Canada's apartheid: racism impacts upon people's lives in many ways but it is in the justice system that Canada's First Nations experience the most readily apparent examples of institutional racism. Many Aboriginals believe the police and courts are used to suppress Native People in the same way as they were used in South Africa to keep down Blacks.(FIRST NATIONS--RACISM)

Publication: Canada and the World Backgrounder

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Neil Stonechild, a 17-year-old Cree Native who lived in Saskatoon, had had a few brushes with the law. On a cold night in November 1990 he had his last encounter with police. He was taken into custody following a disturbance at a housing complex.

Five days later, Neil Stonechild's body was found frozen in a field outside the city. He had been taken on what the Saskatoon police ghoulishly called a "starlight tour."

It was the habit of some city cops to take troublesome Natives to the edge of town on cold nights and make them walk home. The night Neil Stonechild was taken on his "starlight tour" the temperature dropped to a deadly -28[degrees]C. It was too cold for him to survive in the clothing he was wearing.

Ten years after Mr. Stonechild's death, two more Aboriginal men were found frozen outside Saskatoon. Both were apparent victims of "starlight tours." But, in February 2000, Darrel Night survived after being dumped out of town by police. He went public with the story of his ordeal and this encouraged other Native People to come forward with tales of brutality at the hands of the Saskatoon police.

The official reaction is that these are isolated cases. So too must be case of Matthew Dumas, an 18-year-old Anishnabe, shot to death by a Winnipeg police officer in January 2005. And, Dennis St. Paul, shot and killed by an RCMP officer on the Norway House reserve a month ear-liar.

In 2004, there were the "isolated" police shootings of Lorraine Jacobsen on the Kwakiutl reserve, Alert Bay, B.C., Geronimo Fobister of the Grassy Narrows reserve in Ontario, and Gerald Chenery, a Nisga'a, in Vancouver. In 1998, Frank Paul,...

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