Media turns a blind eye

Page 4

The Sept. 5 edition of the Globe and Mail went far to define the history of the media's coverage of the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

On the top of page A14 (the editorial section) is the paper's assessment of the Ontario premier's actions related to the death of an unarmed Native protester, Dudley George, at the hands of the provincial police at Ipperwash Provincial Park six years ago (Pressure is Building for an Ipperwash Inquiry). On the bottom of the opposite page is columnist Jeffrey Simpson's assessment of Assembly of First Nations National Chief Matthew Coon Come's remarks at the United Nations anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa (It's Time to Put Down the Guilt Tool).

One page examines the killing of an unarmed Native man by an on-duty Canadian police officer, and Premier Mike Harris' efforts to stonewall any investigation of his role in that unfortunate action. The next page tells Canadians that the cries of institutional racism and charges that authorities stack the deck against marginalized minorities are over-blown.

The juxtaposition of those two pieces overflows with irony.

The death of Dudley George is, in fact, evidence that Native people are subject to the kind of treatment that non-Native people would never be asked to tolerate in Canada.

Canadians can walk a picket line or stage a peaceful protest without fear of being fired upon by police for exercising their right of free expression. Native people can not.

Canadians expect that the establishment should not be allowed to hide behind its closed ranks to protect the people who may be responsible for the police opening fire on unarmed citizens who pose no immediate threat. Native people can have no such expectation, because neither Ontario nor Canada is willing to call a public inquiry into the Dudley George killing.

Shortly after George was killed, Ontario civil servants stormed the legislature and were met with force by security guards. A couple of bruises and a sprain or two later, a full public inquiry was called into the actions of the Queen's Park security personnel. Native people across the country were amazed. Are a few bruised civil servants more important than a dead Indian? Canada's answer is yes.

And because Canadians seem content to go along with this inequity, it reveals an unpleasant truth: there is much more racism in Canadian society than Canadians are willing to admit.

Canada's preferred view of itself is as a progressive land free of racial inequality in the present day, a claim Jeffrey Simpson and so many others have been asserting since the festivities in Durban began.

Canada's image as a progressive, tolerant, liberal democracy is proved, is it not, because it funds groups such as the AFN, such as women's advocacy groups, poverty advocates, etc., to critique Canada's approach to these interests? This would be high moral ground, indeed, if Canada did not squeal with outrage when the critique offered is something that questions its sanctified self-image. Can Canada be all that it claims if it does not, even for one moment, consider the charge?

It is intellectually dishonest to challenge the fact that racism is a problem in this country. Only incredibly determined denial keeps that wolf from the door of the Canadian consciousness.

In Durban, Coon Come said the unspeakable, offending the sensibilities of a citizenry whose eyes aren't willing to see the mountain of evidence before them. Chief Coon Come, vilified in editorials in every paper in this country, has shown us that Canadians can't handle the truth. And Canada's media are not prepared to do their job and look at that as a very important news story.

Not convinced?

Last year the police in Saskatoon were charged with driving a Native man to the outskirts of town and abandoning him in minus 30 degree temperatures. While several Native women where holding a candlelight vigil for other Native men they believed did because of this practice, a female friend of the police officers on trial attacked the women with the worst kind of racist abuse. It was caught live on tape, shown on the evening news that day and then forgotten. No discussion of what was really going on there. No debate about what it said about Canada's relationship with Native people. What we did hear a lot about, however, was hockey goon Marty McSorley's attack on Donald Brashear. We watched it replayed over and over, ad nauseam, on Canada's news networks. But racism in Canada, caught on tape in all its ugliness? The silence was deafening. The difference, of course, is Canadians love their hockey.

Respectfully,

Bert Crowfoot