The proposed re-organization of K-12 education in Manitoba being contemplated by the provincial government’s Bill 64 is unlikely to have any impact whatever on the educational success of children and young people. But this administrative overhauling will preoccupy educational administrators for years to come. Meanwhile, the real educational problem will continue to go unaddressed.

In the summer of 2009, at a funeral in Winnipeg’s North End following a gang-related drive-by shooting, two of us were approached by members of a North End street gang. They wanted to talk. Too often the voices of the people who have intimate knowledge of, and are integral to, the problems in Winnipeg’s inner city are not heard. Our report endeavours to give a voice to these six Aboriginal men.

Winnipeg’s historic North End was a contradictory place. Poverty was widespread and deep; out of its midst grew a rich and vibrant culture. Today’s North End is similar in many respects – deep poverty and racism, and an emergent culture of resistance, for example – yet different in important ways.

In western Canadian cities like Winnipeg, a new and particularly destructive form of poverty has emerged over the past thirty years. It is inextricably linked with racism, is disproportionately concentrated in the inner city and has especially damaging effects on Aboriginal people. At the same time, it is Aboriginal people and especially Aboriginal women who are in the lead in developing effective, close-to-the-ground strategies to combat this new poverty.

If you look hard enough in the midst of Winnipeg’s sprawling and decaying inner city, you will see scattered islands of remarkable creativity and collective action: innovative community development (CD) initiatives battling the seemingly relentless spread of urban poverty. Most Winnipeggers are oblivious to this struggle: they choose not to know about it – or to care.