Community needs answers

Seven Indigenous children and one Indigenous man have been found dead in waterways in Thunder Bay since 2000. The occurrence of such tragedies in the northern Ontario city is grossly disproportionate. Indigenous people make up only 10 per cent of the city’s population, yet “it’s only our First Nations kids that end up in the waterways,” according to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

But while something seems to be terribly amiss, it’s not at all clear that the Thunder Bay police force or the city’s police board are committed to getting to the bottom of it.

So assured are they that these deaths are all accidental and unconnected that when Stacy DeBungee, 41, was pulled from a river in October 2015, police ruled out suspicions of anything untoward mere hours after finding his body.

The haste of their decision was the last straw for many Indigenous leaders, who have lost all trust in the force. DeBungee’s family filed a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, which has been investigating the police force for allegations of “systemic racism” since last November.

They pleaded in June for the RCMP to be brought in to re-investigate DeBungee’s death and take over the ongoing police probes into the deaths of two First Nations teens, Tammy Keeash and Josiah Begg, who were also found dead in city waterways in May.

Thunder Bay police disappointingly turned down that request, prompting external authorities to take matters into their own hands.

First, Ontario’s chief coroner, Dr. Dirk Huyer, called in the York Regional Police to investigate the deaths of Keeash and Begg.

Now, the Ontario Civilian Police Commission that oversees all police boards in the province, has sent a clear — and most welcome — signal that it too is concerned about how Thunder Bay police handle investigations into the deaths of Indigenous people.

On Monday, it named Sen. Murray Sinclair, the respected former chair of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to lead an investigation into the city’s police services board, which oversees the force.

The commission has asked Sinclair to probe specifically the ability of the board to address concerns about the quality of investigations into Indigenous deaths and the board’s rejection of public complaints of systemic racism within the police force.

Sinclair does not have an easy task ahead of him. He is taking on the role amid heightening tensions between the police force and Indigenous people. The community is still reeling, not only from the recent deaths of the two Indigenous teens, but also that of a First Nations man who died in police custody last week.

The senator’s work will be crucial to rebuilding residents’ trust in the police and local government. But Sinclair’s findings will have implications for communities well beyond Thunder Bay.

It is widely accepted that Indigenous people are less well served by Canada’s justice system than the broader population. About one-quarter of inmates in provincial, territorial and federal correctional institutions are Indigenous, despite the fact that Indigenous people make up only about 3 per cent of the adult Canadian population. They are 33 times more likely to end up in jail.

Meanwhile, they are six times more likely to be murdered, and far likelier to be the victims of other violent crimes. As the nascent inquiry into the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls will no doubt remind us, far too often these crimes go unpunished or even uninvestigated.

This is the larger context for Sinclair’s intervention. Let’s hope his report, due March 31 of next year, begins to describe a path to justice for Indigenous people in Thunder Bay and beyond.

The respected former chair of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the right man to get to the bottom of allegations of systemic racism in the force and point the way out of this mess