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Page 5

Windspeaker Editorial

We've been kicking and screaming about racism and cops and Indians for quite some time now. In fact, we are sick to death of reporting on the "isolated incidents" the authorities insist on labeling the police brutality and racism towards our people.

We continue to write about it, however, because the kind of racism we are talking about is the deadly kind, and if not fatal, fatally flawed because the people who love to hate have the power of life and death over the hated.

It was with more than a bit of disgust that we watched the Ontario Provincial Police video aired on the CBC in late January, but it was with a sense of vindication. We told you so. There it is, right on tape, racism in the police force, racism that we have written about so frequently.

The 'I told you so' isn't going to drive any point home, however, so let us try to persuade Canadians to shrug off that mantle of denial they've cloaked themselves so comfortably in and take a close and critical look at a real problem in their 'just society.' If they don't, more people will die-many more. And respect for law enforcement officers will continue to plummet.

If Canadians choose to open their eyes, they'll see the racism polluting the police forces across this land as plain as the nose on their collective face.

Donald Marshall, Winston Wutanee, Helen Betty Osborne, J.J. Harper, Darrell Knight and all the other starlight cruisers; Lucy Pedoniquott, Shelley Napope, Eva Taysup and Calinda Waterhen, all the women whose remains have finally been found at the Pickton farm near Vancouver, and Frank Paul who died of exposure after police dumped him in a back alley in that city, despite his obvious inability to care for himself at the time. There's more, many more.

And Dudley George.

We don't know who spoke those ugly, racist things caught on videotape just hours before Dudley died at Ipperwash Provincial Park in 1995 (if you haven't heard about it, please see page 8 of this edition for details), because those police officers were protected. There was no public repercussion. One officer got sensitivity training and we suspect paid to attend those classes. The other's contract wasn't renewed.

And where is this racist now? Is he wearing a different uniform? Is he a ticking time bomb waiting to go off on another Native family?

Cops always complain about how the courts let the bad guys they work so hard to catch just walk away with a rap on the knuckles. What do you call sensitivity training after a man is executed for no reason by a police officer? What do you call eight years of burying the evidence in mounds of red tape so people wouldn't be able to view it?

There were 200 cops at Ipperwash that Labour Day weekend, and according to the investigation, not one of them saw which of their colleagues beat Counc. Cecil George so badly that his heart stopped?

Cops talk about honor a lot. But when one of their own dishonors the uniform and job, they form a blue wall. And that dishonors them all. If you make a career out of serving and protecting, you're supposed to be someone special, someone who commands the respect and appreciation of the community at large. If there are clowns and incompetents and criminals in your midst and you protect them, you're just as bad as they are and you command no respect at all from anyone. You have no honor.

You shouldn't be able to become a cop if your mind is poisoned with racism and ignorance. You shouldn't be able to become a leader of cops if you turn your back on the racism and ignorance that stinks up the shop.

As long as nothing happens to people like the two anonymous OPP bigots that taped themselves at Ipperwash that day, there can be no pretence that there is accountability in the Canadian system. Remember accountability. The government authority has been beating that drum in the direction of our people for a number of years. Shine the light on yourselves, boys.

And the media has to takea good long look at itself as well. Print off all the news stories about David Ahenakew and his racist bile and then all the print stories generated about the OPP watermelon brothers. Put those stacks side by side and then ask yourself why the OPP racists generated so little attention across the country. Denial? Or more racism?

As long as nothing happens to bigots in uniforms or in government offices or in newsrooms only one thing is guaranteed: there will be more injustice.

And there will be certainly more funerals.

For God's sake Canada, snap out of it.