In the era of Truth and Reconciliation, John A. Macdonald’s words still echo
John A. MacDonald’s sentiments were recorded in a letter to the commissioner of Indian Affairs shortly before the 1885 hangings of eight Cree warriors. These warriors had had enough. Their people were starving, destitute, and diseased, while the Plains Cree nomadic way of life, and the buffalo that symbolized it, were decimated by the Crown and its new wave of European farmers.
Chief Poundmaker and Chief Big Bear, Cree leaders and iconic dissidents of the Crown, had to concede for their people to survive. The Plains people needed the rations the Crown promised, and in 1882, Chief Big Bear signed Treaty Six with reluctance and sorrow. “We want none of the Queen’s presents,” Chief Big Bear had said. “It was not given to us to have the rope about our necks.”When the rations proved inadequate, Big Bear, Poundmaker, and Cree warriors turned their attention to a resistance effort. Other community members turned to petty theft and prostitution to survive.
The resistance culminated in the Looting of Battleford, Sask. The rebellion sought to reclaim rations promised by the signing of Treaty Six. In the aftermath of the rebellion, Macdonald and his Government sent a message to the Plains people: If you act out, you will be killed.
Chief Poundmaker and Big Bear were imprisoned and eight warriors were sent to the gallows, their deaths sentenced in a foreign language, cruelly denied a translation in Cree.
In Nov. 28, 1885, the eight warriors who took part in the resistance effort were hanged. Indigenous students from the Battleford Industrial School were pulled out of class and forced to stand witness to the execution, a clear warning from the colonial state. The 1885 hanging at Battleford still remains the largest mass execution in Canadian history.
Present injustices against Indigenous Peoples: The Case of Colten Boushie
Now, 133 years later, Battleford has returned to the frontlines of conflict between Indigenous and colonial Canada.
Earlier in February, Gerald Stanley was fully acquitted of the charge of manslaughter for the shooting of a 22-year-old Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation. The jury had no Indigenous or minority representation. The defence argued that the fatal shot to the back of the head resulted from a “hang fire” — a delay between when a trigger is pulled and the bullet fired.
The Crown’s experts denied the claim, noting that “hang fires” are rare and the delay lasts less than a second. Stanley’s gun was found to be functioning properly, but the defence still claimed it was a “freak accident.”
The events as recorded by the police ITO (Information to Obtain a Warrant) state that Boushie, his girlfriend Kiora Wuttunee, and four other friends went swimming at the Maymont River that day.
The young people had been drinking, and some had said they were drunk, according to statements given to the police. At about 5:30 p.m. they arrived at the Stanley farm in Wuttunee’s Ford Escape, after trying to steal “items and vehicles” at the neighbouring Fouhy farm, according to the ITO.
The story given by Boushie’s family is that they were experiencing car trouble and could have been looking for help. A police officer who was at the scene noted that the SUV they arrived with had only a rim, and no tire, on the front driver’s side.
According to the ITO, two men, not Colten, jumped out of the Ford Escape and into a pickup and ATV, both of which were owned by the Stanleys. Gerald Stanley, and his son Sheldon, started to yell at the group and the young men hopped back into the Ford SUV.
Sheldon then grabbed a sledge hammer and smashed the windshield as his father kicked a tail light when Boushie was reversing. Boushie then crashed into a parked car owned by the Stanleys. The two men who had jumped into the truck and ATV immediately fled the scene. As Sheldon went into the house to get truck keys, he heard three shots. When he returned, he saw his father, pale, standing next to the driver’s side window. The third shot had gone through the back of Colten Boushie’s head — it was fatal. After the incident, the RCMP visited Boushie’s mother, Debbie Baptiste, with weapons out, accused her of being drunk, raided and rummaged her home unwarranted, and then mishandled crucial evidence, according to independent reports. A mother experiencing trauma needs comfort when being told she has lost a son, not to be treated like she and her family are criminals. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Baptiste said, “My son was the victim, but I thought we had done something wrong.”
Following the trial, many farmers expressed that they felt aggrieved, and that their voices and issues remained unheard. The growing fear of violence and theft on their properties, they say, has not been taken into account by politicians, and particularly by the prime minister. It’s a warranted feeling, but when implicit prejudice, institutional racism, and poverty intermix with a history of indigenous-colonial violence dating back one hundred years, anxiety levels become high, and it becomes easier to point and pull triggers, involuntary or not, at the Other. Where First Nations Peoples now fear for their lives, rural farmers fear for their property. In the era of Truth and Reconciliation, Colten Boushie, Tina Fontaine, Tammy Kaesh, and Brady Francis, all Indigenous youth, just boys and girls, have been killed or found dead.
[trx_slider engine=”swiper” custom=”yes” count=”3″ offset=”0″ orderby=”date” order=”desc” controls=”no” pagination=”no” titles=”no” descriptions=”0″ links=”no” crop=”yes” autoheight=”yes” slides_per_view=”1″ slides_space=”0″ interval=”2000″ top=”inherit” bottom=”inherit” left=”inherit” right=”inherit”] [trx_slider_item src=”https://www.theontarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/tina-fontaine.jpg”] [trx_slider_item src=”https://www.theontarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/tammy-keeash.jpg”] [trx_slider_item src=”https://www.theontarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/brady-edited.jpg”] [/trx_slider]Photos Courtesy of CBC News
Negligence and sloppy policing permeate these cases. Indigenous youth are being told a narrative that they don’t matter, that they can be killed without the vanguard of the state to administer justice. They have been told that the justice system will protect those that kill them. Accidental or not. Regardless of which side you stand on in the polarizing case of Colten Boushie, there is one thing you cannot argue. Since colonial Canada’s insurrection in 1867, one thing remains constant: There is always a lethal reminder for who governs.
Feature photo Courtesy of Facebook via CC0