Indigenous Bar Association to honour Boushie
Group calls on students, faculty and allies to remember slain man
Andre Bear remembers pain building deep inside him as he digested news of a controversial acquittal of a Saskatchewan farmer who shot and killed a young Indigenous man.
“It really tore my world apart,” Bear says from Saskatoon.
“It made me feel hopeless that I would never see justice in my lifetime as a young Indigenous man in this country.”
It sparked a change inside him, he says, and he decided to become a lawyer.
Gerald Stanley’s acquittal on Feb. 9, 2018, in the death of 22- year-old Colten Boushie prompted rallies and outrage across the country.
Bear, 25, is Cree and a member of the Canoe Lake First Nation. He was working towards an education degree at the University of Saskatchewan as the trial was going on.
He’s now a law student at the university and the student representative on the Indigenous Bar Association in Canada’s board of directors.
He wants to spend his life challenging a system that he says needs to change if there is to be equal justice for everyone.
Jade Tootoosis, Boushie’s cousin, attended a conference hosted by the association last year. She urged the Indigenous legal community to make the second anniversary of Stanley’s acquittal a day of action to highlight the treatment of Indigenous people in the courts.
The association is calling on students, faculty and allies to dedicate Sunday to Boushie.
The National Indigenous Law Students Association has organized a demonstration beginning with a vigil at the University of Ottawa. Participants will then walk to Parliament Hill and eventually to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Bear never met Boushie but he grew up with the young man’s family members in North Battleford, Sask.
Court heard how Boushie, who was a member of the Red Pheasant First Nation, and four other young people drove onto Stanley’s farm near Biggar, Sask., in August 2016. Boushie’s friends testified they were looking for help with a flat tire.
Stanley told court he thought they were trying to steal an allterrain vehicle and he accidentally shot Boushie in the back of the head.
Stanley was acquitted of second-degree murder. He later pleaded guilty to unsafe storage of an unrestricted firearm and was fined $3,000.