PM calls for understanding over teepee demonstration
After an indigenous “reoccupation” of Parliament Hill led to a standoff with police into the early hours of Thursday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he understands the message being sent by activists and urged that they be treated with respect.
“We recognize that over the past decades, generat i ons, i ndeed centuries, Canada has failed indigenous peoples,” said Trudeau, speaking in P. E. I. Thursday. He suggested there are good reasons indigenous people may not want to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday.
A group of indigenous people and supporters had tried to erect a teepee on Parliament Hill Wednesday night, but were blocked by police well into the night before being allowed to put it up just inside Parliament Hill gates. On Thursday evening, organizers said they’d been given permission by the RCMP to move the teepee right onto Parliament Hill, though the exact location was still being worked out. The group was feeling “cautiously optimistic,” said Freddy Stoneypoint.
On Thursday morning, tempers f l ared during a news conference held by the demonstrators after they took offence to a question posed by a CBC reporter; they demanded she leave, then ended the conference.
The reporter had asked the speakers how they felt about Trudeau’s record on indigenous issues. In response, one of the speakers began to talk about a young indigenous person who had died in Thunder Bay.
“But how can he be blamed for that? You don’t think that anything he’s doing is helping the situation? Is he an improvement over Stephen Harper? Talk about his record,” the reporter said.
“Excuse me? Did I just hear you correctly?” said speaker Jocelyn Wabano-Iahtail. “How can he be blamed for that?”
The anger escalated after the reporter asked the group to answer her question. “We don’t want you here. Can you please leave?” said elder Sophie McKeown from Moose Cree First Nation.
After the reporter refused to leave and another reporter from CTV asked a similar question, Wabano- Iahtail accused the reporters in the room of showing their “white privilege” and “white fragility,” and eventually ended the news conference.
“You can’t take our truth,” she said. “Look how many people came to bat for you, white l ady. And you’re a guest here. Without us, you’d be homeless. This is over.”
The exchange occurred after a tense night during which nine people were detained and then released for trying to erect the teepee without a permit.
During the news conference Thursday morning, the speakers said they were not satisfied. “That teepee needs to be moved into the centre of this Parliament,” said John Fox. “That teepee should not be in a little corner by itself.”
“Our group is here to educate people,” said Candace Day Neveau, with the Bawating Water Protectors. “We’re here to say that celebrating Canada 150 is difficult for our people because of what we’ve been through. It’s celebrating our pain.”
Asked what the group was told by the RCMP when they were blocked last night, Day Neveau told reporters that police said they should have applied six months ago for permission to erect a teepee on Parliament Hill.
“Those aren’t our ways,” she said. “We don’t have to honour the bureaucracy.”
Heightened security will be in place in the capital this weekend, including armed police officers. About 500,000 people are expected around Parliament Hill.