Police racism and colonialism

Over the 11 days between August 29th through to September 8th, 6 Indigenous people were killed by police forces across the Canadian state.

 

Jack Piché, 31, of Clearwater River Dene Nation was run over by an RCMP cruiser near Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan at 3 am on August 29th.

 

15-year-old Hoss Lightning-Saddleback from Samson Cree Nation was shot and killed by an RCMP officer early on August 30th in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, just south of Edmonton. He had called 911 saying he was being “followed by people who wanted to harm him.”

 

Tammy Batemen, a mother of young children in her thirties from Roseau River Anishinaabe First Nation, was struck by a police cruiser in a Winnipeg riverside park on September 2nd near an encampment where she lived.

 

57-year-old Jason West, an Indigenous man taken from his family during the Sixties’ Scoop, was shot and killed by 2 Windsor police officers on September 6th.

 

31-year-old Danny Knife from Atahkakoop Cree Nation in northern Saskatchewan was shot and killed by RCMP officers who had responded to a 911 call about a man with a machete on September 8th.

 

Steven ‘Iggy’ Dedam, 33, was shot by RCMP officers during a ‘wellness check’ on Sept. 8 at his home in Elsipogtog First Nation, about an hour north of Moncton, New Brunswick.

 

This outburst of police violence against Indigenous people is not an aberration but a feature of the settler colonial state of Canada. It's the norm and that is a product of the needs of colonial/capitalist powers.

 

Police and colonialism

 

The North West Mounted Police (NWMP) was formed in 1873 to assert its dominion in the west and clear the way for railways to the Pacific Ocean. They waged war against Plains Cree and Metis nations for this purpose during the Northwest Rebellion. Indigenous peoples were crowded onto reserves to allow the exploitation of natural resources and to clear land for agricultural settlement.

 

After acquiring "Royal" designation for services rendered to the British crown during the Boer war in South Africa, the NWMP crushed the Winnipeg General Strike with violence in 1919. The RCMP was formed a year later through merger with the Dominion Police of the eastern provinces.

 

The RCMP and their predecessors enforced a pass system preventing Indigenous people leaving their reserve, kidnapped Indigenous children from their families took them to the notorious Residential Schools and used extreme violence.

 

Today the RCMP continues this legacy with organized militarized invasions of Wet'suwet'en and Secwepemc lands in so-called BC for the building of the CGL and TMX pipelines against the wishes of the Hereditary Chiefs and Land Defenders.

 

In Saskatchewan, 62.5 percent of people who were killed by police between 2000 and 2017 were Indigenous, despite being only 11 percent of the population. From 2017 to June 2020, almost 40 percent of people killed by police across Canada were Indigenous.

 

In 2016, Indigenous people represented 25 percent of the national male prison population and 35 percent of the female prison population.

 

The anti-Indigenous racist violence goes beyond police and prisons. Four years ago, Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman died while suffering racist abuse by staff in a Joliette, Quebec hospital.

 

In July 2017, Barbara Kentner, a 34-year-old Anishinaabe woman, died from injuries sustained after she was hit by a trailer hitch thrown from a passing truck. She heard her assailant yell “I got one!” as the truck drove away.

 

Earlier this month, at the protest calling for accountability for Tammy Bateman’s death, a car forced its way through the protesters, hitting a woman. Although not seriously injured, she declined medical attention and further police involvement.

 

Impunity for police and settler violence against Indigenous people is only part of the inequality faced by Indigenous people in Canadian society.

 

Indigenous people have significantly lower life expectancies, higher rates of infant mortality and suicide than the national average.

 

First Nations reserves are chronically underserved by health services and Indigenous people suffer significantly higher rates of arthritis, asthma, diabetes, disability and infectious diseases than the national average.

 

25 percent live in poverty, including a staggering 40 percent of Indigenous children. They are forced to live in inadequate and crowded housing conditions, and lack access to clean water. 26 First Nations communities are still suffering under long-term drinking-water advisories, including Neskantaga which hasn’t had clean water since1995.

 

Despite these stark realities, Indigenous peoples never stopped resisting the genocidal push of Canadian settler colonialism. Fights for Indigenous rights and sovereignty have garnered more support than ever from wide layers of Canadian settlers.

 

Indeed, when the Trudeau government was elected in 2015, he said that “no relationship is more important to Canada than the relationship with Indigenous people” and declared reconciliation a key priority.

 

Trudeau’s reconciliation, however, didn’t extend to respecting the sovereignty of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, as was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1997. They allowed the BC NDP government to send an RCMP army into their territory on behalf of CGL in February 2020.

 

Resistance

 

When the historic Indigenous-led Shut Down Canada movement erupted coast to coast and blocked rails, ports and roads, there was widespread solidarity in settler communities. The resulting crisis forced to government to send delegates to talks with Wet’suwet’en, though they did not negotiate in good faith.

 

In early 2021, after ground radar searches found thousands of graves at former Residential School sites (which had already been testified to in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission), widespread solidarity for this evidence of settler colonial brutality caused unprecedented numbers of people to question the “moral foundations” of Canada. July 1st that year was a sea of orange shirts in solidarity with Residential School survivors instead of the usual red and white.

 

The struggles for justice and sovereignty for Grassy Narrows, the Land Defence Alliance and 1492 Land Back Lane have garnered much support, and there are many other ongoing Indigenous struggles that continue to challenge the racism and oppression of the settler colonial state.

 

But the rise of the far right that started in the midst of the Covid pandemic is a warning. During the “freedom” convoy in Ottawa in early 2022, proud Canadian settler colonialism reasserted itself. The fascist and far-right forces at its centre were aligned with extractive industries and peddled anti-Trans and anti-immigrant ideology. They have gas-lighted the ground radar findings of mass graves and the force of these ideas has alarmingly pushed the whole political spectrum to the right.

 

These dangerous forces have connections to police and the military and crucial financial backing from the Oil industry. They are the “bodies of armed men” that enforce the interests of Canadian settler colonial capitalism. 

 

To counter their influence, we need to stand up for justice with Indigenous communities under attack by police, for Indigenous sovereignty and rights more generally and build the widest possible movement to confront the far right who want to increase the brutality of the Canadian state to the detriment of all those who suffer under its rule.

 

Many voices have been calling for the curtailment of police interventions, especially in Indigenous and other racialized communities that bear the brunt of police violence. They have called for funding of community led approaches to ensure safety, emphasizing de-escalation and conflict resolution instead of the police who are more likely to shoot rather than ask any questions.

 

These steps would be welcome. But the racism and police violence are built in to the system.