What Really Caused the James Smith Cree Nation Stabbings?
"Police found 10 dead and 18 wounded people on the reserve and in the nearby community of Weldon – all victims of a brutal series of knife attacks by Myles Sanderson. Many of those he killed were among the extended family of his partner Vanessa Burns; he also killed his brother Damien a day later. On Wednesday, one more fatality was added to the toll. After a high-speed police chase, Myles was caught and, according to the RCMP, subsequently went into “medical distress.” He was later pronounced dead, possibly due to a self-administered overdose of fentanyl. His rampage stands as one of Canada’s worst mass killings, and certainly the worst ever to take place on a native reserve. In her last public statement before her death, Queen Elizabeth II said “I mourn with all Canadians at this tragic time.”...
As residents in this close-knit community of 1,900 expressed disbelief and uncertainty about the tragedy, others much farther way claimed to know with greater precision what the massacre was really about, and what caused it. Outspoken Indigenous activist and Globe and Mail columnist Tanya Talaga dismissed those who addressed Sanderson’s addictions and violent behaviour and instead pointed the finger at everyone else. It was “the social fallout of residential schools and racist policies such as the Indian Act” that explained the tragedy, she wrote. “It is time for Canada to take responsibility” for the problems faced by aboriginal communities, particularly breaking up native families via the prison system, Talaga added. In other words, we’re all to blame.
This unwillingness to ascribe personal responsibility was echoed by Chief Wilton Littlechild, a former Conservative MP and commissioner with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In an interview with the CBC Littlechild said, “If you look at what’s behind each individual’s life choices…I’m sure you can trace it back to residential school history. If their parents didn’t go…there’s still that intergenerational trauma after for those that didn’t go.”
Winnipeg Free Press columnist and University of Manitoba professor Niigaan Sinclair went even further, arguing that native trauma (a word he used ten times in his short op-ed) caused by the rest of the country was the true cause of the murders. “All [Indigenous people] are residential school survivors in one shape or another, whether it be experiencing that nightmarish system first hand or intergenerationally…Too many times, this turns to violence,” Sinclair wrote. “What was perpetrated last week was a product of Canada’s history of mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. A genocide returned home.” As for a solution, Sinclair said it “will not be found in more police, jails or blaming First Nations.”
All three elite Indigenous voices sought to indict Canada’s allegedly racist, colonial and genocidal past – and especially the Indian Residential School system – as the true guilty party in the James Smith Cree Nation killings. Any notion of individual responsibility on Sanderson’s part was waved away in favour of systemic arguments casting blame on the rest of society. This is not a new line of thinking. The notion that Indigenous Canadians should be treated differently – in general, more leniently – than offenders of other races for historical reasons has become firmly embedded in Canada’s justice system. In effect, they are considered victims as much as lawbreakers. And the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canada’s prisons is seen as conclusive evidence that much more must be done in this regard.
Yet
after nearly three decades of such leniency and victimhood, the
situation is not improving. Judging by the blood on the ground at the
James Smith Cree Nation in September, it is getting worse. And it is
law-abiding Indigenous Canadians who are paying the ultimate price.
Parliament in 1996 amended the Criminal Code by inserting clause 718.2(e), which requires courts sentencing convicted criminals to consider “all available sanctions, other than imprisonment, that are reasonable in the circumstances and consistent with the harm done to victims or to the community with particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders.” (Emphasis added.) This measure’s specific goal was to reduce the number of Indigenous people in Canada’s prison system. At the time, aboriginal Canadians comprised approximately 2.7 percent of Canada’s overall population, but 15 percent of its prisoners.
Clause 718.2(e) came to play a central role in Canada’s justice system following the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Gladue decision. The case is noteworthy for how it upends conventional stereotypes of gender-based violence as well as its profound influence on Canadian jurisprudence. Jamie Gladue was an Indigenous woman who suspected her common-law husband Reuven Beaver of having an affair with her sister. The situation came to a head during Gladue’s 19th birthday party in September 1995. After Beaver and her sister snuck away, Gladue exclaimed, “He’s going to get it. He’s really going to get it this time.” As the trial judge later noted, Gladue “was not afraid of [Beaver]; indeed, she was the aggressor.” When Beaver re-appeared a little while later, the five-months-pregnant Gladue grabbed a knife and chased him out of their apartment and down the hallway. Confronting him near her sister’s doorway, she then stabbed him in the heart. A neighbour afterwards heard her exclaim, “I got you, you f*****g bastard.”After pleading guilty to manslaughter, Gladue was handed a three-year sentence. She appealed, claiming the trial judge did not sufficiently consider her aboriginal background, as required by clause 718.2(e). In its decision, the Supreme Court chose not to reduce Gladue’s sentence, noting her crime was a “particularly serious one.” (In fact, Gladue served a mere six months in prison and was out on parole a year before the Supreme Court even heard her case.) The court did, however, find the trial judge erred in not taking sufficient note of her status as an Indigenous offender living off-reserve.
As a result of this ruling, trial judges are now directed to request a pre-sentencing report that considers “the unique systemic or background factors which may have played a part in bringing the particular aboriginal offender before the courts; and the types of sentencing procedures and sanctions which may be appropriate in the circumstances for the offender because of his or her particular aboriginal heritage or connection.” This is known as a “Gladue report.” Factors commonly included are a history of cultural oppression, poverty, abuse and addiction as well as residential school attendance, either by the offender or their ancestors.
While the Gladue decision stated that the extra consideration for aboriginals should not automatically create leniency in sentencing, there seems little doubt such has become the de facto situation. Gladue reports have become a key component of the restorative justice movement, which focuses on “healing, reparation and reintegration” rather than overt punishment. Indigenous offenders now have a variety of preferential measures offered to them, including serving time in healing lodges rather than prison and what is called a “Section 84 community release.” These accommodations are unavailable to non-native offenders. And this preference for race-based sentencing procedures is expanding to other ethnicities. Nova Scotia judges can now request “cultural assessments” prior to sentencing black offenders that are strikingly similar to Gladue reports, a practice that could eventually expand across the country...
Despite nearly 30 years of effort, however, the Gladue era must surely be regarded as a failure... the incarceration rate for Indigenous people was still eight times higher than for the rest of the population. In his most recent report, Correctional Investigator of Canada Ivan Zinger reveals that Indigenous inmates account for a staggering 32 percent of total prisoners in custody – double the percentage when clause 718.2(e) was added in 1996...
There is very little Canadian data connecting race to criminal behaviour in a statistically valid way. But analogous evidence from the United States offers an interesting perspective on claims of criminality and overincarceration...
Men, for example, comprise 49 percent of the U.S. population but make up 77 percent of identified offenders in the DOJ survey. With respect to race, whites make up 61 percent of the population and only 52 percent of offenders. Asians make up 7 percent of the American population but a mere 1 percent of violent offenders. Blacks, whose political advocates frequently claim are victimized by the criminal justice system, make up 12 percent of the population but 29 percent of offenders. If a particular group is committing more crimes, it makes sense that they will also comprise a greater percentage of the criminal justice system, including in prison...
A recent Statistics Canada study on Indigenous victimization reveals that native children are far more likely than other Canadian children to have experienced violence at the hands of an adult, to have been sexually assaulted or to have had their basic needs unmet. Twice as many native Canadians as non-natives say they were unloved or unwanted by their parents. One-third of all Indigenous respondents report they’ve witnessed a parent act violently towards another adult. Indigenous adults are also more than twice as likely to be the victims of intimate partner violence as non-Indigenous Canadians. Further, a mountain of evidence illustrates how childhood adversity or maltreatment can lead to criminal or antisocial behaviour in adulthood. All Canadians have an interest in breaking this terrible cycle. But treating violent adult native offenders more leniently than others is not likely to be an effective solution.
The details of Sanderson’s murder spree reveal how simplistic it is to blame institutional or historical causes for individual crimes. He never attended a residential school and was not directly affected by any colonial-era policies. Rather, he grew up at a time when the assimilation of Indigenous people into mainstream Canadian society had been explicitly rejected and the justice system was doing all it could to keep Indigenous offenders out of prison. He was the repeated beneficiary of numerous restorative justice innovations meant to address the alleged “overincarceration” problem, including Gladue reports and healing lodges. Despite ample evidence of his incorrigible criminal behaviour and penchant for violence, however, the personal aspects of Sanderson’s case file were outpointed by systemic factors such as the “intergenerational impacts of residential schools.”
Now, even after having witnessed the bloody results of Sanderson’s release, many native activists are still claiming “native trauma” is the root cause of the tragedy. As University of Calgary professor emeritus of political science Tom Flanagan pointed out in a recent study for Dorchester Review, there is no methodologically-sound basis for making any claims about the intergenerational effects of residential school attendance. Beyond this troubling lack of evidence, such a sweeping assertion also robs Indigenous people of basic human agency, since it assumes they lack the ability to determine their own fate on their own terms – even the basic self-control to refrain from killing their own relatives...“Socially or psychologically isolated, mass murderers lack emotional support and encouragement from confidants. Moreover, they have no one around to help provide a much-needed reality check on their warped perception of constantly being the victim of injustice. Tending to externalize blame, they seek to punish those whom they hold responsible for their miserable life.”
If we accept Fox’s expert opinion that mass murderers lash out at those they blame, it seems significant that Sanderson did not attack the Canadian government, the RCMP, the Catholic Church or any other institutions or individuals representing Canada’s allegedly long history of colonialism and systemic racism. Rather, he brutally attacked his own community, including many members of his family and that of his common-law partner Vanessa Burns. His rampage was highly personal. Had Burns stayed with her parents on that fateful weekend, she would almost certainly have become his 12th victim – and perhaps their children as well would have been added to the awful toll. All of which serves as a sad reminder that a preponderance of the violence suffered by Indigenous people in Canada, particularly by women, comes by the hand of other Indigenous people. A criminal justice system that is deliberately lenient towards native offenders thus puts native communities at greater risk. It seems a grim irony.
Setting Sanderson free from prison despite all the convincing evidence regarding his individual tendencies towards violence and his habitual disregard for the law was part of a decades-long campaign by the federal government to address Indigenous conditions. Such policies are clearly not improving the condition for Indigenous people. In fact, they are increasing the quantum of Indigenous suffering. If Sanderson had been required to serve the full length of his sentence – if his parole board hearing had accepted the plain evidence before it rather than relying on sloppy reasoning about systemic factors – he wouldn’t have been able to commit these horrific crimes. He would’ve still been in prison. Eleven murders could have been averted.
What caused the killings at James Smith Cree Nation wasn’t centuries-old trauma. It was a criminal justice system that puts Indigenous communities at risk by failing to sentence violent criminals appropriately and then releasing them too soon."