By Dr. Pamela Palmater
“While the Canadian genocide targets all Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people are particularly targeted. Statistics consistently show that rates of violence against Métis, Inuit, and First Nations women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people are much higher than for non-Indigenous women in Canada, even when all over differentiating factors are accounted for.”
MMIWG Final Report, Executive Summary, p. 3
RCMP Abuse of Women Widespread
The genocide against Indigenous women and girls in Canada is one that the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP) have contributed to since their inception. By over-policing, under-
protecting, and outright exploiting them, the RCMP have been a major factor in the crisis.
The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Inquiry) estimates that Indigenous women and girls make up 24 percent of homicide victims, despite making up only 4 percent of the population. This has been long known to federal, provincial, and municipal governments, yet families share difficulties reporting missing women to the RCMP. Add this to the fact that recent reports show that RCMP members regularly harass, bully, assault, and rape their own female officers, it should be no surprise that they have also been perpetrators of sexual assaults on Indigenous women and girls.
From the moment an Indigenous woman goes missing, many police forces have been barriers to bringing our loved ones home, but the racism and incompetence of the RCMP is particularly problematic. As I write: “The report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in British Columbia should have been a wake-up call for the RCMP. The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry (Oppal Report) in BC found “gross systemic inadequacies” which amounted to a “blatant failure.” Some of these problems identified in both the RCMP and Vancouver Police Department, included failures to:
- Take proper notes and follow up on missing person reports;
- Follow the proper internal policies and practices;
- Consider and pursue all investigative avenues;
- Complete fulsome investigations and follow-up work; and
- Treat families with respect and keep them updated.
RCMP Protects the Status Quo
The 2013 Human Rights Watch report, Those Who Take Us Away, examined ten towns across the north of NC, and documented numerous reports of RCMP violently assaulting Indigenous women and girls or arresting them when they call for help. These reports included attacks by police dogs, strip searches by male RCMP, repeated punches, using pepper spray and tasers, and injuring them during arrest. Particularly disturbing are also numerous accounts of rape and sexual assault by RCMP members. As Brandi Morin reported in Al Jazeera, women are told by officers, “No one is going to believe you.”
One would have expected an immediate investigation into these reports, yet, the response of former RCMP Commissioner Bob Paullson to the Human Rights Watch report, was to tell his 29,000 RCMP members: ‘‘My message to you today is—don’t be worried about it. I’ve got your back.’’ Why would anyone report a rape by an RCMP member when the Commissioner sends a messages like this to the perpetrators. Ultimately, “this strategy of closing ranks to defend the status quo (which for Indigenous peoples means failure to investigate or protect Indigenous women and girls or their over-incarceration, rape, and murder) is increasingly under fire.”
In one of the most famous works of Indigenous literature, Maria Campbell’s Half-Breed, the
Métis author revealed a few years ago that she was forced by her publisher to edit out her
recounting of being raped by an RCMP member at the age of 14. He had simply dragged her
into the bedroom of her own home, where a few RCMP members had come to hassle the
family about alleged poaching. RCMP sexual abuse of Indigenous women and girls is an open secret well known in many Indigenous communities. Even a 2014 Public Safety Canada report acknowledged this problem, when one service organization reported that the police, “either rape you or arrest you. The cause is racism and discrimination.”
Canada Complicit in RCMP Abuse
The Qikiqtani Truth Commission also found terrible cases of RCMP using their authority to
sexually coerce Inuit women. July Papatsie told the Qikiqtani Truth Commission about the
dynamic with the RCMP in the Qikiqtani region:
“With that much power they could do anything they wanted to do… The RCMP could do
anything they wanted with any woman that was living up north. Anything. Now that
woman who was forced sexually by this officer cannot talk back, has nowhere to go and
complain. Her husband knows but cannot do anything, is powerless.”
This is in addition to the brutality experienced by Inuit men and women by RCMP in the north. Despite the calls for a review of the RCMP by service organizations in the north, the violence continues. In 2020, the Legal Services Board of Nunavut wrote a letter to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP to address “repeated and systemic instances of unnecessary violence” by police.
Video evidence of RCMP brutality is now common place on social media and mainstream media, yet governments have failed to act to stop it. This failure to take swift action to hold the RCMP to account and protect these women, makes Canada complicit in these grave human rights violations – genocide.
What Will it Take to End RCMP Sexualized Violence?
The evidence of RCMP racism and sexualized violence against Indigenous women and girls is now beyond question. Yet, Canada fails to take action for the toxic culture of the RCMP which represents not only a significant risk to Indigenous women and girls, but women inside and outside the RCMP nationwide. The most recent report about the RCMP by the Feminist Alliance for International Action entitled The Toxic Culture of the RCMP: Misogyny, Racism, and Violence Against Women in Canada’s National Police Force compiled the findings of numerous reports calling for accountability in the RCMP. This report was submitted to the Mass Casualty Commission which was an inquiry set up to examine the causes, context, and circumstances giving rise to the shooting deaths in Portapique, Nova Scotia, and the response by the RCMP and others. The final report was damning and made 130 recommendations, many of which called out RCMP failures.
Yet, the RCMP response to the report was embarrassing. Despite being provided with an
advance copy of the report, the interim RCMP Commissioner admitted he had not even read
the report – he “didn’t have time”. He literally summed up the RCMP response to decades of
failures and abuses – they don’t have the time or interest to change. If we want change, we will have to force the change to protect our communities. It is time all Canadians demanded more from the federal government to either fix the RCMP or dismantle it. The RCMP have become a public safety hazard for women and we cannot look the other way.
Dr. Pamela Palmater is a Mi’kmaw lawyer and professor from Eel River Bar First Nation. She is a legal expert on the public safety and human rights implications of racism, misogyny and
sexualized violence in policing.
For more information about the RCMP, check out the Criminals on Patrol podcast and blog, where Season One is dedicated to the “Mountie Menace”