Katłįà Lafferty is Dene, Cree, French and American from the Northwest Territories, and a current UVic law student. She is the author of the memoir, Northern Wildflower, and two novels: Land-Water-Sky, about Dene legends in modern times, and This House is Not a Home, about the northern housing system. She wrote them for her community, and they came to her through the spirit of her ancestors.
This House Is Not a Home is a fictional story based on true events. It presents a clear trajectory of how settlers dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their land — and how Indigenous communities, with dignity and resilience, continue to live and honour their culture, values, inherent knowledge systems, and Indigenous rights towards re-establishing sovereignty. This story is a call for land back.
Interviewed by Isabel Jones
Isabel Jones (IJ): This House is Not a Home is a moving, harrowing, and eye-opening story which educates readers about the horrific story of housing in northern Canada. There has been a raised awareness of residential schools in the last few years and your book adds to the story about the vast impact of government decisions on Indigenous families. Awareness and empathy are developed as we read the novel. Do you hope readers will take away something more from this book?
Katłįà (K): I want them to have a great sense of knowledge of what’s taken place in Canada’s history, not just in the north, but all across Canada with this notion of land grabs on Indigenous lands without consent. It’s really important for people to understand how that came to be and it’s quite a complicated timeline of events that took place starting from the very beginning of the Doctrine of Discovery. Also, I really hope that it makes people cry! That’s one of the things I wanted was to have readers really feel that emotion and to know what it might be like to suffer the way that family did. When people ask why I fictionalized the history, I explain that this allows readers to step into the characters’ shoes, to experience the emotion of their despair.
IJ: The title implies a great deal about the nature of home. Ko’s family returns from a hunting trip to find their home razed to the ground. What was lost for them, besides their possessions?
K: They lost their connection to land and their ability to live independently and free from assimilation of society where you have to work and pay bills and all those things. That was something they never had to do. Their life was more about being connected to the land through getting daily sustenance and their spiritual fulfillment and even energy in terms of health. All of that was taken away. It really wasn’t about material things at all. They could have rebuilt if they had the chance, but the world was evolving around them, so it was almost impossible to continue living that lifestyle. Their entire way of life was taken away. In truth it really did happen overnight. The remaining survivors of that family tell me it happened that way. They came back and their house was gone. She was actually pregnant at the time and they had to live in a tent in -40° in the winter. They started asking questions and had no idea what happened. Ko’s family gets no help from town officials, the government’s Indian Agent. You can definitely see how that would break someone down, defeat them so they become so discouraged that they give up. That’s where addictions can come in. If Ko wasn’t as strong as he was, there would be no way.
IJ: During the story, Ko learns the stories of his ancestors and the land through his father and eventually passes those on to his children. Stories are so crucial to identity, making connections and making meaning in our lives. Has the writing and telling of your stories, sharing this hard history, contributed to healing in the community or yourself?
K: Definitely, yes. Even me, growing up, my grandma went to residential school, my mom went to residential school and we didn’t talk about it. I didn’t know why my family was struggling the way we were until later on in life and then I discovered, oh, that’s why. Even in our own communities we don’t know why things are the way they are. In terms of housing, you do really need to know the history and I’ve never thought of myself as a historian, but history is so important to know where we are today and why we are where we are so the more that the book educates the better. Now I’m seen in the community and the legal community as the person who wrote the book on housing and I’m seen as a big advocate for housing. I’ve been asked to be at that national level because of this book. I am willing to take on the task but I just want to tell the story. If that’s the case and leads to other things, then great.
IJ: I learned the term environmental racism when reading about your role as climate writer-in-residence at the West Vancouver Public Library. Can you talk about what that means and how it is evident in Canadian communities today?
K: It occurs across the world. You’ll see poverty-stricken communities right adjacent to mills or old abandoned mines. It’s kind of out of sight, out of mind. We’re going to make a mess and not care this is in your back yard because you don’t matter. That’s really what happened with the goldmine as well. It was right in Yellowknife Dene First Nations’ land and it was spilling toxic substances into the waterways, spilling into our ability to hunt and fish and trap. For about a 100 km radius it was poisonous.
Back in the day there were no regulations around consultation, like section 35 consultation. Now that there is, that’s happening less and less thankfully. It’s more something of the past but you’ll still see it and I think it’s something that goes hand in hand with racism because of this notion that certain demographics or marginalized communities don’t matter to the people that are benefitting off the lands. Unfortunately, it happens in inner cities as well, in ghetto areas where there’s dumps right in people’s backyards. It’s not safe, it’s not pretty, it’s destructive. People are starting to stand up about it now and say, ‘No, hey not in my community!’. You’re going to have to follow this process, or we’ll have to benefit somehow. We’re not going to just sit here and allow that to happen. So, it’s good to know that things are changing. There’s no way in this day and age that that goldmine would be able to operate the way it did back in the day. One of the smokestacks that was emitting inorganic arsenic, they knowingly called the name of our chief. Those emissions were directly in the way the wind blew into our community so it was very, very strategic but that would never happen today.
IJ: Change happens slowly as we see over the time of Ko’s childhood, parenting years, and old age. Do you feel that positive change is happening with housing in northern communities?
K: I like to write in full circles. I find it’s the Indigenous storytelling in me, I’m not very linear at all. The trajectory of Ko’s life needed to be told in that way. You needed to see what he was missing for the rest of the book, what he was driving toward what he was motivated to do, what he was longing for and needing in his life. Without that you wouldn’t have had the full understanding of how much he needed the land for everything. I didn’t plan it; it unfolded that way.
The landscape of housing in the north is slowly changing, but not nearly as fast as we need it to. The only reason it’s changing is because of advocates pushing for that change. The government is in response mode. They’re not actually forwardly doing a lot of the work but are just triggered by a state of emergency in housing which leads them to do something. It’s not near enough where it should be. A lot of people on reserves are stuck in between territorial or provincial government or federal government and there’s a blame game. We gave you the money, what did you do with it? It’s not that cut and dried. That’s why it’s not solved. It’s much more complicated than that.