Global Courant 2023-05-21 21:12:36
OTTAWA –
Dean Gladue says he never experienced racism before joining the RCMP.
The 26-year-old veteran began his career in the police force in 1989 as a special constable, a role assigned to the First Nations reserves of the police force. It was a rank lower than its non-native colleagues, who were better paid.
It felt like he was “a second-class citizen,” he said in a recent interview.
After the program ended, Gladue transitioned to a job as a permanent agent. The 25-year-old Metis man would then hear casual remarks in the office, with comments such as “a dead Indian is a good Indian” that were later brushed off as stress when he was brought to a supervisor.
“You just take the beating. You just take it,” he said.
“As you get older, you start to realize, ‘Why did I do that’?”
Gladue had been interested in police work since childhood and saw the RCMP as a good career, especially when his salary improved. He also knew that he could retire before age 50, which he did.
And he loved the job, especially after joining the British Columbia Drug and Organized Crime Unit, where he focused on education.
Despite there being a time when he would convince others not to join, Gladue, now a leader at Metis Nation British Columbia, has come to feel the opposite, especially when it comes to prospective Native officers.
“If we as Indigenous people want to change something in Canada, we have to be from within,” he said. “We can’t run away from it.”
That representation remains a challenge for the RCMP, which celebrates its 150th anniversary on Tuesday. It has difficulty recruiting, but also retaining indigenous members.
According to the force’s 2020 diversity statistics, about seven percent of members identify as Indigenous, up from nearly eight percent a decade earlier.
Nadine Huggins, chief human resources officer of the Mounties, attributed part of that to how it used to graduate only native classes, like the one Gladue once belonged to, whose members have now retired.
She said the RCMP hopes cohorts of eight to 16 Indigenous cadets will learn together, with groups spread out over time to avoid a similar situation.
Huggins couldn’t say how many are in a typical troop, but an internal report shows that the number of Indigenous candidates enrolling at Depot, the RCMP cadet academy in Regina, is down from six percent to four percent as of 2020.
“We’re not a popular profession right now,” Huggins said.
“The murder of George Floyd has really had a ripple effect on this generation, and the hunger for police is high,” she said of the 2020 murder of a black man by a Minneapolis police officer, which sparked global protests.
“I also don’t want to pretend there are no challenges in our organization,” she added.
“There are challenges in our organization and there (are) challenges that we are very consciously addressing and constantly trying to avoid.”
Reconciliation remains one of them. An internal review of the force’s efforts as of 2021 said that while it has taken steps to address injustice, the role it played in colonialism is still significant.
Growing up in Saskatchewan, Heather Bear said she learned there were two legal systems: one for indigenous peoples and one for those who were white.
Bear, a vice chief with the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, said when a First Nation needs the RCMP, it’s not there.
But it always seems to be there for writing speeding tickets, or when someone misses a court date, she said.
She pointed to the mass stabbing last September at James Smith Cree Nation, where it took officers nearly 40 minutes to arrive after the first 911 call.
They were dispatched from a detachment more than 30 minutes away — a distance that underscores the reality of the contract policing model that spans the country’s rural and indigenous communities, exacerbated by widespread job postings.
Bear said instances of officers using excessive force and not properly investigating the killings and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls have only increased mistrust of the RCMP.
“I really don’t think they understand or know the extent of the damage.”
Having more Indigenous officers “would do a world of good,” Bear said, but she warned it wouldn’t solve the problem of policing in the system.
Ralph Cardinal, pictured in a photo of a handout, served with the RCMP for just under 30 years and says his ability to speak Cree survived his years of policing frontline Indigenous communities. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO
Ralph Cardinal barely spent 30 years on the force. The Cree man said he felt pigeonholed overseeing predominantly Indigenous communities, which involved years of risky work depending on the area.
“It’s a letdown when you’re always on the front lines dealing with everything possible that no one wants to see.”
Like Gladue, Cardinal first graduated as a special agent. After seven years on the job, he returned to Depot for training to gain his agent status.
He eventually traded in his brown uniform for the iconic Red Serge.
“What are they going to teach me that I have (not) already taught myself?” he said.
“Nothing.”
Cardinal said he had strived to move within the organization and work in larger centers, but was unable to do so.
There was an attitude that non-Native First Nations members didn’t want to control, he said, and felt he had to work “three, four or five times harder” to earn his sergeant rank.
The RCMP’s 2021 reconciliation assessment found that a lack of career opportunities and mental health contributed to the decline in Indigenous membership.
Cardinal loved his job. He saw the impact he had in indigenous communities as he visited the elderly over tea. He credited his ability to speak Cree as helping him survive his decades on the front lines.
“It calms people down.”
He said he believes the organization is missing opportunities to recruit more indigenous officers and is also not recognizing those who have served.
In his home community of Bigstone Cree Nation, about 200 miles north of Edmonton, he said they’ve seen five RCMP members retire in the past decade — and get “no recognition.”
Huggins said the force is working to attract more Indigenous recruits and is providing a fund for people in remote areas to travel to receive their assessments.
She also said it plans to better target people between the ages of 19 and 24 — a demographic that includes many indigenous peoples, one of the fastest growing populations in the country.
Copl. Maureen Greyeyes-Brant has made a career out of bringing in more people like that.
A graduate of the Mounties’ Indigenous pre-cadet training program, which sends a cohort of young people to depot for several weeks each year, she serves as a coordinator.
The hope is that after their experience they will consider a career with the RCMP, but not all of them. Of the 30 candidates who graduated last year, 18 expressed interest and some remain in the application process, but only three have been accepted into the depot so far, according to Greyeyes-Brant.
She said the police’s demands mean it’s not for everyone, but noted that many also have their own perceptions of the RCMP, which she herself has had to deal with during her 22 years on the force.
Greyeyes-Brant, a Plains Cree woman from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, recalled that a man once yelled at her while she was at a recruiting event, calling her a traitor.
Her answer to him: “You can stand outside the building and yell and scream that things need to be changed.
“But I’m the one inside.”
Greyeyes-Brant acknowledged that the RCMP’s Indigenous representation has declined and said she can understand the reasons why some have left.
“But for myself, I’m staying in to fight the good fight,” she said.
“I’m staying in to be heard.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on May 21, 2023.
