Justice is not colour blind

A number of developing stories this past month demonstrate quite clearly that there are two distinct standards of law in North America when it comes to First Nations people on this continent.

Consider the case of Adam Capay. Capay is a member of Lac Seul First Nation, who is currently awaiting trial on charges of first-degree murder in the 2012 death of a fellow inmate at Thunder Bay Correctional Centre.

Ever since that incident four and a half years ago – until media attention led to a public outcry – Capay was held in solitary confinement at the Thunder Bay Jail, a provincial maximum-security institution. He spent 23 hours alone in his cell each day, where the bright lights are never dimmed, only permitted out for an hour each day to shower and perhaps make a phone call. According to the United Nations, more than two weeks of solitary confinement meets the definition of torture.

Capay has since been moved to another cell with better lighting controls, and access to day rooms, showers, phone calls and television. But that may only be temporary, until the media attention dies down.

In this case, an old First Nations saying definitely applies: “Justice? Look at the jails, it’s just us.” Indeed, in federal prisons, Aboriginals represent 25% of the inmate population, about the same as in the Ontario provincial system, despite being only about 3% of Canada’s population as a whole. In Saskatchewan provincial jails, Aboriginals account for 81% of the inmates.

Meanwhile, down at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, First Nations protest camps are being sprayed with unknown substances from an airplane. This would appear to break any number of US and state laws – including laws on terrorism – but are the thousands of law enforcement officers present to prevent any interruption of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline investigating these crimes? To ask the question is to answer it. Of course not.

Then there is the blue elephant in the room right here in Quebec. Six SQ police officers in Val-d’Or faced a year-long investigation by the Montreal Police Service of 37 complaints lodged against them of abusing and taking sexual advantage of Aboriginal women. According a media leak days before prosecutors were to make an announcement last week, the suspended police officers received a letter from the Montreal police that said they would not be facing any charges.

Mistissini resident Errol Mianscum’s reaction was typical. “If those were non-Native women making these accusations, it would been a different ending. So sad this judicial system obviously not written for us continuously fails us and we as a people sit idly by and allow them to close their doors on us and laugh at us.”

Police investigating police in Quebec have rarely led to charges. The Quebec government should have responded by holding an independent provincial judicial inquiry to determine the truth. If Quebec Aboriginal Affairs Minister Geoff Kelly accepts the results of this investigation without calling for an inquiry, he should resign for refusing to honour the mandate of the ministry he assumed.