Ep: 19 Defund the Police

[MUSIC] This is Anti-Up, Indigenous Women talking about important shit. [MUSIC] [FOREIGN] Welcome to Anti-Up. My name is Tania Telega, and I'm coming to you from Taco Ranto, place where I make my home. I live here, I work here, spend some time here, I should say. Sometimes it doesn't feel like I live here, doing so much traveling lately. But you're joining us on Anti-Up. This is a podcast for by and about Indigenous Women. And we're here to talk about important shit. This episode is really important. This episode is something that we grapple with as First Nations people constantly. This is something I know that all of the guests on the show today is something we all grapple with and have for many years. And I'm so incredibly honored to be sitting here with some fantastic, fantastic way. We are talking today about defunding the police. And before we start having this chat, I would like to introduce you to the best anti-around Christine Jennie. Welcome to the show. I'm Tania, high praise and deed, and I return the compliment in full. I'm Christine Jennie. Welcome to Anti-Up. It is my pleasure to be here as always speaking with these incredible women. I am joining you today from the home territories of the Yitan Quachen, Yie Kwanlin Dunn. Beautiful day here for our recording day. We've had a beautiful late summer coming to us. And in this episode we are talking about policing, defunding the police, and the relationship historically and currently between the police and Indigenous communities. Thinking about this before showing up today, I put a lot of thought into what this has meant to us, what this means in my world and how I view it. And I was reminded of the summer of 2020, which was I think a very eye-opening summer for a lot of people in Canada and the United States. A lot of events that had happened and very specifically was reminded of Sandy Hudson, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Canada. And her attempts to speak to legacy media about racialized violence with the police in Canada and racism in Canada and was shot down by legacy media. And this was in the midst of our reactions to the deaths of Chantel, more of Regis Kurskensky packet and with no real resolution around that. And no real clear platform to explain what defunding the media means. And then I got further back into the history of all of this and started thinking about the Northwest Mounted Police, the precursor to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their involvement with the history of colonization of Canada from the extension of the CP rail to the Gold Rush here in the Yukon. So a lot of history floating into my head today. I think it's like that for definitely for all of us and I'd like to go ahead and introduce actually I don't know Christine if you'd like to introduce Pam. And I would love to. Joni's and I were one of our guests today, a friend to all. A Sandy's working, studying and volunteering in First Nation issues of a wide range of topics such as social, political, legal issues, impacting First Nations for over 30 years. I would be so surprised if you don't recognize the name I'm about to say. Dr. Pamela Palmyr is a magma citizen and member of the Eale River Bar First Nation in Northern New Brunswick. She is a professor in the chair of Indigenous Governance at Toronto Metropolitan University. Pamela is an advocate and a warrior in the work she does, warrior life. Indigenous resistance and resurgence is her latest book and it is her podcast of the same name, warrior life. Pamela Jo Kueshani. Welcome back to Auntie Up. Well, thank you so much. I'm so pumped to be here. This is like your podcast is the best. And I just want to say quay to everybody, all the magma people who are listening and everybody else. This is the best podcast. So thanks for having me. We are so grateful that you took the time out. Because we know you've been on the road and traveling around and you know that's I think we could do another podcast on on aunties at ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. You should do that. We actually should. I had no idea that Christine also wrote motorbikes as well. Yes, yes, and it doesn't seem surprising when we sit here in this and and and and I'm just going to shout out her name now because I have to in in the north in atlin, which is in British Columbia, but we claim it as our own in a lot of ways because it's so close to you. I'm going to shout out to Joan Jack, who is also a lawyer, also a warrior and also a writer. Yep, that's right. So hi, Joan. Hey, Joan. Hey, and we're going to I think we're going to go ahead to and introduce our next guest who we know is going to be joining us rather soon. And that is Eleanor Sunchild. Eleanor is is an incredible lawyer. She's a writer. She is a warrior, an absolute warrior. And I I'm honored to to call her friend Eleanor has spent a lot of time advocating for justice for Colton Bushy, for his family, for right from the beginning, she has been involved with what happened on that farm Gerald Stanley's farm in Saskatchewan. It's incredible to me that we're sitting here and it's been years since that happened. You know, I saw on I think it was on Twitter the other day that we just came by an anniversary, the anniversary of his death. And I was just noting how so much time goes by, but sadly, sadly not much has changed when it comes to the justice system, when it comes to what happens with our people, the treatment that we receive by police and how there's lots of platitudes and talk about improvement, but it takes a long time to actually see it. You know, Eleanor has been on the forefront of trying to get justice for the Bushy family. And including, you know, there was a report that came out and she has spoken out about how the RCMP treated Colton's mom, Debbie Patiste, barging into her house to tell her that her son had just passed and as well, treating her basically like a criminal. You know, how can indigenous people ever get justice from a system that treats us this way, that treats moms this way? I think a lot about defunding the police. I know that many of us on this podcast, we all write about it, we talk about it, we speak about it. And I think that we have so many questions about what it means. And to set the stage though, I think I'd like to ask Pam, what does it mean to defund the police? Well, that's the question of the century, I think, because it started out as a pretty simple concept, a call to literally defund the police, literally get police out of our communities, literally, you know, take the funding away from them for all their tanks and, you know, weapons of war and all of these things that they use to oppress Native people and Black people and a whole lot of other people. It's become very complicated since then, because as you know, everyone wants to, you know, have their say about defund the police, all of the critics of the defund the police movement. So, well, it's not really defund the police. Now, it's about reconciliation, it's about, you know, police officers showing up at our powwows or hiring more Native people, hiring more Black people and really getting this concept of defund the police, getting them out of our communities, addressing all of the dangers, like they are literally a public safety threat, contrary to what people think, and twisting it so that it's not at all what we started out saying to begin with, you know, and that's the problem with defund the police. And that's the problem with anything that we say, in fact, it's always twisted or softened or minimized or there's some kind of distraction or, you know, different kind of description for what's actually happening. You know, we want, we've been wanting to deal with racism, violence, sexualized violence, misogyny, homophobia and a whole bunch of police forces for decades. Instead, what we get are police forces saying, well, you know, um, we're going to change our internal policies and, and come up with some ethics and values. I'm like, dude, it's not the ethics and values. That's the problem. It's your criminality, it's your corruption, it's your violence, it's your, you know, that your sexual predators. Like, that's the problem. And so the way in which defund the police has really just been watered down and softened runs now counter to the movement of us trying to address, you know, corrupt police forces, violent police forces, racist police forces, sexually violent police forces and the need for them to literally be stuck in our communities. I mean, as you know, some first nations literally have RCMP outlets right in their communities or in schools, for example, or in hospitals. So you can't even escape law enforcement and for native people that that that's lethal. Here in the Yukon, I want to give a shout out now to Gina Nagano and House of Wolf. There's a lot of, they're, they just held their inaugural conference on community safety and community safety initiatives. Where they're talking about creating the safety initiatives and safety officers, if you will, of the communities to take care of their communities, is this a route that you see Pam for indigenous communities to be able to say, you know, it's not that we don't, we recognize that order needs to be kept in a lot of ways. We recognize that there are ways that we need to be able to, but, but this isn't new to indigeneity. We had ways. We have laws. We have protocol. But it's not, you know, we need those of our own to be taking care of who we are. So are there roots here in the rest of Canada to where we see community, community-minded policing in that sense to be able to be implemented? I think so because we're coming at it from a different context. Obviously, there's no one generic indigenous point of view. We all come from different nations with different native laws and values and practices, but we've always had a sense of safety and security for our nations. That included defending our lands from other nations. It included protecting our women and children so that they weren't captured by other nations, especially when Europeans came over. So safety and security is a very different concept than order and structure, oppression and control, which is at the heart of Canada's capitalist system. And so you can see from those two very perspectives, safety and security, which I mean, that's everybody wants that in their communities and their families, wherever they are, versus order and control domination of a capitalist system. So what is it that they're trying to actually control? What kind of order are they trying to keep? They're trying to stop people from interfering with the capitalist status quo, right? That's why you see homeless people who have nothing being thrown in prison. That's why you see a guy who stole the 75 cent chocolate bar, languishing in a provincial jail and has never been charged with anything. That's very different than there's a legitimate safety issue in our community. It could be domestic violence. It could be something else. And we need measures to keep people safe. And that's where you see the huge divide between this capitalist colonized version of what order is versus indigenous peoples really talking about community safety and security and love and caring for one another. Completely different. If I could just follow really quickly, Pam, you had talked about that the place of policing. Are you there to keep indigenous people from interrupting the corporate structure? And you just hooked exactly what I was talking about in the introduction. When I was, you know, going back and taking a look at the inception of the Northwest Mounted Police, and leading me to, you know, we see these intergenerational connections in these systems as well. We talk about intergenerational trauma. We talk about inherited memory. These systems also have inherited memory. They also have intergenerational connections. And I'm thinking about the Northwest Mounted Police, their place, and how they were utilized by CP Rail to extend the railway across and connect Canada. That was the big thing. That was the goal. That was the celebration. And the indigenous people who said, "No, you can't put this through our land. They got arrested." They were protesting. They got arrested. Now, this is all starting to sound very familiar because this is a story that took place in the late 1800s. These are events that took place in the late 1800s. But as I'm describing them, I am picturing the land offenders at Wetsuit. Exactly. It's literally like people think that, you know, there's a few bad apples. They don't understand the history of policing around the world, in fact, but specifically here in Canada and the United States, the Northwest Mounted Police, which became the RCMP, was specifically set up. They were the strong armed enforcers of genocide. Nothing has changed. They were literally set up to keep us away from resources, keep us away from any kind of business or development, keep us away from the rails, like anything else that settlers had an interest in. They were the long arm of genocide. And so they trapped us on reserves. And even the RCMP's own lawyer at the time knew that that was a breach of our treaty rights to travel about freely as we always did in our territories. But the RCMP enforced that policy and it was never a law. Enforced that policy anyway. They were the ones on the front lines of dragging our kids to residential schools, throwing our parents in prisons if we refuse, dragging kids back who tried to run away. They've been there every step of the way as the enforcers of genocide to control and oppress. Now think about that in terms of slavery. You know, we had hundreds of years of slavery here in Canada. And what did they do? They were designed to control black slaves and prevent them from moving about, prevent them from having freedom, prevent them from escaping. And so those two things happened in Canada and the US at the same time. That's why police forces have never changed. That's what they were set up for. They were trained to do it violently, lethally if possible, and they have been provided with near complete impunity for doing so. That's the whole system. You know, you bring up some really incredible points there and it's true. It's like the RCMP in policing and the bounding quote on quote of Canada, the settling of Canada. Policing has been a mainstay. It's been one of the pillars. How do we turn that around? Well, I mean, the answer to that question is, what are you trying to accomplish? You know, that's it. So it's not a question for us. It's a question for federal and provincial governments. Like what are you trying to accomplish with police? If it is to maintain order and control over the to protect the capitalist system, whether it be mining or pipelines or banking or corporations or whatever, then policing fits. Why would you defund what effectively becomes the personal security forces of primarily corporate interests? Why would they? However, if your interest is to provide safety and security to the public, that's an entirely different function. And you can't have all of those things at the same time, right? Because there's a conflict of interest. I mean, the RCMP's own pension is invested in TC energy and the mining. So they have a vested interest in being the law enforcement and being the private security for pipelines or anything else. So the question really goes back to government. What are you trying to do? What do you want the police to do? Because we have an army. If you're worried about outside people coming to attack us, you got a national army, right? If you want to help people with mental health or personal crisis, we've got social workers and psychologists and mental health workers and health care workers that you could put a lot more money into and a lot more supports. So what is it that you're trying to do? And that's literally the answer to whether or not we're going to see any change in policing. And because I think it's disproportionately this control and protection of stability and order in the capitalist system, I don't think you're going to see a lot of changes on the safety and protection front. Wow. I agree with sadly with everything that you say there. And I am going to ask Eleanor her thoughts on this too. We were just talking about how is it possible for Canada to rethink policing, considering the RCMP's role in the colonization of this country, the taking of our kids, putting them into schools, their role in MMIWG. I mean, how is it possible that we can turn this system around? I mean, I don't know how you feel Eleanor. You know, you and Pam are both lawyers. Sometimes it must feel like you're hitting your head against the wall all the time. It is definitely. I am not a fan of the RCMP. I have, have a lot of lawsuits against the past and present. And like being lawyer for the bushy family, I seen right from the moment Colton was killed, how that case was handled, how the RCMP favored, favored that the white family over Colton and his family. You know, Colton was the victim in that case, but he was not treated like like a victim at all. He had to prove his innocence all the way through even to this day. And that is the failure of the justice system and failure of the RCMP. And it hasn't changed. It hasn't changed at all. We can demand justice. We can jump up and down for it. But in the end, we're just Indians. I had an incident of racism in my yard in July. You might have seen it online where basically three white men came and attacked my friend because one of the men was looking for his pants and assumed that my friend Colby, who has a long braid of hair and looks native, had his pants, right? So I don't know if you guys seen that, but it's on camera. We have lots of videos around our house, lots of surveillance. And so that was in full full view. And I released it on social media. So people can see exactly what I'm dealing with, what we in Saskatchewan and basically in the prairie provinces, it's really, it's so racist here. I mean, it is all over the country, but particularly Saskatchewan is bad, really bad. And the police, in this case, you know, when I'm the victim, I force services. But a lot of people don't have the access to justice that I do. Being a lawyer, knowing how to work media, having cameras in my yard, it's a little different. But for the average indigenous person in the prairies, the police, police are not on your side. So I, I don't think that that's a situation that can be rectified, that I really believe that we need our own, our own justice systems. We need our own systems that are ours, based in our traditions, based in our governance, based in our ways, because this justice system in Canada that we have right now is not serving us at all. You know, I saw online what happened. I think it was on Twitter, what happened to your friend, beat up, and the little girl was inside the truck, right? And my son, my son was in the house too. My 13 year old son who has a long, long black hair and could have easily came out. What if he came outside? You know, what if that little girl, Colby's little girl, came out of the truck? And now these white men are apologizing to me and are sending messages. But it's too late. It's too late because they did what they did. And sadly, that's just one example of the white privilege that people think they have. They think they can come and beat up anybody, any indigenous person, and they'll get away with it simply because they're the right color. They're white color. And that's basically what I see in this province all over the country as well. But the racism and the systemic racism in the justice system and that the RCMP have, it doesn't end. It's just instant after instant after example, after situation constantly, like it's it's like almost every week something happens. And it shouldn't be like that. You know, this is our land. We were here first. We should have equal justice. You know, I'm listening to all of this and I'm thinking about, you know, our issues that that we've been having in Thunder Bay, you know, since the beginning of time. It's the same thing. I mean, you know, we talk about Saskatchewan and we talk about, we talk about Thunder Bay, we talk about Canora. We talk about Timmins, you know, so many Northern communities, all of Northern Ontario, you know, basically it's, it's, why is this, it's the same, right? It's the same across all the prairies, right on into to BC. And that's not letting the urban centers off the hook. But you know, what I'm thinking of what has gone on in Thunder Bay, listening to you speak, and like we have these issues still all the time. When does it change? Like, you know, how many times do we have to replace the police board? How many times do we have to get, and this is an issue all across the country too, right? So the answer from politicians that don't really know what to do is to hold another commission. Let's hold another inquiry. Let's investigate the crap out of it apparently again. And what does that do? What does that leave us with? And now we'd like to tell you about our sponsors as we share a no indigenous history moment. Every week the team of researchers at No History provides anti-up with little known facts about indigenous peoples, places, and things. So this moment is to talk about the appalling relationship of the RCMP and indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, formerly known as the Northwest Mounted Police in the West, and Dominion Police in the East. They have a reputation of acting as a paramilitary police force against indigenous peoples. While non-indigenous Canadians revere the Mounties, indigenous peoples have experienced the brunt of their oppressive violence, especially when the RCMP moved us off the land and protected settlers. The Northwest Mounted Police was the might of colonial rule, evolving into the RCMP. They were not the heroes of the Canadian frontier. There is a myth the RCMP were established to protect indigenous peoples from violent American whiskey traders and other thieves from across the border. However, the truth is, they subjugated and suppressed indigenous communities in order to make way for European settlers. The main purpose of the Mounted Police in the West was to dispossess indigenous peoples from their land and culture and strengthen British control in order to build the country of Canada. They also undermined well-established inter-tribal treaties and indigenous modes of law, damaging alliances that lasted for hundreds of years. Indigenous communities had their own form of justice, able to negotiate and defend their territories if another nation was encroaching on their traditional territories and hunting grounds. However, these methods of justice were outlawed under the Mounted Police. Principles of Frontier Justice allowed the Mounted Police to act as judge, jury, and executioner. The Northwest Mounted Police were empowered by the Crown to arrest, prosecute, judge, and sentence offenders. A court system would eventually be established in 1886 and a jury trial wasn't recorded until 1878. Neither system has been fair to indigenous peoples back then or today. This form of unbridled control would become the norm for how the Crown dealt with indigenous peoples through subsequent policies like the Indian Act. During this era, the Mounted Police were responsible for enforcing the past system, which was an illegal system that limited the movement of indigenous peoples on and off their reserves. They acted as true end officers and effectively kidnappers of indigenous children for residential schools run by the church and state, and oversaw food rationing to reserve communities leading to starvation and community dissolution in the aftermath of the bison extinction of the late 19th century. Today, the relationship between the RCMP and indigenous communities remains strained, distrustful, fragile. No history who brought you this most important factoid is a proud sponsor of Antiep, the podcast for, buy, and about indigenous women, talking about important shit. Visit www.nohistory.ca Eleanor, you had talked about your media literacy, your ability to speak to the media, harness the media. We don't all have that. I've had my complicated relationship with media, and I work in media. We don't always know how to do that. I think that a lot of us in these conversations recognize that these institutions, these pillars of power rarely work alone. These pillars all require each other to hold up the same way a lot of this is being delivered. So in the media, what role? What role is the media playing in all of this and not holding the RCMP in holding all the policing agencies in the way they rate their headlines in the press releases being taken as fact-wool statements? What is the role of the media in all of this? Well, what I've observed is they always take the most sensational and run with it. So if I'm approaching the media, I'll approach it from that point of view like what we'll grab a headline and what will make a good sound bite, but the media is very biased and so you have to keep that in mind when you're approaching them, which reporter, which outlet, who do you have a good relationship with? Who will tell like the truth and not twist your words? So, you know, I have rep trusted reporters that I speak with fairly regularly, who will quote me word for word, but in general, the media is very biased. They have they have their own stereotypes, their own racism and they appeal to their readers. So, you know, there's certain radio stations, certain reporters that I will not talk to because I know that no matter what I say, they're going to twist it. So, I just say, yeah, yeah, not talking to you ever, ever. Pam, how do you handle it? Everything Eleanor said, obviously, we all work in some media context and so we've all experienced this. You know, you've got the media who has four decades, decades and decades, literally just taken the speaking notes for the police and reported it as if it was fact over and over and over again. So, so there you've got that problem and our voices weren't effectively represented in previous decades. And then you also have how they describe the situation. So, the cop is always some kind of hero. Even if the cop is being investigated or charged for something like, you know, brutal violence or something, it's like, hero cop, 20 years on the four, saved a cat from a tree, saved an old lady crossing the street. And so, you know, they're always portrayed in this wonderful light, the victims who are often, you know, either seriously injured or not alive anymore. It's like, you know, drunken, jamedo, working streets or, you know, young native men well known to police. And so, those send out those, if not direct, but subliminal messages, like, oh, so known to police, what does that mean? What's a reasonable person going to think? Well, he's probably been in lots of trouble, maybe doing some dangerous things. And so, maybe the police were justified in their reaction. And, and so, the media just, they have the biggest hand in what the public thinks, right? Because when you think about police forces, I mean, they're not like Doug Ford with their own like news agency, right? They have to use the same media that we use primarily. And so, the biggest educator or miseducator on anything indigenous or anything policing is mainstream media. Independent media does a lot better job, you know, because they're really focused on the facts and the backstory and the context and making sure they represent, you know, voices and that kind of thing. But mainstream media, they're better. I have to say, I'll give them that. They're much better since I don't know more. I've seen them do a lot better job. I've seen them more Carter to change things. I've seen them respond to headlines. I've actually seen them change headlines when people, you know, call them out on Twitter, for example. But the problem with it is, you know, we cannot look at the media as the individuals we work with. Because the individuals that I interview with on a regular basis, fantastic people. And they report properly and they get the facts and they include our voices, but they're part of larger corporations. So, it's really inconsistent. So, I can do an interview at 6 a.m. in the morning for a certain, you know, media outlet. And the questions are right on. And they give me time to explain and they give the context and they don't do any racist. I can do for the same corporation two hours later with a different person. And I feel like I'm back at square one trying to explain why we're not all violent people like stop thinking about us that way. So, it's still very, very inconsistent. And it goes back to again, what is the purpose of the media? Who owns the media? Who's controlling the media? And nine times out of ten, it's some massive corporation. Look at in the maritime. Who owns most of the media in the maritime? It's Irving oil. Irving is the one who has taken all of native land and resources and trees and all of that stuff. So, of course, we're going to be presented as the, you know, dangerous protesters. And so, we also have to think just as much as we think about what is the government interest? What are the corporate interests here? Aside from the bottom line, aside from the other interests they might have. Because, as you know, like I just said, you know, it's the corporations that own different media outlets aren't just operating the media. They might also be engaged in other activities. And so, they want to make those things consistent and work for them. And we're really an afterthought. I think the media, it could be safe to say, was fairly involved in how we received our information and how the public perceived the information on what happened to Colton Boshi, Alan Moore. What are your thoughts? Oh, yeah. The media was right from the, from the moment the press release was issued by the RCMP the day after he was shot. The media was all over it, calling him a thief, a drunk, blaming him for his death. You know, and we've had to fight that to this day. Like, there's still people who say that anyone trespassing on land should be killed and just for being, being indigenous. Yeah, Colton was, was crucified by the media. He was so damaged. And so, whenever we've had to talk about him, we always make sure that we, and we shouldn't have to, but we make sure that we humanize him. We say, Colton was somebody's, those Debbie's son. He was Jaden and William and Jason Staten's sibling. He was their brother. You know, we always have to say who he was, what kind of, he like, he was a really kind person. He like, to help at ceremonies. But, but we have to do that because we have to make sure that people realize he's a human being. And that, that shouldn't have to be like that. We shouldn't have to make sure that people realize that he's a person. Exactly. And the other thing, you know, in that whole, like, whether it's Colton Bushy or any of those situations where police come out and try to defend themselves, you've, you've got a situation where they almost always present us in a bad light or some form of criminality. So, they don't give us the benefit of innocent until proven guilty. None of them, like, knowing can talk about Colton as a criminal on that day because he never had a charge and a rest or a trial to determine whether or not he did anything wrong on that day. He's not here to talk about it. But, let's just say he was convicted for trespassing and then he was shot. We don't have the death penalty in this country. Like, people keep forgetting about that. When it comes to Indians, it's like, oh, well, he might have been stealing something. He might have been trespassing. Someone might have been frightened. You don't get to shoot someone because you're frightened. I mean, just talk to any of the native women that are languishing in prisons in this country for defending themselves against domestic abusers or human traffickers or drug traffickers. And they're sitting in prison because they were legitimately frightened or beaten within an inch of their death and defended themselves. So, like, the narrative is really, really important. We don't get the benefit of innocent until proven guilty. We don't get the benefit of not having death penalties and we don't get the benefit of being able to defend ourselves in any way, physically or in the media. And so, we can't win. And that's the problem. So, the media works very well hand in hand with the police and keep in mind. There are reporters who want to have access to the police, who want to have access to information and get it early. So, there are some reporters who are self-interested in making sure their career goes ahead or they have access. So, there's such a complicated bunch of self-interested factors that forgets that we have basic human rights to live and to be protected from violence and arbitrary detention and all of these things. And they just work so well together that it's very, very hard to combat. Just picking up on what you were saying to about humanizing, putting a human face like, you know, it's up to all of us all the time to constantly do that, right? And I'm a member of the media. I've been a journalist for such a long time and that was one of the things that I battled with at the Toronto Star for many years was to tell the story of what was happening in Thunder Bay and to say these are children. You know, these are kids and they are dying just to get a high school education, which is a fundamental right of every other child in this country. And it should be for anyone regardless of the color of their skin or where they live or anything. You know, and it was that humanizing, trying to tell people that this like Colton, he could be any one of our sons. He can be your son, you know, and trying to convince the Canadian public that this story affects you to because you know what, we're all bleed red, right? You know, and it's a constant, but it's everything, right? It's a battle of racism. It's a battle of colonization. It's the justice system. It's the police. It's institutions. It's a healthcare system. It's all tied together. And so it's the constant uphill battle. And you know, I, when we're talking about humanizing and we're talking about how we put a real face and real stories, I mean, and I think of our women. And I think of how our women constantly have faced policing and have been in situations like, you know, we've all talked about MMIWG before, you know, we all know intimately what this all means and how we're treated by police when we complain. And I'm just going to, you know, if you don't mind Eleanor, I'm just going to bring this around to you here because part of the reason why I said, wow, earlier was not because I was just agreeing with Pan or one of her points was because of something you wrote in the chat when we were recording this. And you said something about Dawn and your friend is just, is Dawn Dumal. She had to run with her child and go south of the border. And she has been there for how many weeks has it been now, Eleanor? It's, uh, let's be going on three weeks. Three weeks. Yeah. Yep. And you are, you are friends with her. Like, and can I ask you just, just because I'm curious too, so we've just been talking about the media. Have you, uh, it all been trying to help in that respect with her as well, like, you know, get her story across? Well, Dawn, Dawn has to tell her story herself. It's her story to tell. So I helped her write a statement while she was incarcerated in Portland. We, we actually, a couple of us went down there to assist. I can't practice law in the states, of course, so I couldn't go be her lawyer, but I could go be her support. So when we were down there, uh, the media, of course, was coming up with their own view that she faked her death and look at all the taxpayers' money she's using and blah, blah, blah. So when we were down there, I helped her write a statement that was released in Saskatoon and then not went to the national media and all over. But it spoke about how she felt that she was left with no option but to run, that she had made police reports surrounding domestic violence and nothing was done that she had been going through family law court and nothing was done. She had went to child protection again. She was not listened to and so she had no option, other option. Like I said, there's a lot more to her story, but it's up to her to speak it. She got released today in the US. They don't want her in the state. She's coming home. She will probably ace charges here and see that's another example of how the media literally just read from the police statement. You know, the police say she was in the United States illegally and I was like, really? Has she been charged? Has she been convicted? Has it been found by a judge that she committed a crime? Because guess what, dudes? We're fucking Indians. We have the right across the Canada, US border. It's something called the "Jay Treaty". We can be in Canada or the US illegally. So that went straight from the press of the police right into the media just saying illegally, illegally, illegally, right? So no concern for, I wonder what was wrong. Why would someone run? People don't run for no reason. You know, think of murder to missing. Think of domestic violence. Think of all of these things, but no. She's like, we're victim blaming and we're demonizing and she hasn't even had the right to even determine whether or not she's in the United States illegal. And I can tell you right now, you can't be if you're a first nation's person because we have the right to cross the Canada, US border and it happens every day. So this leads us into another facet of this conversation. We've been speaking about the discrepancy of immediately being treated like criminals right out of the gate. There's another facet to this conversation because sometimes indigenous people are in need of assistance as well. They need someone to come and take care of a situation. Maybe someone's breaking into your home. Maybe, maybe your under threat. Maybe your car got stolen. Maybe anything happened. Any number of reasons we call for those who we've been told are safety and care are entrusted to. But it doesn't happen that way. Not at this stage. So many, so many of our own people will not call the police when a crime has been committed because there's no trust in the justice system. There's no trust in the police. So how then do we support our communities and our families and our relations in seeking justice when that sensation is there, when that truth is one of the collective experiences of indigenous people in this country. That's a really loaded question. Even when you get stopped by the police, I always hit record. And I always advise people to hit record when they get stopped by the police because of all of the horror stories we've heard about police brutality. So then how do you trust them to come investigate crime at your house or help you? Well, I think you have to, like I always believe that there should be a witness, always, always have somebody there when you're dealing with the police, no matter in what situation, whether you're being stopped by them or you're calling them, like they're always has to be some kind of backup. And cell phones are great for that, right? Like they're good. But if they're responding to a complaint, like they have, you make sure they take notes, you know, because they have to document everything and like it's a situation that is concerning. The other part of it is that as Native people, we have to support each other and provide support to those vulnerable people, like the woman in need, anybody in need just show up and do what you can for them to help the situation. Like I always think of the police as a last resort. Like I really do. And that's pretty sad coming from a lawyer, right? I'll only call them if I really have to or if I need it documented or I need like, but I'll make sure that they do their job properly, right? But as I said, a lot of people don't know how, how to deal with them because, because you learn to fear them, it's like black people in the States, right? Like you have a, we have a difficult relationship with our police services here in Canada. It's the same. We need to rely on them, but on the other hand, we don't trust them. So that's why we need our old, like we don't need indigenous, indigenous officers becoming policemen. Like that's just putting a face in the same position. We actually need our own systems of peacemaking. Like that's what it is to piece. But on the other hand, too, we need to deal with all that colonial trauma within our communities that was brought in from the residential schools and the day schools and the foster care system and all the other colonial systems and and deal with all of that anger and violence and trauma that lives there and continues to impact us as Indigenous people because the police aren't going to be able to deal with that trauma either. We as Indigenous people and particularly as Indigenous women, mothers, sisters, we need to help our people address that trauma. And I guess we start with ourselves. We start with our families and we heal. You have to heal. And Christine, like your question is so important because you're talking about examples. What services do we want the police to provide? So if your car or your bicycle or your stereo is stolen, do you want the police to invest it? Because it's already happened. So the police aren't going to prevent it, right? What you want them to do in that circumstance is investigate and try to locate and return. And so who has a better investigation and closer rate than police officers? A lot of insurance agents have very skilled investigators. They're far more talented and successful in determining whether something was fraud, who stole it, where it's located, how to get it back. So that is that a service we need the police to be doing, especially when calling the police in that circumstance could end up with you being shot, a family member being shot, you being charged or arrested or in the words of Indigenous women, they either rape you or they arrest you. So you have to think about who is it that you're calling? And I'll just give you an example. Would you call a local gang to come and respond to someone who might have stolen your car? No, of course not, right? They're going to be, you know, violent. They have criminal histories, sexual violence. Well, that's literally the RCMP. There hasn't been a report done on the RCMP in the last 30 years that hasn't called them out for corruption. I mean, their own internal reviews show just how corrupt they are. They plant evidence, they lie, they protect each other. You know, you've got this recent report that we just wrote that with the Feminist Alliance for International Action that we submitted to the Mass Casualty Commission for all of the RCMP failures that says every report shows they're sexually violent and they specifically target Indigenous women and girls for sexual exploitation and violence, both inside of the RCMP. So I would never tell a native woman to go work in the RCMP. They admit to targeting not just native women in the RCMP, but those they think were sexually abused as children. Why on earth would I want any of my sisters to work in the RCMP? And then outside of the RCMP, you have human rights watch in BC, where all of those women and girls reported being raped by RCMP officers, you've got, you know, like all of them, the missing inquiry in BC, which said the RCMP were a racist and could care less about the safety of those women. You've got Justice Basterache's report that said there is no saving the RCMP. Their police culture literally eats policy. So if a former Supreme Court of Canada Justice looks at the RCMP and says he was shocked by the large number of violent rapes of women inside the RCMP and those women are trained and protected, like, what chance do we have with any of that, right? We certainly don't have any options. And so we're failing to look at the problem and admit that we have a problem. And I always ask how many bad apples does it take to admit that we have the whole bunch of spoiled? One, two, 500, a thousand, we're not there yet. And unfortunately, we could do a hundred more, you know, interviews, inquiries, reports, they all say the same thing. The RCMP refuses to reform itself. They protect one another and that the sexual violence, the homophobia, the misogyny, and the racism is in every region of Canada and at every level from the new recruit to those in charge. So if that's the case, what the hell kind of chance do we have with the RCMP? So there's some institutions that is not just about defunding, it's about dismantling. And if there's any institution that needs to be dismantled, it's the RCMP. We can talk about what services other police forces or community safety people are going to do, but the RCMP cannot be saved. So many facets to this conversation, we've only touched on a couple of them. It always reminds me, I always think about the times when we would spend as much time as it would take in our history and from my teachings, as much time as it would take to have the conversation and resolve it. So there are always things we're not able to touch on within the time constraints of a podcast. And I could just talk to these women for the whole day. And I hope I do have the opportunity to come back and speak to these important topics again. If you are listening from the Yukon, I just wanted to remind everyone as well that we are coming up to the 10 year review of the report sharing common ground that was a report approached by YG, sorry, Yukon government for those not local Yukon government council of Yukon First Nations and the RCMP. And that was worked on between 2010 and 2014 with community involvement survey and recommendations released in 2014. We're coming up to the 10 year review for that. Keep an eye out for that. Read the report. It is available online. Read the recommendations available online. Let us prepare ourselves for the review of this report coming out. I'm Christine Jenny. It's been such a pleasure to join Tanya and Pam Palmetter and Ellen Morse. Sunshine, Pam and Ellen Morr. Thank you for speaking with us today. Keep the rubber side down. Anti-ep is produced by Jolene Banning and Kim Wheeler for Makwa Creative. Our executive producer is Tanya Tulega. It is emits by John Paul DeRoever at Blueprints. Anti-ep is sponsored by No History and Animiki, Indigenous Innovation since 2003. Follow and like us on socials at Anti-ep podcast on Facebook, anti.up on Instagram and Anti-ep 1 on Twitter. [BLANK_AUDIO]