Victor Mondaca: Harm Reduction on Winnipeg’s Streets

Victor Mondaca once slept by the river in Winnipeg with nothing but the clothes on his back. Today he works in executive leadership in community-based housing and co-founded Nahuen Consultation with his partner Amanda, training frontline workers, librarians, students and everyday Winnipeggers in de-escalation, harm reduction and how to reverse an overdose.

We sat down with Victor, who is Mapuche, to talk about what actually makes a community safer, and why pushing people out of sight makes things worse.

We’re talking:

• Recovery as something built over time through culture, family and purpose, and the role shame plays in keeping people from help
• What reconciliation between police and Indigenous communities would actually require
• How science can break down stigma around substance use, and why we treat some substances so differently from others
• What real community safety looks like, and who gets left out when we push people out of sight

Victor’s argument is simple and harder to practice than it sounds: if we want safer neighbourhoods, the people most at risk have to be part of the “we.” He has responded to multiple overdoses while out in our city because the person was in plain view. Move people out of sight, and outreach workers can’t find them either.

As Victor puts it: “If the end goal is safety, then we need to look at the most vulnerable and ensure their safety too.”

Victor Recommends:

• Reading: Drug Use for Grown-Ups by Dr. Carl L. Hart, which challenges common assumptions about drugs, drug use and drug policy.
• Reading: “Anatomy of a hush-up: How Health Canada buried the safe supply expert reviews” by Euan Thomson at Drug Data Decoded, an investigation into expert reports on safer supply that Health Canada never released.
• Watching: “Connecting to Culture,” a three-part series from the First Nations Health Authority on Indigenous harm reduction, told by Elders, peers and youth.
• Watching: “The Power of Addiction and the Addiction of Power” by Dr. Gabor Maté, a talk on addiction, trauma and disconnection that asks what has happened to someone rather than what is wrong with them.

Learn more about Nahuen Consultation—including upcoming harm reduction training opportunities in Winnipeg—on their website.