As Canadians continue to fear being taken over by the United States, the entire country has mobilized in red-and-white pride while chanting the new national mantra “Elbows Up.” But something significant has been missing from the discourse amid an important federal election: a serious conversation about why Indigenous people are continuing to die in altercations with police – either on the streets or behind bars – in record numbers.
The deaths, the abuse and the headlines feel nonstop, and the latest report, from APTN Investigates, is infuriating. From Aug. 30 to Dec. 14, 2024, 15 Indigenous people died, either in police custody or in police interactions.
How can this entire country honestly claim to stand together when Canada’s systems of power and justice continue to erase First Nations, Inuit and Métis?
In December, two mothers of First Nations people who were shot and killed by law enforcement tearfully and powerfully demanded a national inquiry into the epidemic of police violence at the Assembly of First Nations’ winter general assembly. There was an emergency resolution about the 10 deaths of First Nations people between August and November, 2024, due to police interactions.
AFN National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak demanded an inquiry, supported by all political parties, to investigate Indigenous deaths and other serious incidents, with the aim of finally changing this deadly trajectory. But to be clear, Indigenous people have been screaming about this issue since even before Canada became a country.
That call has gone unanswered. Actually, it is worse than that: the calls have been effectively outright ignored.
What does this say to our living children and youth who have to live their lives fearful of police, the Crown, and a justice system that too often diminishes their existence? Indigenous people represent the fastest growing segment of the population. To whom will these new generations turn?
I cannot get out of my mind the image of Pacey Dumas, a 90-pound 18-year-old who was lying on the ground – as per police instruction, after officers responded outside his family home to a fight call – when his head was kicked like “a soccer ball,” according to a civilian witness, by Edmonton Police Service Const. Ben Todd on Dec. 9, 2020. The officer was not charged. Mr. Dumas was unarmed. Now, he lives with brain damage, and has a permanent indentation in his skull.
Earlier this month, a judge rejected a request to review the Crown decision not to prosecute Mr. Todd, after Alberta’s police watchdog found that there was reasonable grounds to suggest the officer had committed an offence.
I spent Tuesday at the University of Regina, speaking to students about Canada’s true history and relationship with Indigenous people. Afterward, we spoke about continued police violence, homelessness and addiction in this province. They told me Saskatchewan is still divided after the shooting death of Colten Boushie on Aug. 9, 2016, by white farmer Gerald Stanley, who was acquitted of all charges in Mr. Boushie’s death by an all-white jury. This is also the province where 11 people died and 17 were injured after a stabbing rampage by Myles Sanderson, which terrorized the James Smith Cree Nation and the village of Weldon for three awful days in 2022.
Many of the issues underlying these awful events are playing out nationally. And in the absence of a true country-wide commitment to a deep investigation into systemic racism surrounding policing and justice issues, the short-term answer in Saskatchewan is a bizarre one: hiring more police.
The proponents of the newly created Saskatchewan Marshals Service say it will be a needed addition for urban, First Nations and rural policing. But it will not get to the heart of the matter of the historic, fractured relationship that started when the North West Mounted Police, and then the RCMP, started clearing our people off the land and into Indian Residential Schools. It won’t be an answer to a national epidemic, either, because creating a new police agency, on top of all the others, doesn’t get us anywhere new. It will not be the courageous, just and sustainable solution we need to examine how the hell we got here in the first place, nor will it address the root causes of the problem. If you want to know what those causes are, read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, the 94 Calls to Action. Read the independent report by the RCMP oversight commission into how Mr. Boushie’s mom was treated by RCMP officers on the night her son died.
So before you put your elbows up for Canada, let’s fix what was once called Canada’s most important relationship. Only then can we really all stand proud and strong.