By Canadian Press

Indigenous Peoples in U.S. stand with BLM, but await their own reckoning

Jun 16, 2020 | 10:49 AM

WASHINGTON — First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples in Canada and the United States are showing solidarity with the Black community as widespread demands for social change sweep across the globe.

But Indigenous communities stand behind the Black Lives Matter movement in another sense as well: in line for lasting justice, wondering when their turn will come.

Both countries are awash in tidal waves of public anger over systemic racism and police brutality — but in Canada, more than in the U.S., outrage has focused on tensions between law enforcement and Indigenous Peoples.

Experts say Indigenous people in the U.S. are just as likely as Black people to be killed by police, even though they only comprise about 1.6 per cent of the population.

Circe Sturm, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas, Austin, says that makes more than five million Indigenous people in the U.S. the single most targeted demographic in the country — a fact that gets no attention from governments or the media.

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Protesters in Canada have been on the march in recent days over the separate shooting deaths of two Indigenous people in New Brunswick and the violent arrest in March of a First Nation chief in northern Alberta.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2020.

The Canadian Press