Verdict drives home Canada’s racism problem
After the verdict in the Gerald Stanley case, I attended the justice rally outside the courthouse with my mom. On the way there, she casually asked: “What if I just give the finger to every white person I see?”
“What if they’re our allies?” “If they don’t shoot me, then I guess they’re an ally.”
“Sound logic, but I’d still rather you didn’t.”
That exchange should give you a sense of the mood in the car: anger, fear and a slight hopefulness that not everyone considers Indigenous people thieves and trespassers to be dealt with at the end of a gun.
Outside the courthouse, I saw a fair amount of people. I cannot estimate the size of the crowd as I am short and only saw people’s backs and the speakers standing on the steps.
It was cold outside, but I didn’t feel it because I was chasing around my toddler and my five-year-old niece. They were running up to every person with a dog, asking to pet it. At the same time, I kept an eye on the barricades watched by police, mindful of that Dodge Charger that drove through a peaceful crowd in Charlottesville, Va., only six months ago.
One of the speakers, Dr. Sheelah McLean, gave a rousing speech in which she baldly called out the racism in this province. She started off by saying, “The message is out there that white people are superior and Indigenous people are inferior.”
At this, my mom gave out a startled: “What the hell?”
I patted her arm. “Don’t worry she’s going somewhere with this.”
McLean explained that such messages are fed to us in media, by society and in the actions of our institutions. All of the speeches were positive, about moving in a direction together, about addressing the racism. Because racism is something can be changed; being racist does not have to be a permanent condition.
When I first heard the verdict, one of my thoughts was that I have to move from this province, away from the prejudice against First Nations, to a place where my son and I will be safe.
But when I looked up on the steps of the courthouse and heard from First Nations people living in the North Battleford area, on their traditional lands, I realized that they cannot run from it. They must walk into the same stores with people who believe that it was an accident when a man shot a 22-year-old man in the head — or worse, people who do not believe the accident defence at all but who rather think that it’s OK to shoot someone on your property because of what you suspect they might do.
We all know we have racist people in Saskatchewan and that their racism is often directed at Indigenous peoples. We cannot control their attitudes or their actions. But we can hold them accountable through the mechanisms of state that are put in place to protect all of us: the police, the courts, the prisons. But when these systems fail, then racism wins.
There are those who say racism played no part in this case. If so, then why challenge visibly Indigenous jurors? If there is no racism involved here, then why am I seeing racist messages on social media stating that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” in every possible permutation that you can imagine?
After the rally, we went to Burger King.
“I worry about my grandsons, who are about that age,” my mom said as we kept an eye on my niece in the play area. She was running through there like a person possessed. My toddler stayed next to me and tucked into his meal (for once). I watched my niece carefully; her dark hair and skin marked her as an Indigenous person. There were at least three other races in the play area, but this made no difference in the way the children played.
But outside the play area, the room was tense. Society’s teaching had done its work — Canada has a racism problem, and this verdict has driven it home once again.