Aboriginal people face plenty of discrimination in Saskatchewan

The tragic death of Colten Boushie, combined with a series of alarming attempts to justify and even celebrate his shooting, has resulted in some discussion about widespread racism against indigenous people in Saskatchewan. And it would seem obvious that the appropriate response to bigotry boiling over into violence is not to stand back and hope it settles down to a steady simmer.

Unfortunately, the provincial government seems to have no problem with a disturbing baseline of racism. And we should be concerned both by the fact that Brad Wall and his party are lurching around in search of excuses to do nothing, and by the fact they’re doing so based on false assumptions.

Wall personally made a point of dismissing calls for action by claiming that there’s no greater issue of racism in Saskatchewan than elsewhere in Canada. And it’s worth asking first why we should consider that to be any justification: Even if it were true that other people were just as prejudiced elsewhere with equally appalling results, that still wouldn’t represent a reason to do nothing about an attitude that publicly endorses or excuses the murder of fellow citizens based on their aboriginal heritage.

That said, Wall’s attempt to minimize the particular problem with racism in Saskatchewan is as wrong in fact as it is in principle.

We may not have a single measure of racism readily available. But there’s clear evidence that indigenous people face greater systemic discrimination in Saskatchewan than in any other Canadian province — meaning that even compared to what’s indeed a shameful national baseline, we have even more work to do (and racism to undo) as a province.

For example, it’s true that child poverty on reserves is scandalously high across Canada. But it’s also true that Saskatchewan’s rate is the second-worst in the country. And Wall and his government have gone out of their way to reject any role in trying to improve matters.

Similarly, Saskatchewan has the highest proportion of indigenous people in custody of any province. And that can’t be explained solely as a matter of population: In particular, Manitoba’s population includes a higher proportion of aboriginal people than Saskatchewan’s, yet a consistently lower proportion of its incarcerated population is aboriginal.

And in most provinces, indigenous people have modestly higher unemployment rates. But only Saskatchewan has recently seen an unemployment rate nearly three times as high for aboriginal workers compared to the general population.

In other words, even if we chose to set the bizarre goal of matching the obstacles faced by aboriginal people in all other Canadian provinces, we’d still have further to go than anybody in eliminating historical injustices toward First Nations and discrimination toward indigenous people. And if the readily visible gap in opportunities and outcomes wasn’t enough to spur our provincial government to do anything to improve the situation, we should at least expect a public outbreak of violent prejudice to do so.

Instead, Donna Harpauer, newly appointed as the provincial government’s minister responsible for First Nations, is planning to take a wait-and-see approach to even what she recognizes to be obviously wrong: “Basically, we’re going to be watching this closely and make sure it doesn’t become more than what it already is, which is unacceptable.”

Unfortunately, one of the main factors that allows discrimination to continue is the lack of will to push for more defensible social norms among people who should know better. And as long as Wall keeps claiming that the plight of Saskatchewan’s aboriginal people is somebody else’s problem, we can fully expect violence to bubble up again.