Maxwell Johnson, left, a Heiltsuk First Nation member who was arrested trying to open an account, and Chief Marilyn Slett hold artwork Johnson created for display in the bank's main Vancouver branch, in 2022.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
If you ask any visibly Indigenous person if they’ve been followed around a store or a mall by security guards for no reason, chances are they’ll tell you that it has happened to them.
We call this “shopping while Indigenous,” and nothing can make you feel smaller, angrier, or lesser-than. Being singled out due to your race doesn’t just make you feel insecure and on edge – it makes you feel as though you don’t belong.
Everybody has a story about it, Heiltsuk Nation Chief Marilyn Slett told me. If it didn’t happen in a mall, it happened in a restaurant – where a server forgets to come to your table until you leave, or when you try to use your Indian Status card for a partial tax rebate off a purchase. “You can’t go anywhere without someone having a type of experience,” Ms. Slett told me on Wednesday.
Heiltsuk Nation has had some high-profile experiences in consumer racial profiling. In 2019, a similar case captured national outrage when Heiltsuk’s Maxwell Johnson and his granddaughter were handcuffed by Vancouver police at a Bank of Montreal branch. They had tried to use their Indian Status Cards to open an account; a BMO employee called 911.
Now it is Heiltsuk member Dawn Wilson, who is the CEO of the Coastal National Coast Guard Auxiliary, and her dad Richard Wilson, who say they were racially profiled after visiting a Canadian Tire store in Coquitlam, B.C., in 2020.
“I think people need to know that these big-box stores, with Canadian in the name … aren’t necessarily treating everyone equally,” Ms. Wilson said in a YouTube video released by the Nation’s Tribal Council.
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According to Ms. Wilson, it all started when they went to Canadian Tire for a new set of tires. With an hour and a half to kill, they went into the store to do some shopping. But when they got to the till, she said, the security guard asked to look into her father’s bag in front of everyone.
“I tried to act like it was normal, but when we left, I could see it in his eyes. It wasn’t okay for what happened to him. I was just so ashamed of myself for not saying anything,” she said.
Then, she says, it got worse when she went to pick up her car from the auto centre.
“I told the man who was working what had happened. And he looked at me and said, ‘My dad taught me the difference between an Indian and a Native.’ I said, ‘Oh yeah, what is that?’ ‘An Indian comes from the reserve and begs and steals and demands money.’ So, I looked at him and said, ‘what am I, what is my dad?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Well I never said it.’ And I said, ‘No, you said your dad taught you.’ I was in a room full of men and I was silently crying.”
She says she walked out, and another employee came with her keys and apologized.
After repeated attempts to contact Canadian Tire and get an adequate response, the incident is now the focus of a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal complaint that will be heard in late October against Canadian Tire and the firm providing security at the store.
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In preparation for the hearing, the Nation commissioned an expert report called “Indigenous Consumer Racial Profiling in Canada: A Neglected Human Rights Issue.” The two professors who authored the report call for restorative justice approaches such as Indigenous ceremonies, cultural safety training, and the collection of more information on the issue.
It is time for Canadian Tire to show some moral corporate responsibility here. The company should engage with the Heiltsuk people and agree to participate in restorative justice. BMO leaders did so in the case of Mr. Johnson and his granddaughter in 2020, when 15 representatives of the bank participated in a public healing ceremony called a washing ceremony, held in the Big House in Bella Bella, B.C.
But so far, Canadian Tire, which just purchased the Hudson Bay Company’s intellectual property in June, has refused to participate, Ms. Slett says.
“Canadian Tire and the security company are opposing the remedies we are seeking – the washing ceremony," she said. “This contributes to further damages and doesn’t allow for the healing within our community, or for Richard and his daughter Dawn.”
Canadian Tire has a chance to be a leader on the principles of truth and reconciliation - and avoid alienating First Nations people who have had to deal with racial profiling for too long.