With the acquittal of Gerald Stanley, Colten Boushie has joined the shamefully long list of Indigenous lives taken with impunity in Canada. Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man, was shot by Stanley at point-blank range in the back of his head, after Boushie and his friends drove onto Stanley’s farm with a flat tire. Only 3 per cent of homicide cases in Canada end with acquittals, according to recent Statistics Canada data. Since the exoneration of Stanley, many commentators have described Canada’s criminal justice system as “broken.” But the system isn’t “broken;” it was built this way. “Think about everything that First Nations people have survived in this country: the taking of our land, the taking of our children, residential schools, the current criminal justice system,” wrote Mohawk legal scholar Patricia Monture-Angus.

Source: thestar February 22, 2018 10:30 UTC