The recipient of a donation from the CPA’s Orange T-shirt sales at our 2025 convention is First Light, an Indigenous-led organization in St. John’s, Newfoundland. First Light has seven locations in St. John’s that assist urban Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who are experiencing homelessness, mental health issues, and who require supports in the St. John’s area.
Just outside the convention centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is a bus stop where many locals congregate during the day. While the 2025 CPA convention was being held in St. John’s, there were two Indigenous men who spent the whole day there. They weren’t waiting for a bus but, rather, seemed to be waiting for opportunities to converse with the large number of psychologists who had suddenly come from away. They were quite happy to tell us all about their hometowns, about the most picturesque locations in the province, and to act as de-facto tour guides suggesting the places outside the city we all had to visit.
Over the course of three days, we learned from those two men about some of the Indigenous history of St. John’s, but mostly about the history of the rural parts of the province. They told me about the nine-day hunger strike in 1983 by Mi’kmaq activists – a hunger strike that prompted the Newfoundland government to finally release $800,000 in federal funds that had been supposed to go directly to the community of Miawpukek. The funding had been held back for more than a year because the provincial government wanted to take a significant portion of the money for themselves for “administrative purposes”.
I learned even more about this hunger strike from Stacey Howse, the Executive Director of First Light, when I spoke with her this month. She pointed me to the CBC Gem documentary The Forgotten Warriors, which details the 1983 strike in Conne River and exemplifies the struggles faced by Indigenous people in Newfoundland. Their history is not taught in the school curriculum there. When Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, the Indigenous population was not only ignored, but specifically excluded, which meant that services and supports that could have helped were not made available. Since then, the province – and organizations like First Light – have been playing catch-up.
Says Stacey, “so many people don’t understand the history of Indigenous people here in Newfoundland and Labrador. It’s not in the school system, and as a matter of fact there was inaccurate information in some of the existing social studies books about the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaw people which differed tremendously from our oral history. We’ve been working very hard to teach the history.”
First Light has seven locations in St. John’s that assist urban Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who are experiencing homelessness, mental health issues, and who require supports in the St. John’s area. The vast majority of Indigenous people in St. John’s who need the supports First Light provides come from the surrounding communities and have deep ties to the land in the rural areas of Newfoundland and Labrador.
First Light is an Indigenous-led “wraparound” agency, meaning it provides many services which all work in concert with one another and which cover, as best they can, all the varied needs a person in St. John’s experiencing homelessness might require. Stacey talks passionately about the ‘Housing First’ model, which suggests that the first thing people experiencing homelessness need is housing. It’s all well and good to provide a host of services – employment, education, mental health, addiction services – but having stable housing is the most important part. With stable housing, accessing those services becomes much easier. Without it, the effectiveness of wraparound services becomes greatly diminished.
During the 2025 CPA convention, there were several presentations that touched on homelessness (Correlates of PTSD Symptom Severity in Homeless-Shelter Support Staff, Experiences of Women and Gender Diverse Individuals At-Risk for Homelessness) and several others that touched on Indigenous issues (Exploring Priorities for, Concerns about, and Definitions of Nature Connection in Curve Lake First Nation, Methods of Weaving Reconciliation Promotion in Psychology Curriculum). When delegates left the convention centre, we could see first-hand the need in downtown St. John’s for the services provided by First Light.
At every convention, the CPA sells orange T-shirts designed by Betty Albert, and chooses a local charity for a donation derived from the sale of those T-shirts. In 2025, we chose First Light. We chose them because they offer the kinds of services that are carefully and pointedly designed to achieve the best results for the urban Indigenous population, and for people experiencing homelessness. We also chose them because they are dedicated to telling the stories, and sharing the history, that led Indigenous people to St. John’s in the first place.
It's the kind of story you’re unlikely to hear without the work of Indigenous knowledge-keepers in Newfoundland and Labrador. That is, unless you have a few days to hang out at the St. John’s convention centre bus stop.