Labelling theory stresses that people embody the assumptions and opinions and biases that people attach to them through labels and informs how people treat them based on that label. If someone is labelled a thief they will likely continue to thieve, if someone is called a threat based on attributes that are out of their control, then they will live a life where they are judged as a threat and they will perceive everyone around them as a threat as well. But what if I told you that places can also fall victim to this process? When we condemn places as hopeless they become stagnant and unimportant in the eyes of society, which results in damage centered narratives about these places to fester. What is a damage centered narrative you may ask? It is a bias or opinion that an issue, person, groups of persons, or places are in their essence damaged and incapable of self-improving without a saviour or that the issues associated with them were a natural part of the damage that is associated to them. The North End suffers from these exact narratives, it is painted to be a hopeless area where victimization, crime, and suffering is just a natural part of life, one cause for this is settler colonial ideas of the inner city and the intertwined containment of indigenous victimization into the area (Dorries 2019). Is this a conscious process? The answer is yes and no, once people are made aware to how it functions their is a process of self-reflection and introspection that kicks in, however, when authority and power come into play discretion and personal choice become a reality informing how people are treated. Ask yourself: what biases do I hold about people? What kind of jokes about certain groups of people do I believe are okay to make? To I find myself scorning certain groups of people over others? We will then realize that many of us hold biases that inform how we treat people. Settler colonialism is so tightly stitched into the psyche of the city that even the good work being done within the North End is seen as inadequate. Take a moment to look at how class, wealth, and even race are couched into different areas of the city, historically the North End has been home to the lower working class individuals of the city, immigrants, refugees, and low-income families (Mackinnon 2021). Where you live is dictated not by personal choice, rather by what you can afford, if people from your community live there, and how you'll be treated by the people already there.  How can we expect people who've been historically walled away from other parts of the city to live outside the North End? And with this historical reality being unconsciously recreated, the labels that are attached to the people living in the North End and the labels and narratives attached to the North End itself continue to proliferate.  

So how do we work towards improvement? How do we untwine the narratives that have existed in Winnipeg since before its establishment? Two words: education and indigenization, the education levels of indigenous youth is increasing which is one critical factor in redressing colonial narratives, Non-indigenous students are receiving increasing interaction with and education from people that are from the inner city, and indigenization efforts of urban spaces in and out of the North End are further working to break down Colonial narratives (Mackinnon 2021). Engagement is key, the more you interact with the North End and the issues that are endemic there,  Winnipeg's inner city has been undergoing a decades long process of globalization (Gorayshi 2010). The North End is not a barren hopeless economic black hole, newcomers and generational inhabitants alike have made the north end their home. When these newcomers come to the country they set up businesses, gain employment, strive to better their lives which all contribute economically (and is a point that will be talked about more in the 3rd article).  

Therefore, take a second to remember the North End is not a stagnant and decaying place within the city, it is a dynamic and diverse area with individuals from all walks of life, that through a little investment and work has the potential to prosper. It is now up to ask ourselves: are we okay with how things are especially when the potential to be better is so great?