Waterloo Region Record

Region slow to respond to Indigenous centre proposal

Activists balk at idea to put it in old police station

LIZ MONTEIRO

Two Indigenous community members say they feel left out of plans for a possible Indigenous hub in downtown Kitchener and wonder if the Region of Waterloo and the City of Kitchener consider the move a priority.

Bangishimo Johnston and Amy Smoke, co-founders of the Land Back Camp in Victoria Park, which they call Willow River Park, presented their plans for an Indigenous cultural and community centre for the former Charles Street bus terminal to regional officials last November.

They say they are still waiting to hear from officials on how plans are moving along.

“We are not provided with any updates as to what is going on,” Johnston said in an interview Friday. “It’s really frustrating because we feel like we are left in the dark.”

Johnston said both the region and the City of Kitchener say they are focusing on Indigenous issues by implementing anti-racism initiatives.

“Yet it doesn’t feel like reconciliation is a priority,” he said.

Instead, suggestions for an Indigenous hub appear to be redirected elsewhere — the current Waterloo Regional Police detachment on Frederick Street.

The Kitchener detachment will be moving to the former provincial courthouse down the street. Construction is underway.

Officials are tight-lipped about what will happen to the old police detachment, which is also being considered for an arts hub, among other ideas.

“A number of community partners have expressed interest in use

of the space and tours of the space have been facilitated,” the region said in a statement Friday. The police station is still in use and not yet considered surplus, the region said.

Many people in the Indigenous community don’t want a cultural centre in a police building, Johnston said.

“The trauma that has happened to us by police services. There is a lot of Afro-Indigenous community members as well that would not want to access the police station for support services,” he said.

Officials are not taking into consideration what a police building represents to the Indigenous community, Smoke said.

“We would like to foundationally build a communal gathering space instead of just putting us in a building that was designed to erase us,” she said.

The police station would also “limit us on what we could create,” she said. “There is so much trauma built into the building.”

“Even if they were to hand over the police station, it would take millions of dollars and years to renovate,” Johnston said.

Last week, the region announced it was sending out “engagement teams” in the core until mid-September collecting input and suggestions on future ideas for the old bus terminal.

The bus terminal site, about one hectare (2.6 acres) in size, closed in 2019 and was used as a COVID-19 testing site until this past March. The site is mostly owned by the region, but Kitchener owns a small part of it.

The region has said it is considering a mixed-used development and affordable housing, with consideration for equity and inclusion and economic development.

“The thing that sticks with us is that they are using the word developer in their public engagement meetings which implies that they are looking to build something there like rental units or condo units,” Johnston said.

Smoke said she is disappointed to see the region carrying out an engagement process by interviewing citizens on the street on their thoughts about what to do with the former bus terminal site.

“The engagement teams they are sending into the streets is exactly what our film was about,” she said, referring to the 30-minute documentary: “Recollection and Imaginings: A Collection of Stories About the Charles Street Bus Terminal” that the pair made earlier this year. “We literally did that work and they are acting like it is an original idea.”

Johnston and Smoke say they have put plenty of thought and effort into an Indigenous hub at the old bus station, with drawings prepared by two University of Waterloo architecture students.

Smoke and Johnston met with the students and created a wish list for a community centre.

Plans include a daycare, meeting rooms, space for mental health and domestic violence services, healing gardens, and a gathering space or hall for 500 people.

They would also like to have transitional and emergency housing units available on possibly two floors.

The plans were presented to regional officials last November along with a petition with more than 3,500 names of people supporting a multipurpose centre, he said. Other local Indigenous organizations also supported the vision.

Smoke said they also met with Two Row Architect from Six Nations who would design the project.

“We had already begun some of the conversations on how we begin this,” said Smoke, referring to a feasibility and needs assessment studies. “We got the ball rolling.”

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2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

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