Just another dead Indian: a modern history

Brett Forester is a status Anishinabe member of the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation.

By Brett Forester is a status Anishinabe member of the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation living Ottawa. We thank him for allowing Socialist Alternative to publish this article, which first appeared on thebrassmonk.com. Across Canada people took to the streets to express solidarity and frustration after a white man was acquitted of killing a young Indigenous person. Again. On February 22^nd Raymond Cormier was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Tina Fontaine, a 14 year old Anishinaabekwe from Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba.I share their frustration. But once again I’m not outraged. And once again I’m not surprised. On February 14^th I wrote about Gerald Stanley’s acquittal in the death of Colten Boushie. I wrote about aanjigone, the Anishinaabe tradition of, among many things, considering events and emotions thoroughly before acting on them – before even expressing a reaction to them. Cormier’s exoneration only vindicates the truth of what I initially argued: that Indigenous people can be killed with impunity in Canada because we’ve never had justice and certainly won’t see it soon. Because there’s no justice for dead Indians. Or living ones. Because the warlike savage still looms predatorial in the shadows of Canada’s collective subconscious psyche. Because Canada is a racist country. It’s a jarring thing to write but it ought to be said because I think it’s true. Many people – about whom I presume to know nothing – on Facebook, the news, and elsewhere, avoided race and turned the Stanley discussion into one about property, about criminality, about a man defending his livelihood. Similarly it’s been reported that the Crown’s case was so flawed and flimsy that it left the jury no other option than to exonerate Cormier. If the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit. Taken on a case by case basis, these arguments always point to the ways in which the dead were somehow responsible for getting themselves killed. They were drunk, profligate, criminal, militant, violent. Indian. Somehow law enforcement officials always make critical protocol errors when Indigenous lives are involved. Indigenous peoples, First Nations, Anishinaabeg and so many others, don’t see these deaths as isolated incidents. Or at least I suspect they don’t. There is a long history of Indians being freely killed in Canada. The killers always fall back on stereotypes. And they always go free because of it. Or almost always. But instead of giving in to hate, division, and rage I offer a brief modern history of some instances where Indigenous people have been killed, or have mysteriously died, in Canada. I offer these stories to combat bigotry the best way I can. It’s by no means exhaustive and I call it modern because I’ve decided to reach back no further than a few decades, though I could reach back centuries. Nevertheless, this sordid, racist, and tragic history displays the historical continuum within which one must situate the deaths of Boushie, Fontaine, and many others, along with the subsequent injustice visited upon their relatives. First let’s start off with a different sort of case, one in which the roles were reversed. It was late on May 28^th 1971. Donald Marshall Jr., a 17 year old Mi’kmaq boy from Membertou First Nation, walked through a park in Sydney Nova Scotia with another boy named Sandy Seale. They were trying to find trouble. Trouble found them. A brief fight ensued with two older men named Roy Ebsary and Jimmy MacNeil. Ebsary was carrying a knife with which he stabbed Seale in the stomach and slashed Marshall across the arm. They all fled and left Seale dying. Marshall later returned to hail an ambulance. The following investigation was botched and pathetically insufficient. No autopsy. No photographs. Little evidence. No weapon. They decided arbitrarily – that is, without any evidence – that Marshall stabbed Seale, slashed his own arm, and made up the story about the fight. Ebsary and MacNeil lied to the police – in fact, perjured themselves due to police intimidation – and also blamed Marshall. Marshall was arrested in June. Six months later Marshall was convicted of non-capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Life. Marshall should’ve said it was an accident. They would’ve let him walk. Ten days following Marshall’s conviction MacNeil confessed Ebsary perpetrated the murder. The officials ignored it. What does one more Indian in jail matter? After serving eleven years of his prison term, in 1983 Marshall was released after a Nova Scotia court appeal. In 1989 he was fully exonerated. Law enforcement officials’ conduct was monumentally incapable. The events were utterly and shockingly racist. In 1990 Jean Chretien’s Royal Commission stated as much, concluding Marshall was “convicted and sent to prison, in part at least, because he was a native person.” In 1985 Ebsary was convicted of manslaughter after three trials and sentenced to three years’ incarceration. His sentence was reduced to one year in 1986. One year. Versus life. Ebsary must’ve remembered to say it was an accident. And that was justice. When Ebsary’s motives were in question truth, justness, and mercy suddenly mattered. Marshall was given a show trial because he was presumed guilty. All the symptoms of Canada’s prejudicial legal system were present in 1971 and persist right through to 2018. The overarching structural racism and cultural insensitivity of the courts. The blatant and negligent foregoing of standard police protocol. A gross imbalance in meting out punishment. The spontaneous manifestation of racial stereotypes against Indigenous men and women in media and the general populace. All these were present in the baffling miscarriage of justice which was served Donald Marshall Jr. And this package of adversity was what Colten Boushie’s family referred to when they claimed the deck had been stacked against them. The notion of progress suggests things ought to have improved since 1971. They haven’t. They’ve remained constant. Strikingly constant. As the Marshall controversy wound down in 1990, another one was brewing. It was November 24^th 1990 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Neil Stonechild, a Salteaux First Nations boy, coincidentally also 17, walked through the snow-covered streets with his friend Jason Roy. It was an absolutely polar night which environmental records reveal dipped to minus 28.1 degrees Celsius. Stonechild and Roy shared a bottle of Silent Sam vodka between them to keep warm. At 11:51 PM, Constables Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger picked up Stonechild after a complaint was called in against him. Jason Roy was soon picked up as well. Roy was terrified. He gave a fake name and denied knowing Stonechild. Roy was let go. He later reported that Neil was screaming in the backseat of the cruiser. Screaming. “Help me. They’re going to kill me.” And those were the last words Roy heard Stonechild speak. Or so he later claimed. But that was the last time Stonechild was seen alive. For certain. By anyone other than Constables Hartwig and Senger, that is. The next morning two men were building a fence in a snow-covered field near a Hitachi plant in a remote industrial area on 58^th street. They stumbled across the frozen body of Neil Stonechild. He was facedown in the dirty snow. His hands were drawn inside his sleeves for warmth. One of his shoes was missing and there were visible abrasions on his heel. His face was battered and bruised. No one inspected the body close enough to see if his wrists had handcuff marks on them. The police soon arrived and conducted an investigation which Royal Commissioner David H. Wright would call in 2003 “superficial at best.” There were almost no photographs taken. Stonechild’s shoe was never recovered. No one followed Stonechild’s footprints beyond a gravel parking lot to try and determine how he ended up frozen alone near a ditch beside an empty Hitachi plant. The case was turned over to the Morality unit rather than Major Crimes. It was turned over rather quickly. And, Wright decided, wrongly. Stonechild’s death was treated as an unfortunate accident and foul play was never considered. Another Indian drank himself to death. What did it matter? Then there was Darrell Night. On January 28^th 2000, in similarly sub-zero temperatures, two Saskatoon police officers picked up Darrell Night, another Indigenous man, and drove him five kilometers to a remote area outside of town where they left him to freeze wearing only a t-shirt and a jean jacket. Except Darrell Night didn’t die. He lived. He found help and made his way back to Saskatoon. Along with his supporters Night eventually exposed the police practice known as “starlight tours,” where police officers would kidnap drunk, rowdy, poor, and powerless Indigenous people then drive them to the edge of town where the police would assault and leave them to fend for themselves. Night’s allegations exposed police racism and deceit. And it reignited interest in the unusual conditions of Stonechild’s death. In 2003 Commissioner Wright presented his findings on the case. Hartwig and Senger claimed they let Stonechild go soon after picking him up at 11:51 PM, at which point they immediately proceeded to another call. However, Wright found there were, at minimum, 27 minutes unaccounted for from the time the Constables said they let Stonechild go and when they arrived at their next call. The Commissioner also concluded that 27 minutes permitted the Constables enough time to drive Stonechild to the Hitachi plant, assault him, leave him, and drive back. Wright also determined that the Saskatoon police conducted an extremely poor investigation. Constable Rene Lagimodier arrived first on the scene of Stonechild’s body. He followed Stonechild’s footprints back to a gravel parking lot and no further. He decided Stonechild was stumbling around drunk and his bruises were from falling. He concluded arbitrarily there was no evidence of foul play. Lagimodier would later admit that Stonechild’s footprints were not crooked or stumbling and did not indicate excessive drunkenness. He also admitted the right heel was worn and discolored from walking shoeless on gravel for an extended period. He also admitted the strange hour, the unusual location, and the bruises on Stonechild might have indicated to any reasonably suspicious mind the presence of foul play. He admitted all this later. When it ceased to matter. And yet none of it crossed his mind at the time. Or, even worse, maybe it did. Wright couldn’t conclude beyond a doubt that Saskatoon police killed Stonechild. Yet his inquiry strongly suggests this is precisely what happened. Wright asserts that Keith Jarvis refused to look at an autopsy, refused to take pictures of the deceased, failed to disclose the Constables’ involvement, and refused to hand the investigation over to Major Crimes because Jarvis “was either aware of police involvement or suspected police involvement.” Well I’m not a judge. Wright’s report and Night’s testimony make it clear that Stonechild was subjected to a starlight tour. That a 17 year Indigenous boy was kidnapped, assaulted, and left to die in a remote area by Saskatoon police. The inadequate investigation at the time made it impossible to ascertain the true circumstances of his death. Constables and Hartwig and Senger were eventually fired. And that was it. Justice. The same pattern persisted in this case: negligent ignorance of standard police protocol, popular and systemic racism, lenience and mercy for the killers, stereotypes and blame for the victim. The deck was stacked against young Neil Stonechild too. Canada’s thoroughgoing structural and popular racism facilitated Donald Marshall’s wrongful conviction, the Saskatoon starlight tours, and other events unnarrated here. Racial injustices like these occur in societies where racism is part of the official Constitutional and juridical modus operandi. “It would be very easy for Governor Dewdney to throw away the money of the country upon Indians hanging round the various posts begging for food. It would be very easy to give them flour, beef and bacon, that would cause him no trouble and might give popularity. But he was told to husband the funds and the food placed at his disposal.” One hears this rhetoric in the streets and occasionally in the House of Commons. Why give First Nations money, services, or anything at all? They don’t know how to make proper use of the money and resources given them and they’ll end up just wasting them. This logic is based on the stereotype of the lazy Indian. In fact, the quote above was uttered in the House of Commons. In 1886. By Sir John A. Macdonald. Canada’s first Prime Minister was defending his government’s policy of withholding food rations from western Indigenous nations. The government was trying to fracture and force these nations onto reserves. Macdonald and Dewdney’s critics argued it was cruel and inhumane to withhold food rations from suffering people on the brink of starvation. In fact, buffalo herds were nearly wiped out at the time, and Dewdney’s own agents reported that Indigenous communities “had lost their crops through frost,” not due to laziness. Still Macdonald held firm and stood by his man. Charity won’t accomplish anything, Macdonald held. Just detract from the common surplus earned by white settlers. “The Indian will keep himself in a starving condition,” Macdonald said. The government can’t give in to philanthropy or confraternity. Historians are often told the Latin phrase ad fontes. It means the fountainhead. Go to the source. And this is it. The founder of the Canadian state stood aloof in the House in 1886, arguing the Indians were responsible for their own death and starvation. These stereotypes and prejudices are essential. Very little has changed. To pick up where I left off then. The following case received great attention at the time. But the death of Leo Lachance has faded into history. It was January 28^th 1991. A year had passed since 17 year old Neil Stonechild’s death.  Leo Lachance, a Cree from Whitefish reserve near Big River, was shot and killed by Carney Nerland while exiting Nerland’s Prince Albert, Saskatchewan gun store. After an investigation lasting merely one and a half days, Prince Albert police charged Nerland with manslaughter. In this case Nerland was found guilty. He was sentenced to four years’ incarceration. He was released in 1993 after serving two. Two years. It turned out, once again, that the RCMP and Prince Albert police wholly mismanaged the investigation into a potentially racially motivated killing. In fact, Nerland was an avowed fascist and racist. It was later revealed that Nerland was the Saskatchewan leader of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation. He was also an RCMP informer. Despite Nerland’s prominent and pronounced racism, and despite the suspicious scenario leading up to Lachance’s death, murder was never considered as a charge. Even though found guilty, the Crown Prosecutor concluded that the shooting was accidental, and counselled lenience and mercy.Nerland remembered to say it was an accident. According to Nerland, he’d fired two test rifle rounds into the ground. As Lachance was leaving the store, Nerland pulled the trigger one last time to empty the breech. He thought the rifle was empty. But it wasn’t. As Lachance was walking out of the store, the third and final mystery round shot and killed him. Accidentally. Sound familiar? It should if you’ve been following the news because Gerald Stanley acquitted himself using a very similar defense. And the police investigation into the Stanley shooting was similarly inept. By this point I shouldn’t have to summarize once again the unfortunate characteristics of this pattern. One dead Indian after another. And another. No justice for the dead and none for the living. Canadian racism remains unchanged since John A. Macdonald argued the government ought to withhold food rations from starving Indians. Since Donald Marshall was sentenced to life in 1971 for a killing he didn’t commit. Indigenous individuals are presumed guilty even of their own deaths. On the other hand it’s acceptable in Canada to shoot Indians so long as it’s plausibly accidental. Now fast forward four years from Lachance’s murder and jump from the freezing snow-swept Saskatchewan plains to the sandy beaches and azure glitter of Lake Huron near Grand Bend, Ontario. On September 4^th 1995, a man named Dudley George, along with a large group of Anishinaabeg protesters from nearby Kettle Point First Nation, occupied Camp Ipperwash, the former site of the Stoney Point Indian Reserve. That particular area of Lake Huron, with its sandy bays, shallow waters, sloping dunes, and warm climate was traditional Anishinaabeg summering ground for centuries. The Stoney Point reserve, however, was created in 1827 in the aftermath of the War of 1812. The Stoney Point Georges, my grandmother among them, descended from a Pottawatomi man named Mandoka, later given the Christian name George, after the English king. Mandoka’s father and brothers fought with Tecumseh during the war. Originally from America, Mandoka and others sought refuge in British territory, at Stoney Point, after being banished from the U.S. Mandoka’s descendants lived at Stoney Point peacefully and sustainably – maybe even happily – for over a century. However, in 1942, during WWII, Stoney Point was seized and appropriated by the Canadian federal government under the War Measures Act. It was renamed Camp Ipperwash and Lake Huron’s shallow sandy bays, once valued for their ease of access and abundance of resources, were coveted instead because the terrain they offered mimicked European shores on which Canadian soldiers would land on D-Day. The government promised to return the land after the war. They never did. For 50 years Stoney Point’s former residents sought the return of their land through every possible avenue. Small protests were common. But on September 4^th 1995 something much larger was brewing. The conflagration became known, rather absurdly, as the Ipperwash Crisis. In reality it was a peaceful protest and an exercise of democratic civil liberties. But provincial government leaders and law enforcement brass painted it as an armed insurrection because the protestors were angry Indians. On September 4^th the OPP were figuring out how to respond. OPP Superintendent Parkin soon demanded an unrecorded private line of communication be established to discuss the situation with the Incident Commander in charge. A provincial inquiry, started in 2003 and delivered in 2007, headed by Commissioner Sydney Linden, later considered this decision an unusual breach of standard police protocol. The next evening at 11:40 PM false reports of automatic rifle fire reached the OPP. No witnesses, either OPP officers or Indigenous protestors, were afterward able to confirm the presence of firearms at the protest. Commissioner Linden later wrote that in his estimation the Anishinaabeg occupiers were truthful about their peaceful intent and no weapons were ever present. Nevertheless reports of automatic rifle fire further terrified government and law enforcement officials already fearful of violent Indigenous insurgency. Tensions continuously mounted. On September 6^th Ontario Premier Mike Harris sat down with his staff and closest advisers to determine a plan of action. During the meeting the exhausted and exasperated Premier reportedly sent the room into a shocked hush when he uttered the following statement. “I want the fucking Indians out of the park.” “And use guns if you have to,” Harris may have added. Harris later denied saying fuck and the part about guns. But he admitted expressing his adamant desire to have the Indians removed. Linden didn’t buy it. The Commissioner expressed his belief that Harris more than likely used the reported racist expletive. And that’s what the OPP did. They got the fucking Indians out of the park. And they used guns. Even though they didn’t have to. Later that day the OPP officers donned full riot gear: shin guards, thigh guards, chest protectors, and helmets. All were armed with a firearm and a riot shield. Once the OPP were armed, they advanced on the Anishinaabeg. They advanced under the impression that “the Indians had Molotov cocktails, hunting rifles, and AK 47s.” Witnesses never corroborated reports of such weaponry. Nor were any found at the protest site. But it didn’t matter. The reality didn’t matter because the Anishinaabeg protestors became the stereotyped warlike savage. They must have had rifles and AKs. Acting Sergeant Ken Deane was, therefore, likely in a state of nervous agitation when he saw Dudley George walking down a road near East Parkway drive. Sergeant Deane later claimed that George emerged from a bush aiming a hunting rifle at three OPP officers. He said he saw George’s finger on the trigger. About to claim some scalps. So Deane reacted and fired three rounds from his semi-automatic pistol into George, wounding him mortally. The OPP apparently thought they were in a warzone fighting hostile insurgents. There were presumably OPP officers present trained in CPR or paramedics. But none came forward. No one attempted to save George’s life or stop the bleeding. Instead Dudley was dragged back through the bushes to safety and driven to the hospital by friends. He never made it, dying tragically on the way. Sergeant Deane claimed George threw his rifle into a ditch. Yet Deane never attempted to recover the weapon in order to keep it as evidence or to prevent other protestors from using it. The rifle was never found because it never existed. Some said George might have been holding a stick. Yet if Deane was looking close enough to tell George’s finger was on the trigger, surely he could have identified the difference between a 30/06 and an oak branch. And so Sergeant Deane was tried for his behavior and was convicted of criminal negligence causing death. Justice Hugh Fraser found Deane’s story predictably ludicrous, ruling Deane fabricated the rifle story “in an ill-fated attempt to disguise the fact that an unarmed man had been shot.” Fraser sentenced Deane to serve two years less a day in the community, as well as 180 days of community service and no house arrest. For killing an unarmed Indigenous man Deane was sentenced to suffer some minor inconveniences for two years minus a day. Justice. I mean it was an accident. Sort of. Deane was killed in a highway accident in 2006, just before he was slated to testify before the Ipperwash inquest. It wouldn’t have been justice. But truth at least helps. Finally in 2016 Justin Trudeau returned control of Camp Ipperwash to the descendants of Stoney Point’s original inhabitants, including Mandoka’s, along with a transference of 95 million dollars for cleanup and redevelopment. It took 74 years, tireless lobbying, protests, one crisis, and one dead Indian to get the government to honor it’s word. And that’s what Indigenous people have to go through to get the government to abide by simple treaties and pacts they’ve made. That’s what it means to have the deck stacked against you. And still nothing stopped there. The same patterns of racism persisted. Police negligence, lenience with the killer, stereotypes for the dead, plain unadorned racism. Another inquest to sit on shelves and gather dust. Another set of recommendations to ignore. There was also the underreported Thunder Bay inquest which wrapped up in 2016 with jurors making 145 recommendations to eight parties. Between 2000 and 2011, seven young Anishinaabeg students died while attending school in Thunder Bay, many by drowning. Some of the drowning deaths appear rather ominous when one considers their similarity to Saskatoon’s mysterious Indigenous freezing deaths. Why aren’t young Indigenous people freezing drunkenly to death on the outskirts of other towns? Why aren’t Indigenous students falling drunkenly into rivers elsewhere? Hardly ridiculous questions. And not rhetorical either. During those eleven years Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Robyn Harper, Paul Panacheese, Reggie Bushie, Kyle Morrisseau, and Jordan Wabasse all died in Thunder Bay. They were all between 15 and 21 years old. Five of these deaths resulted from drowning in Thunder Bay’s rivers. A pathologist determined the cause of death in two drownings to have been an alcohol related accident. The cause of death in the other three drownings – Anderson, Morrisseau and Wabasse – was ruled undetermined. That is, investigators didn’t know how three students ended up falling in a river to drown. And yet they somehow knew it wasn’t foul play. Another arbitrary presumption. It didn’t matter all that much to them. Nishnawbe Aski Nation lawyer Julian Falconer made that much clear when he cross-examined Dr. Toby Rose. Rose was tasked with reviewing the work of the original coroner. Falconer focussed on the fact that some of the young Anishnaabeg were found covered with inexplicable bruises and injuries. Falconer’s cross examination revealed that foul play was entirely plausible and reasonable. Police simply didn’t bother pursuing that particular line of reasoning, much as they didn’t in the death of Neil Stonechild. We have, yet again, a woefully inadequate police investigation tinged with racism and punctuated with stereotyping and a pathological desire to blame the dead when the dead are Indigenous. A few more dead Indians. Fell into the river drunk and couldn’t get out. Or maybe not. Of course I don’t know if some of these students were murdered, killed, or fell in by accident. Much as it was with Stonechild, the inadequate police follow up means we likely won’t ever know. The police did a good job ensuring that. Just like in Saskatoon. But I do know that in January 2017, a 34 year old Indigenous woman named Barbara Kentner walked unaware down a street in Thunder Bay. She died after a man in a passing vehicle lobbed a trailer hitch at her. The thrown trailer hitch struck her in the abdomen and she died from the sustained injuries months later in July. Another dead Indian. Killed with savage cruelty in broad daylight. If such a thing happens during the day in Thunder Bay, I wouldn’t rule out foul play at night. And you may notice we’ve arrived almost at the present. You may also notice I’ve omitted some other prominent instances of Indigenous people being killed with impunity by Canadians. Like the Highway of Tears. Or the case of Deanne Desjarlais. Yet another inquest was announced into her death on March 1^st 2018. She was found dead on park bench in British Columbia. There are no suspects in the death and I suspect an inquest will be small consolation to Desjarlais’s family. Especially so considering there are few recommendations the inquest can make which previous ones haven’t made already. So it’s fitting I should wind down with a mention of these particular tragedies. This is because it was Cormier’s acquittal in the death of young Tina Fontaine – compounded with my frustration with Stanley’s exoneration in Boushie’s death – which inspired me to sit down and write this brief history. More proof that young Indigenous girls, boys, men, and women can be killed or mysteriously disappeared by anyone, at any time, anywhere. In Canada. I’ve shown what it means to have the deck stacked against you in cases like Boushie’s or Fontaine’s. I’ve shown these weren’t isolated instances which occurred in a vacuum. Rather the Boushie and Fontaine trials occurred in continuum with everything I’ve narrated thus far and more. An unbroken chain from Confederation until now. Nor was the sideshow isolated or novel. The media and popular outrage. The racism. The stereotypes. The government inquiries. It all occurred in every case discussed above. One need not be a prophet, then, to predict the future. And despite the traditional Anishinaabe optimism I ought to have, part of me is an Orwellian pessimist. After going through this gut-wrenching past, after seeing the tenacity of these patterns of injustice, negligence, and hate part of me feels like it won’t end it now. That it can’t. Even though it should. That the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls will make their recommendations, which will go unread and unheeded. That we shan’t have justice yet. Orwell used the phrase “the long horror” after the Spanish Civil War. It’s a tragically apt phrase. Part of me knows the long horror isn’t over. Even so. Feeling as though this will be the case, I convince myself to behave as if it won’t. You will probably see and hear people argue it – whatever it might be at the time – wasn’t about race. Bullshit. For Indigenous people it was about race. And it is about race. This history ought make that much clear. And finally, if you’ve followed me thus far you might be wondering: What is to be done? That’s something one often hears in common discourse. It’s one thing to narrate the injustices of the present and the past. But what should we do to ensure the future is better? And often in regular discourse there’s shoulder shrugging and stuttering at this point. One has to be a genius to remedy Canada’s racist illness. That’s not so. Almost every injustice I’ve narrated here was followed by an inquiry of some sort. Many of these inquiries made the same recommendations. Very perspicuous recommendations. Read them. Listen to them. Consider them. Act on them. That is the way of aanjigone. And it’s a fine a way forward as any.