Don’t stereotype Winnipeg police as racist, inquiry told

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This article was published 11/12/2018 (1956 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Winnipeg police have urged the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls not to paint all officers as racist, saying the city has made progress in better serving Indigenous people.

“We believe that we are moving in a good direction,” Kimberly Carswell, an attorney for the Winnipeg Police Service, testified Wednesday to the inquiry, as it wraps up public hearings this week.

Meanwhile, First Nations leaders and families from Manitoba told commissioners about the need for political will and Indigenous laws, in order to end a centuries-long cycle of violence.

In Ottawa, Carswell went into depth about improved historical and cultural education for officers, better recruitment of Indigenous officers — whom WPS no longer clusters in the core — and sexual-assault awareness training. She noted testimonies of egregious treatment by police officers, but urged commissioners to not paint all officers with the same brush.

“The Winnipeg Police Service is not the same police service it once was, and is making improvements in a number of areas to be more responsive, and respectful to the Indigenous population,” she said.

“Some of these stories have been very difficult for police to hear, but we recognize they are important— and further, necessary — for us to hear, in order for us to continue to improve,” Carswell said.

“We ask you to keep in mind that there are many police officers who have treated Indigenous women and girls with respect, and been responsive to their needs. Not all members can be addressed with the same condition.”

WPS had two commissioners ride along with officers from its exploitation unit, and examine how it works with local Indigenous groups. Carswell said the force is intentionally starting slow with the province’s restorative justice program, in the North End and soon downtown, “to be able to closely monitor and evaluate” it.

Earlier, First Nations people from Manitoba urged Canadians to push for more progress.

“There is not one First Nations family in Manitoba that has not been touched by, and wounded, by this violence. It is devastating and has rippling effects on us all,” testified Grand Chief Arlen Dumas, of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

He said First Nations will see little progress in numerous fields — like child welfare, education and health — until they can run their own systems based on Indigenous laws passed down through generations.

“First Nations are caught in foreign, Western systems, from birth to beyond death,” he testified Monday.

Once commissioners release their report, AMC wants federal funding for two summits in the province, to craft a 10-year plan to devolve various systems into First Nations’ hands.

Joëlle Pastora Sala of the Public Interest Law Centre walked commissioners through the traditional First Nations lifestyle, and how govenrnments disrupt them.

What starts with a mother going into labour through the sacred connection to water quickly devolves in Winnipeg hospitals to stereotypes from medical workers and so-called birth-alert apprehensions from child-welfare workers.

“Her ties to community will be severed within hours of entering the world,” Pastora Sala said, followed by craving affection from predators, confusion over the cultural traditions “recorded in her blood memory” that she can’t access, and will be punished by foster-care officials for doing so.

Dumas also decried the commissioners’ “glaring oversight” in not providing adequate information and aftercare to families, who were traumatized by testifying through a “western, combative style” process “which arbitrarily imposed timelines” on them.

“Given the nature of the issues before the inquiry, the work was always going to be challenging. Those challenges did not need to be compounded by a flawed process,” Dumas said.

Meanwhile, a Winnipeg lawyer representing various, local grieving families said that Indigenous people want to move beyond having to sue in order to access basic rights.

“If it’s about political will, and if the leaders of this nation are only looking on the next election, then we will once again be at the bottom of their priorities,” testified Catherine Dunn.

She said Canadians need a much better education on their history and how it related to ongoing violence against Indigenous people. Otherwise, the courts are the only way to build political will among governments:

“How do you do that? You sue them. How often do you do that? Every day. Who sues them? Every political organization in this country,” she testified.

“The evidence is overwhelming, that in every system in this land — education, child-welfare, medicine, land resources, language — Indigenous people are betrayed, again and again, by their own governments,” she said.

“The federal government, the Manitoba government, is not protecting them, as is their duty.”

She echoed Dumas in saying that land entitlement is key to restoring First Nations’ sense of self.

“If you have no land, then you have no home, and if you have no home than you have nothing. Because you cannot get past the fact that you have no home,” she said.

“Where is the political will? Where is Canadians’ horror of who we are?”

The commissioners end all hearings this Friday. They have until April 30, 2019 to submit their final report to the federal government.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca