Tansi Nîtôtemtik,
This week we begin reviewing the Calls to Action on justice. The focus of our post today is on Call to Action 25, which concerns the Royal Mounted Canadian Police (RCMP). As we will outline, The RCMP and its predecessor, the Northwest Mounted Police (NWMP), have long been at the front line of the unilateral administration of the Candian justice system upon Indigenous communities, to damaging and disproportionate effect. Call 25 is as follows:
- We call upon the federal government to establish a written policy that reaffirms the independence of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate crimes in which the government has its own interest as a potential or real party in civil litigation.
This call relates specifically to a 1994 RCMP investigation into residential school abuse that became tainted with allegations of bias.[1] It was alleged by the complainants of the lawsuit that the Federal Government exercised control and influence over the RCMP investigators to protect its own legal interests in any resulting civil claim.[2] The Federal Government has dismissed the need for action on Call 25, declaring most recently in 2018 that the RCMP are, in fact, an agency independent from the direction of Federal Ministers.[3]
This claim of independence from the Federal government overlooks the complicated role between the RCMP, colonialism and reconciliation - and requires a broader understanding one how deeply intertwined the RCMP is to Canada’s justice system and its disproportionate outcomes. Despite early political relationships and Treaty intentions to the contrary, the Canadian-colonial justice system was by-and-large unilaterally imposed on Indigenous nations.[4] On Treaty 6 land, First-Nations signatories did not contemplate giving up the right to their own existing justice systems when signing of treaties.[5] The legal justification behind the initial imposition of the NWMP remains to be clumsy; built upon conflicting legal premises and racist assumptions.[6]
On Treaty 6 land, the first NWMP regiment was sent west to police settlers in 1874. By 1885, the NWMP had found themselves as a military force in direct armed conflict with Louis Riel and the Métis Nation at Duck Lake,[7] while simultaneously policing Indigenous communities. The line between policing and military blurred. In 1897 a Cree man named Kitchi-manito-waya was a fugitive on the run from the NWMP. When the NWMP found him armed and hiding in a bluff with two family members, a force of 100 officers took a strictly military response and shelled them with artillery.[8] In response to heavy political criticism that this was ‘heavy handed,’ the acting NWMP Commissioner responded that: “unless such an open defiance of authority was quickly and effectively silenced, others would follow their example.”[9]
Library and Archives Canada, PA-202188
Many Indigenous communities have never accepted the authority of the RCMP. In 1923, Hereditary Chiefs of the Six Nations appeared before the newly formed International League of Nations to argue that the Dominion Government’s imposition of settler criminal law on the people of the Six Nation was a violation of their existing nationality, legal systems and independence.[10] One central argument was that the imposition of the RCMP onto their land constituted a ‘hostile invasion’.[11] The argument before the League of Nations was accepted by four member nations.[12] Naturally, the Canadian State didn’t like this assertion of sovereignty and immediately passed legislation to depose and replace the Hereditary council.[13] This also contributed to the imposition of section 141 of the Indian Act, which made it illegal for Indigenous nations to hire lawyers – with a penalty of jail time – successful quieting such legal arguments for decades to come.[14]
The RCMP have been directly involved in the most shameful acts of Canadian colonialism. This includes systematically apprehending children as young as three from their parents to send to residential schools,[15] being involved in the mass shooting of Inuit sled dogs,[16] widespread sexual abuse and gendered violence,[17] enforcing draconic Indian Act laws such as the ‘pass-system’,[18] and the forcible relocation of communities.[19]
Photo by Michael Toledano.
Currently, the RCMP’s 3.4 billion dollar annual budget[20] is spent in part continuing the confused identity between police and military force. This year, the RCMP approved ‘lethal overwatch’ measures from snipers against peaceful protesters to enforce the Federal Court injunction of an oil and gas company.[21]While the Federal Government may feel that the RCMP is an independent entity, their current operation is so deeply embedded and similar to their violent history that it seems no iteration of the RCMP that can exist congruently with any functioning or serious conceptualization of reconciliation.
Keep reading this week for a deeper discussion on the Calls to Action on Justice.
Team ReconciliAction YEG
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1Canada, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Honouring the Truth and Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Winnipeg: The Commission, 2015 at 165.
2Ibid.
3Crown-Ingidionus Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, "Delivering on Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action" (05 September 2019).
4Joshua Ben David Nichols, A Reconciliation Without Recollection? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020) [Nichols].
5Harold Johnson, Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2019) at 121 [Peace and Good Order].
6See Generally: John Leonard Taylor, “The Making of Treaty Six: Treaty Research Report Treaty Six (1876),” Note, (1985), Treaties and Historical Research Centre Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Online: <https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-HQ/STAGING/texte-text/tre6_1100100028707_eng.pdf >
7Jean Teillet, The North-West is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel's People, the Metis Nation (Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 2019) at 341.
8 Edwards Butts, “Almighty Voice,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (6 February 2006), online: <https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/almighty-voice>.
9S. W. Horrall, The Pictorial History of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited, 1973) at 14.
10Nichols, supra note 4 at 161.
11Ibid at 162.
12 Ibid at 163.
13 Ibid. at 164.
14I First Nations and Indigenous Studies, The University of British Columbia "The Indian Act" (2009), online: <https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_indian_act/#:~:text=Section%20141%20outlawed%20the%20hiring,result%20in%20a%20jail%20term.>.
15 Marcel-Éugène LeBeuf, “Role of the RCMP during the Indian residential school system” (2011) Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
16 Qikiqtant Truth Commission, "Thematic Reports and Special Studies 1950–1975: Analysis of the RCMP Sled Dog Report" (2014) Qikiqtani Inuit Association.
17Jaskiran K. Dhillon, “Indigenous girls and the violence of settler-colonial policing” (2015) 4:2 Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society pp 1-31.
18See generally: Jane Gerster, “The RCMP was created to control Indigenous people. Can that relationship be reset?” Global News, (15 June 2019) Online: < https://globalnews.ca/news/5381480/rcmp-indigenous-relationship/>.
19Tina Loo, Moved by the State: Forced Relocation and Making a Good Life in Postwar Canada (University of British Columbia Press, 2019) at 19.
20Government of Canada, "Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2019-2020 Departmental Plan" (04 November 2019) online: <https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/royal-canadian-mounted-police-2019-2020-departmental-plan?wbdisable=true>.
21Jaskiran K. Dhillon, "Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show." The Guardian, (20 December 2019), online: <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/20/canada-indigenous-land-defenders-police-documents>.
