‘CRITICAL JUNCTURE’
“I think Colton Boushie is the Rodney King of Western Canada,” says Mark Kleiner, a pastor with the Lutheran and Anglican churches in Biggar. “I think we will look back and see this as a critical juncture in the history of our province.”
The ‘no trespassing’ signs spray painted on tires that line farm fences along the rough gravel road now seem more ominous than ever. They seem to represent a divide, a tension that was once simmering and has now boiled over.
Colten Boushie’s shooting death and the subsequent arrest of a white farmer, Gerald Stanley, has unleashed a torrent of hatred, an avalanche of online racism that previously was mostly the stuff of hushed whispers and private conversations. However, some are doing their best to see through the anger and bridge the divide. Some people see hope. “I think Colten Boushie is the Rodney King of Western Canada,” said Mark Kleiner, a pastor with the Lutheran and Anglican churches in Biggar, near the scene of the shooting.
“I think we will look back and see this as a critical juncture in the history of our province.”
Kleiner said he was disheartened by many people’s response to the shooting in his small town.
He saw fear, anger and a level of unwarranted defensiveness on the part of many white people in and around Biggar.
“It’s really what this exposed. It’s like a boil that’s been lanced. It’s gross. We are seeing all this stuff come up,” he said.
On the rural road that leads past the scene of the crime — Stanley’s farm yard in the rural municipality of Glenside — the feelings appear more mixed. Amid the vitriol expressed on the Internet, neighbours and other farmers nearby are hesitant to speak publicly about the shooting.
Some say Stanley is a quiet man who has lived for some 20 years with his wife on her farm. They say she’s an active member of the community, working at a nearby nursing home. The gate leading into their yard is now locked, a new fence recently erected.
Over the last decade, the crime rate in the rural area around Biggar has more than doubled, according to Statistics Canada. Some have suggested the increase is part of the tension between the reserve and the surrounding area.
One farmer in the area said he doesn’t have any issues with people from the reserve, and that he often helps them when they stop by with a flat tire or in need of gas to get home. However, he said his attitude changed a few years back when his truck was stolen and RCMP found it stripped for parts on the reserve.
Colten’s aunt, Sabrina Peeaychaw, is a band councillor who grew up not far from the Stanleys’ farmyard, on the outskirts of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. She was virtually next-door neighbours with many of the farmers, connected by the grid roads that criss-cross the area.
Peeaychaw went to school in nearby Cando and graduated with many of the children who grew up on area farms. The narrative of racist white farmers who are angry and afraid of aboriginal people from the reserve exists, but the reality is more complex, she said in an interview at the Red Pheasant band office.
“To this day we are good friends with a lot of them,” she said.
The grief has been overwhelming for many, and the racist comments on Facebook and other online platforms have been hard to take, Peeaychaw said. She has stopped reading and replying to them, unwilling to add fuel to the fire — but at least people are talking now, she added.
“He has died a hero and a warrior. Right across Turtle Island and the whole world, he has raised awareness about racism,” she said of her nephew.
The expressions of overt racism, however, have created tension on the reserve that has not dissipated in the two weeks since the shooting.
Residents, Peeaychaw included, are complaining about an apparent increase in the number of RCMP officers in the area since Colten’s death.
“They are basically treating us like we did something wrong,” said Tash Baptiste. She’s seen more officers on the reserve stopping people almost at random since the shooting, she added.
“It just seems like we are the criminals out here.”
Baptiste said she would like to learn to get along with her neighbours, to start to work toward healing.
In other parts of the community, however, the grief is a personal struggle.
Colten’s brother, William, spoke softly about trying to counsel his friends and loved ones.
“I’m dealing with a lot of people who were close to him and are talking suicidal to me,” he said as he waited in a van outside the band hall. “I’m like ‘Hang in there, you know? My brother wouldn’t want you to join him.’ “
Now that overt racism is again gaining international attention, it’s something people must be honest about in order to move forward, Kleiner said.
“We need to be scandalized by our awfulness. Sometimes that can create real change,” he said.
His church in Biggar, where the congregation is entirely non-indigenous, has worked hard in recent years to talk about reconciliation. They’ve had events acknowledging the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the idea of finding truth and reconciling with indigenous people has made it into Kleiner’s scripture readings.
Boushie’s death has put all those teachings to the test. He hopes it will get better.
“I don’t know what happened out there, you hear all sorts of stories. But it’s symptomatic of a really deep problem — not only in Biggar, but in Saskatchewan, in Western Canada,” Kleiner said.
Red Pheasant Elder Ben Wuttunee agrees, saying he thinks change will come, no matter how slow and difficult the process may be. The area’s racist past has been well-documented, he said. During the late 1920s and 1930s, Biggar was a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan.
People in the town acknowledged that past through the work of the local museum more than a decade ago. Wuttunee says people have to keep working through the past and look toward a brighter, more inclusive future.
“Things have to break through. It’s taking time, but the system is changing. The education system is changing. They are saying, ‘Let’s put treaty in the curriculum, let’s have an elder come and speak,’ ” Wuttunee said.
“I have hope that it will get better.”
We need to be scandalized by our awfulness. Sometimes that can create real change.