The latest saga facing a homeless couple now well-known to Chief readers highlights just how complicated the social problem can get. There's simply no good guy here - and no bad guy either. What's obvious is the homeless issue so often touches off impassioned discussion, with loads of people believing one extreme - that all homeless are lazy drunks or druggies who don't deserve free accommodations - and others saying everyone deserves food and shelter, no matter what life decisions they make -including dangerous criminal behaviour.The common link often found among those talking from the sidelines is they rarely look at how it happened. How a person's life story leads to such a deplorable situation. But those details are of paramount importance - not as a means of justifying or denying help, but as a means of addressing an increasingly debilitating social ill. Obviously turning one's back doesn't help, and handing out sandwiches at emergency shelters is not eliminating the problem. But listening to their stories and learning from their stories might help find tailor-made solutions. And it's the best approach to prevention - catching others on the way down the same path.Each and every homeless person's story involves a complex web that could include inherited mental and emotional problems, untreated physical and emotional trauma, and on-going social ills like racism, ageism and addiction. In the case of Claire Johnston, we can guess where it all began: she and several family members were victimized by the residential school system. It's an old story that many -even in First Nations bands - will respond to by saying: "get over it." But when you stop to think about it, the Canadian government actually did go a long way to achieving its goal of cultural genocide. Families were torn apart, and languages, religion and cultural traditions denied. This lasted into the 1970s. Let's face it, getting over it isn't working. Especially when the Canadian government only recently acknowledged this terrible past with Stephen Harper's apology. And most Canadian students are still not taught this particular historical gem in schools, leading to many non-Aboriginals' confused resentment: "What do they have to be so mad about?"And while we no longer see residential schools in Canada, we still have marginalization, and many of them are native. We're just beginning to hear about the Canadian shame of reserve life in remote northern regions of the country. Claire's is merely one story of injustice lived with, and suffered throughout an entire lifetime. You can be sure that every one of the people living out on the street has a similarly horrific tale to tell. Many, like Claire's, spanning numerous generations. So let's stop pointing fingers, shall we? And get on with the process of healing. Without compassion and understand among all involved, there's no way to solve the homeless crisis.
