The only way we are ever going to stop RCMP racism and brutality against Indigenous peoples is to declassify, deconstruct and defund the institution itself.
The ongoing debate about whether racism exists in the RCMP is a distraction from the real life impact that racialized violence has on Indigenous peoples everyday. Racism, sexism and corruption exist in the RCMP, and have so for many decades. Those facts are not disputable. The numerous investigations, commissions, inquiries, individual civil actions, class action lawsuits, and horrifying statistics leave no doubt that the RCMP engage in regular acts of racial profiling, harassment, over-arrests, brutality, sexualized violence and killings of Indigenous peoples at grossly disproportionate rates. They also commit these same acts of racialized violence against our Black brothers and sisters. What makes matters worse is that the RCMP do so with a high degree of impunity.
If Indigenous peoples are to be safe in their own territories, we need immediate, radical and sweeping changes in the laws, policies and governance of law enforcement in Canada; not the weak recommendations that dance around the edges of the status quo. For years, when confronted with racialized violence against Indigenous peoples by police, investigators and police spokespeople have recommended things like cultural awareness or cultural sensitivity training as if the problem was cultural difference. But the problem has never been about Indigenous culture. The problem has always been about racist, violent and corrupt police culture.
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