ABSTRACT
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, unsanctioned relief encampments emerged in several Canadian cities to support houseless residents. One such encampment began on 24 July 2020, in what is colonially known as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Named Pekiwewin (Nêhiyawak/Cree for the act of coming home), the encampment was a space of harm-reduction, mutual aid, and community care. The timing of the camp coincided with the state-supported 2020 National Hockey League’s Playoffs, safely held nearby in a walled off section of city-center Edmonton called “Hub City.” This chapter shows how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing spatial and temporal boundaries in Edmonton. It also explores the city’s dystopian and utopian possibilities. To do so, it draws from an ethnography spanning Pekiwewin’s planning, the 112 days of camp, and the police eviction on 12 November 2020. It argues that Pekiwewin departed from a trajectory of what Mark Rifkin calls “settler time,” or the linear spatiotemporality structuring city-center Edmonton. Instead of being fixed in city-center Edmonton’s extractive spatiotemporality, Pekiwewin was concurrently structured to settler time through what Rifkin describes as “livable forms of stability” (Beyond 32). This temporal co-existence helps imagine a future outside of racial capitalist settler coloniality, and offers hope for a sustainable future.
