A recent report co-authored by a Carleton professor found that the RCMP is placing corporate interests over Indigenous rights by factoring in Indigenous protestors’ ability to gain public support in their management to stop them.
The report comes in the wake of police enforcing an injunction and taking down one of two checkpoints set up by members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation on Jan 8.
The checkpoint, located near Smithers, B.C., was built to regulate entry into traditional Wet’suwet’en territory in opposition to the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline.
According to Jeffrey Monaghan, Carleton criminology professor and one of the authors of the report, his team was able to find these results through archives of RCMP data collected by the Access to Information Act.
Monaghan said tools used by the RCMP to assess the risk of Indigenous movements reveal a problematic mandate because they are not assessing Indigenous protests in Canada based on factors of criminality, but are more concerned about the protestors’ ability to gain public support.
“It’s not the potential of crime that’s being evaluated, but it’s the potential to reach a public narrative,” he said.
Miles Howe, co-author and doctoral candidate at Queen’s University, said he agreed.
“Challenges to legitimacy, ability to reframe narratives—those are, in the eyes of the RCMP, risky things to deal with, whereas they are entirely legal,” he said.
He added their report reveals criteria used to assess the risk of protests by the RCMP is focused on how much a movement can gain public support.
“Something in a group or a protest event that’s deemed risky is if there are strong social networking skills, or a telegenic leader—someone who looks good on television,” Howe said.
Howe said his findings also showed that economic influences played a large role in the decision for police intervention in B.C.
“The RCMP, which is tasked with balancing a variety of mandates including upholding Aboriginal rights, once again determined that corporate rights and private property outweigh that,” he said.
Monaghan said the RCMP’s decision to take action against the Wet’suwet’en nation seemed “unusual and performative.”
“They wanted the media to be paying attention,” he said. “They’re communicating a much broader message that is not just about the Wet’suwet’en camp, but about their intention to take a much harder line on protests against pipelines.”
Ashley Courchene, a Carleton graduate student and the chairperson for the Circle of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Students in the Canadian Federation of Students, said the report’s findings point to a broader trend.
“I’m not surprised. This is just the way that Canada has treated Native people since our country came into existence,” he said.
“There is Canadian and Indigenous law that [recognizes] Indigenous jurisdiction over this territory, so Canada needs to obey its own law and not corporate interests,” he added.
A response from residents and supporters of the Wet’suwet’en camps is expected in court on Jan. 31. The interim court injunction, which led to the RCMP action in Smithers, will be in place until then.
—With files from Temur Durrani
Photo by Temur Durrani
