Dettah Chief Ernest Betsina is calling out the City of Yellowknife for giving cigarettes to homeless people, arguing that the municipality's comments about the matter had racist undertones and he said the city seemed to be leveraging people's addictions.
In October, city workers conducted a point-in-time count, a project that helps measure homelessness in Yellowknife. In an email to SA国际影视传媒, the city admitted that it used cigarettes as incentive to help complete its survey. One of the intentions behind that, according to municipal staff, includes facilitating engagement.
"Small, culturally-appropriate incentives help initiate conversations and build trust, which is particularly important when working with individuals in vulnerable circumstances," said Abby Schelew, a communications advisor with the city, in an email to SA国际影视传媒.
Betsina said that practice is not OK and not a reflection of what Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) does. The chief explained that tobacco can be used for something like a 'feeding the fire' ceremony.
"We don't give out cigarettes just for the sake of it and to promote cigarette smoking. No, we don't do that as YKDFN," he stressed.
Betsina added that there are racist undertones to the city's comment about cigarettes being part of a culturally-appropriate incentive.
"I just don't understand what the city is trying to do and it just caught me off guard," said Betsina, who said he learned about the municipality's methods on Nov. 22. "I find it disturbing that I heard that."
Betsina added that it seems like the city might have been leveraging homeless people's addictions by using cigarettes SA国际影视传媒� an addictive substance SA国际影视传媒� as motivation to take part in a survey. It appears that the city values statistics and data over the homeless population's lives by giving them such a harmful substance, he contended.
On Nov. 19, SA国际影视传媒 scheduled an interview with Mayor Rebecca Alty for Nov. 22 to discuss this topic. About 90 minutes before the interview, Alty wrote to SA国际影视传媒, indicating something else had come up and said she was consequently not available to talk.
Although SA国际影视传媒 directed Alty's attention to Betsina's comments about racist undertones and leveraging people's addictions, she did not address them.
"I donSA国际影视传媒檛 have anything further to add except weSA国际影视传媒檒l take the comments into consideration for future point-in-time counts," the mayor stated in her email.
SA国际影视传媒 also approached Coun. Ben Hendriksen, chair of the city's community advisory board, but he did not respond to the invitation to comment.
According to the , more than 90 per cent of survey participants were Indigenous, despite only making up 23 per cent of Yellowknife's population. Most of the those Indigenous people were First Nations as well. Almost 40 per cent of respondents said they require addictions and substance use services.
"I just hope that this trend does not continue, especially handing out cigarettes to my members out on the streets," said Betsina. "I just don't want members to start complaining to me that the city is handing out cigarettes to us just to get some reports or their stats that they want to talk about, just for cigarettes."
The chief added that handing out something like food would be a much better alternative than smokes.
