36 June 20
A big issue in Canada is the arrest of Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca-Fort Chipewyan First Nations that occured in Fort McMurray in March of this year. Chief Adam was driving a truck with an expired license plate on it, and he was detained by Fort Mac RCMP outside of a bar, at night. An attempted arrest got ugly, and an RCMP officer was video recorded punching Adam repeatedly when he appeared to be cuffed and on the ground. He was charged with resisting arrest, in addition to the driving without a license charge. At trail, the resisting arrest charge was dismissed by the judge, and Adam was convicted on the license charge.
The video of the arrest went viral and was held up as an example of the systemic racism that exists in the RCMP. The Hamilton Spectator editorialed today about the need to review policing on the basis of the video, and, of course, the anarchist violence released upon the death of George Floyd. This simple-minded view, that policing needs to be reviewed and defunded to some extent as punishment for systemic racism is addressed below.
Even a propaganda sheet like the Spectator editorial pages must understand – somewhere in the deep recesses that once housed a journalist’s mind – that there are two sides to a story. This is my best reconstruction of what went down in the arrest of Chief Allan Adam.
Eastern Canadians have no idea of the “lived experiences” of westerners. Of note, is that out west there are no romantic illusions about aboriginal people. The aboriginal people of the west are racially much purer than aboriginals of Southern Ontario and eastern Canada. There are no blue-eyed, blonde-haired people with status cards out west. The closest to that are known as Metis.
Aboriginals also comprise a much greater proportion of the population. They came into contact with European culture less than 150 years ago, and up north in places like Fort Chipewyan it was a lot more recent than that. Before the tar sands project, Fort McMurray was an Indian village of 1,000 people on the banks of the Athabasca River. And Fort Chipewyan is further north than that. To many aboriginals, Europeans are newcomers and carpetbaggers to be endured until they eventually disappear.
The government of Canada is the government of the Europeans that First Nations deal with. The government of Alberta is an upstart and illegitimate interloper. The RCMP are contracted by Alberta to be the provincial police force, and this is advantageous because aboriginals accept the RCMP as the police force of the federal government.
That Chief Adams had an expired license sticker on his vehicle is surprising, inasmuch as there was a license with a sticker on it at all. (He must have bought his truck used.) Since many First Nations don’t recognize the legitimacy of the provincial government, nuisance laws like provincial licensing are ignored as much as can be gotten away with, especially when enforcement is weak. Chief Adam was arrested, not on his reserve, but in the big city of Fort McMurray.
With this as backdrop, you can appreciate that the situation of arresting Chief Adam was not de novo. Chief Adams likely had a massive chip on his shoulder. The police of Fort Mac weren’t going to be bullied into letting an enforcement matter go, and things escalated quickly. Arresting drunken Indians is pretty routine for the RCMP, and given how hard arrest is often resisted, the arresting officer probably leapt to DefCon4 straightaway. Resisted arrests are never pretty, and the arrest of Chief Adam was no exception. But that’s also why we have judges and trials.
It would be wrong to generalize from this episode. You can’t conclude that systemic racism exists in the RCMP because of this. You’re missing a lot of data. At worst, you could say that both sides knew the score. If, however, you still want to have one policing policy for aboriginals and another for Canadians, well, that’s exactly what systemic racism is – isn’t it!
There are two sides to every story. Life is more complex than simpleminded anarchists understand. The only outcome of changing policing under the pressure of anarchist demands is more violent crime. Had Chief Adam not left his reserve, the RCMP wouldn’t have bothered him for driving an unlicensed truck.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment