Source: The Guardian<\/p>\n
Link:\u00a0https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/jan\/29\/canada-first-nations-colten-boushie-gerard-stanley-trial<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The case of Colten Boushie, 22, killed after seeking help at a farm, has divided Canadians over race and policing<\/p>\n
fter a warm summer day spent swimming in a Saskatchewan river, the five friends piled into the car for the 50-minute ride home.<\/p>\n
But as they headed towards the Red Pheasant First Nation in western\u00a0Canada<\/a>, a tyre blew out. The group pulled into a nearby farm, hoping to find help, they later told police. A shot was soon fired, killing one of the young men in the vehicle, 22-year-old Colten Boushie.<\/p>\n What exactly happened on that August night is set to be investigated this week in a Saskatchewan court, as jury selection begins in a case that has\u00a0ignited racial tensions in the Canadian province<\/a>\u00a0and laid bare the deep fissures between some indigenous and non-indigenous communities.<\/p>\n A local farmer, Gerard Stanley, was charged with second-degree murder, but the 2016 killing set the province on edge.<\/p>\n \u201cColten Boushie is the Rodney King of western Canada,\u201d said Mark Kleiner, a former pastor with the Lutheran and Anglican churches in Biggar, a town near the site of the shooting. \u201cIt is really a flashpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the scarcity of details, competing narratives soon emerged. Some argued the farmer would not have shot at the group had they been white. Others described the youths as \u201ctrespassers\u201d.<\/p>\n As Boushie\u2019s family grieved the death of a caring young man who had been working towards becoming a firefighter, hate-filled comments flooded social media.<\/p>\n \u201cHis only mistake was leaving three witnesses,\u201d wrote one rural councillor who later resigned. Another commenter said: \u201cHe should have shot all five and been given a medal.\u201d<\/p>\n Duelling fundraising campaigns soon sprang up. More than C$21,000 was raised to help cover the costs of Boushie\u2019s funeral; others raised about C$14,000 to help Stanley\u2019s wife. \u201cMuch of the farming community around us who know this family know they are loving and deserving of some help through a difficult time,\u201d said a fundraising page for Stanley\u2019s family.<\/p>\n First Nations leaders criticised the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for fuelling tensions: in a press release a day after the shooting, the force said three occupants of the car had been taken into custody as part of a related theft investigation and another male was being sought. No charges were ever laid.<\/p>\n \u201cThe news release provided just enough prejudicial information for the average reader to draw their own conclusions that the shooting was somehow justified,\u201d said Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations.<\/p>\n While the RCMP later apologised for the news release, many in the province pointed to it as another example of how the justice system fails to treat indigenous people equally.<\/p>\n When police arrived at Boushie\u2019s home to notify his family of his death, they did so in an \u201cextremely insensitive\u201d fashion, said Chris Murphy, the lawyer for the Boushie family. \u201cThey surrounded [his mother\u2019s] trailer at the Red Pheasant Nation. And came into her trailer and searched the trailer, the same day that her son died.\u201d<\/p>\n Boushie\u2019s mother so overcome with grief she could barely stand, but family members said they were asked by police if they had been drinking.<\/p>\n The RCMP later cleared its own officers of any misconduct in an internal investigation. Boushie\u2019s family responded with a statement asking: \u201cHow are we to trust the RCMP when they treat us like criminals when we are the victims?\u201d<\/p>\n The question of race \u2013 in the shooting, the police response, and public perception of the case \u2013 will loom large during the trial, said Robert Innes, a professor of indigenous studies at the University of Saskatchewan. The province has a troubled history on the subject, he added, citing Saskatchewan\u2019s past\u00a0as a hub of Ku Klux Klan activity<\/a>\u00a0in the 1920s.<\/p>\n What is different now is Canada\u2019s fledgling efforts to confront its historical mistreatment of the country\u2019s indigenous population, such as the system of residential schools which saw more than 150,000 aboriginal children forcibly removed from their homes and\u00a0placed in a system rife with physical, mental and sexual abuse<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever the verdict, there\u2019s going to be a real pushback to it,\u201d said Innes. \u201cFor indigenous people there\u2019s going to be: \u2018Again, the justice system has failed us.\u2019 For a lot of white people, there\u2019s going to be: \u2018See, because of the political correctness of our culture, this is how the justice system is rigged against white people.\u2019 Even though there\u2019s no evidence to substantiate that kind of claim.\u201d<\/p>\n In the months since the shooting, hundreds of protesters have gathered outside the court house during court appearances by Gerard Stanley, who has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.<\/p>\n Their anger has been tempered by the Boushie family\u2019s calls for calm. \u201cColten\u2019s death must have a purpose,\u201d his cousin Jade Tootoosis told protesters last year.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile his death reveals a deep divide that exists between many within this province, it has also brought us here to this courthouse, where we can come together and ask for a fair trial for everyone involved.\u201d<\/p>\n The family\u2019s response has been critical in tempering the simmering tensions, said Kimberly Jonathan of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations. \u201cI can\u2019t say enough how that prevented more bloodshed,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know that there were people that are willing to come and take up arms and say enough is enough. No more dead children. No more.\u201d<\/p>\n This week\u2019s trial could shatter the calm, she warned<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve lost our kids to\u00a0the Sixties Scoop<\/a>\u00a0[when indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families], we lost our kids to\u00a0residential schools,<\/a>\u00a0we are losing them in the justice system, we\u2019re losing them in the\u00a0jails and the penitentiaries<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we face more loss, we get more anger and hatred towards First Nations and [people] saying it\u2019s your fault. Well, we didn\u2019t get there alone. And we\u2019re not going to get out of the situation alone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: The Guardian Link:\u00a0https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/jan\/29\/canada-first-nations-colten-boushie-gerard-stanley-trial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1347,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions\/1347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}