This brief analyzes a little-known policy that is behind the housing crisis on some reserves in Canada that has been wreaking havoc on First Nations for decades. The Default Management and Prevention Policy (DPMP) is supposed to build capacity and support for First Nations that have fallen into debt. Yet, the long-term, overall consequences of this policy are that, in many cases, it intensified rather than resolved the financial crisis in communities. This brief focusses on housing infrastructure as one example of this policy’s damaging effects.
This resource was created as part of the Yellowhead Institute Cash Back Red Paper. Picking up from Land Back, the first Red Paper by Yellowhead about the project of land reclamation, Cash Back looks at how the dispossession of Indigenous lands created a dependency on the state due to the loss of economic livelihood. Cash Back is about restitution from the perspective of stolen wealth.
