At Indigenous Climate Action (ICA), we believe in the importance of self-determination and sovereignty in Indigenous governance and community building. This includes community building through collective care and harm reduction as we move towards a just transition. 

Healing Justice (HJ) is one of our Pathways at ICA; a political framework that has at its core collective care and safety. One of the pillars of HJ is harm reduction, which includes the many ways outside of provincial/federal governments that we care for each other, the Land and our communities. 

A great example of HJ’s harm reduction pillar can be seen in the work of Indigenous community-led organizations like the Sunshine House in Winnipeg. The Sunshine House is a community drop-in and resource centre that provides collective community care through harm reduction and social inclusion. They run a drop in space, a program where people can explore their gender and/or sexual identity called “Like That” , and more recently a Mobile Overdose Prevention Site (M.O.P.S.). 

M.O.P.S. is an Indigenous-led space based out of a recreational vehicle where individuals can access harm reduction education and supplies as well as test and use substances while supported by a dedicated team composed of Indigenous and POC people with lived and living experience of using drugs. 

We are in support of the Sunshine House and other Indigenous and peer-led community responses to healing, but programs like Sunshine House M.O.P.S. are highly stigmatized and regularly under attack by legislation like the recently announced Bill 33 in Manitoba. 

Bill 33

The Addictions Services Act (Bill 33) outlines new legislation for how addictions services can be carried out in the province of Manitoba. It sets a new framework without consultation or consent of local community and Indigenous groups while discrediting years of harm reduction research, consultation, and support held up by the community often with little to no funding from the state. 

This legislation will have detrimental impacts to life saving services like the Mobile Overdose Prevention Site (M.O.P.S) operated by the Sunshine House. The bill also reinforces the medical industrial complex by not recognizing non-licensed health-care practitioners like the Indigenous peers currently supporting the M.O.P.S. program.

Bill 33 is in direct opposition to Indigenous community-led responses to decreasing the harms of overdose and the self-determination of Indigenous communities.

Criminalization of Community Care

In both harm reduction and climate justice spaces, legislation and criminalization seek to control and undermine the self determination and liberation of Indigenous peoples. Community-led solutions are often criminalized through legislation and enforcement that only offer a false sense of security while causing harm to individuals and communities.

In the environmental movement, we see this in the policing of land defenders through programs like C-IRG. In the healing justice movement, we see this in policing and legislation like Bill 33 in Manitoba. 

Again and again we see the state fail to offer us real solutions to our current crisis, then block interventions by our communities - even when these actions or services have a proven record of reducing harm.

Harm Reduction in a Just Transition Framework

Indigenous and community-led solutions, like Sunshine House M.O.P.S, are critical for the health of our community, but they are often grossly underfunded and their services stigmatized through political narratives and laws like Bill 33. Instead of continuing to uphold a healthcare system built on a colonial frame, we should be centering the lived experience, leadership and expertise of Indigenous folks and people who use drugs in response to the overdose crisis. This crisis, just like the climate crisis, has impacted all of our communities in one way or another.

When we think about building a regenerative economy through a just transition framework, we also envision a decolonized health system accessible and supportive TO ALL. To us, that includes life saving and non judgemental interventions for our relatives who use drugs and engage in street economy. It includes access to safe supply and safe consumption sites. It includes ending the stigma around drug-use.

If we are ever to come together as a collective to build the future we want, then we need to stop policing substance use and start uplifting liberatory harm reduction services like M.O.P.S. 

End the Stigma & Uplift Community Voices

Please support the Sunshine House in whatever capacity makes sense to you. We also encourage you to find, support and uplift organizations in your own communities that are working to decolonize and decriminalize community care.

Follow the Sunshine House on social media:
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Consider donating to the Sunshine House or buy their awesome merch!

About the Authors

Erin Konsmo (they/she) is a Prairie queer of Métis and settler Canadian descent. They grew up in central Alberta and are a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation. Erin has spent over a decade working in sexual and reproductive health and continues community work in the areas of gender and sexuality, birth work, consent education, gender-based violence and health promotion. Erin now supports ICA as our Healing Justice Manager.

Rosalyn Boucha (she/her) is a designer, illustrator and creative communicator currently supporting ICA as our Communications Manager. She is a member of Animakee Wa Zhing First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory and is of mixed Anishinaabe and German-settler descent. Growing up on both sides of the medicine line (US-Canada border), Rosalyn also holds deep roots in Kabekanong (Warroad, Minnesota) on Lake of the Woods. 

Erin and Rosalyn both currently live and organize in Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba.