I feel struck by the tragedy of the death of Neil Stonechild and the callousness that the Saskatoon Police had in dealing with the death of a first nations person. Really how they dealt with all the first nations people spoken with in the book. The police often talk about a single bad officer, but there are many “single” officers in this that either commit crimes or don’t investigate the crimes of those they work with.
The exception seems to be the few officers that really care about what happened in the Starlight Tour deaths and spend time investigating the officers that committed the crimes.
Even sadder is the decades of generational trauma that have been visited on first nations that makes it easier to choose addiction and actions outside civil society. The Canadian government ripped first nations from their homes in residential schoolsand now punishes the children of residential school survivors for the behaviour that is almost a forgone conclusion from the trauma visited on their parents at the hands of the government.
The Canadian government spent generations tearing apart first nations society, we should be spending decades putting it back together instead of half hearted attempts and nice words.
A must read for any Canadian wanting to see how poorly we treat our First Nation neighbours.