Police Brutality as Catalyst for Indigenous Movements: The Story of the Native Brotherhood

By Tyler McCreary and Irina Ceric

Police brutality played a significant role in the formation of today’s Indigenous movements in British Columbia (B.C.). Violence against Indigenous people by police officers was a common experience for Indigenous people in B.C. and throughout Canada in the 20th century.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the RCMP’s primary role in B.C. was enforcing policies of colonial control and assimilation on Indigenous communities. While general policing in the province prior to 1950 fell under the jurisdiction of the B.C. Provincial Police, the RCMP was responsible for enforcing federal Indian policies. This included controlling the movement of Indigenous people, regulating their access to resources, and stopping Indigenous people from performing traditional governance practices.

The normalization of violence

The RCMP was often involved in the forced relocation of Indigenous communities, as well as the forcible removal Indigenous children from their families and communities to church-run Indian Residential Schools. They also policed Indigenous people’s everyday lives, which often involved the use of force to implement discriminatory laws, ranging from bans on Indigenous alcohol consumption to hunting and fishing regulations. The normalization of RCMP violence towards Indigenous people continued and intensified after the force took over provincial policing operations in 1950.

Indigenous resentment of settler colonial authorities particularly congealed around the question of police power. The federal government commissioned the 1955 Hawthorn Report into Indigenous-settler relations, which observed that Indigenous people tended “to personify White authority in police officers” and “expressed attitudes of hostility or fear (or some combination of these) toward police authority.”¹

The authors of the report also recognized that “officers who enforce the law were shaped by and actively participate in the society which, at present, subordinates [Indigenous peoples] in very real and apparent ways.” ²

The rise of an anti-police brutality campaign

In the mid-20th century, the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia grew to become a powerful voice for Indigenous resistance to police brutality. The Brotherhood was established in 1931 to protest discriminatory fishing laws restricting Indigenous fishermen.³ However, as policing was central to Indigenous repression, they lobbied officials to address issues of police harassment and organized demonstrations to demand justice.

In the period, liquor laws were explicitly discriminatory, specifically criminalizing Indigenous drinking.⁴ Issues of police brutality were often entwined with the application of these racist liquor prohibitions against Indigenous possession of alcohol. The Hawthorn Report noted that police harassment around these laws had “come to stand for all the ways in which [Indigenous peoples] feel misused or belittled by authority.” ⁵

In a 1950 incident, Wet’suwet’en man Tommy Mitchell was charged with assault following a police liquor raid.⁶ However, his arm had been broken in the incident and the jury would eventually dismiss the charge on the basis of his injuries.⁷ The failure to meaningfully address structural biases in law and policing led to Indigenous riots in the following years. The winter of 1951-52 witnessed repeated conflicts between the police and Indigenous bar patrons in the provincial Northwest.

Indigenous organizers continually shifted the gaze to focus on police actions. In 1953, Harold Sinclair, the district vice-president of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia, organized a meeting in Smithers to discuss the “rough handling of natives by police.” ⁸ The RCMP, attending the meeting, denied targeting Indigenous people for arrest or “waiting for them when they came out of the beer parlours.” Distrusting the adequacy of settler investigations into instances of police brutality, Sinclair advised that complaints should be made through him and the Brotherhood. 

A riot in Prince Rupert is a flashpoint for change

Police brutality in the treatment of Indigenous people became an intensifying flashpoint. In August 1958, another riot engulfed the city of Prince Rupert as a thousand people surrounded the police station and city hall.⁹ The Native Voice, the newspaper of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia, reported that the trigger for the uprising was the use of “undue and unnecessary” force by police, who had beaten two inebriated Indigenous women with flashlights during their arrest.¹⁰

In order to restore settler control, the police enlisted reinforcement from military reservists, local firefighters, members of the RCMP coastal patrol, and several settler onlookers. They eventually repulsed the demonstrators with fire hoses and tear gas. The riots left fifteen community members and five police officers injured. Twenty-five of the thirty-nine people charged in association with the riots were Indigenous.¹¹

The Native Brotherhood of British Columbia and its settler allies stressed that the riot was an effect of broader conditions of police violence. Sinclair, speaking for regional Indigenous people, diagnosed the riot as a symptom of a deeper problem that required systematic investigation.¹² The Prince Rupert Labour Council concurred, petitioning for the creation of a Royal Commission to conduct a “complete inquiry into law enforcement in this city and ‘the alleged discrimination against the native population.’” ¹³

Both the federal and provincial government refused to commission an inquiry. A local Prince Rupert committee investigating the riot noted that “various forms of discrimination” against Indigenous peoples contributed to the conflagration.¹⁴ However, with substantial police influence on the committee, they found “no evidence to support allegations of brutality made against the RCMP.”

Despite government indifference, the movement grew, and continues to grow

Concerns about police brutality and negligence have endured, as have Indigenous organizing around the issue. In 1969, the National Indian Brotherhood joined the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia and three regional tribal councils calling for an inquiry into police brutality against Indigenous people in British Columbia.¹⁵ Such calls continued to be repeated through the decades. Most recently, there have been prominent challenges to the failure of police to investigate instances of violence against Indigenous women.¹⁶ Major provincial and national inquiries into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) have recognized how entrenched racism in police forces contributed to inadequate investigations of cases of gendered, anti-Indigenous violence.

Overall, the struggle against police brutality has been long and difficult but played a significant role in the expansion of the Indigenous organizing in British Columbia and throughout Canada. Organizations such as the Native Brotherhood played a crucial role in challenging the enduring legacy of colonialism and systemic racism within law enforcement.

Today, many Indigenous movements continue to come together to fight police brutality. Edmonton-based Free People Free Lands, the Indigenous / allied Saskatchewan Manitoba Alberta Abolition Coalition (SMAAC), the Toronto-based MMIWG advocacy group No More Silence, and all the grassroots youth movements and organizations who have stood up to police indifference, brutality, and surveillance that continue to terrorize Indigenous communities.

1. H.B. Hawthorn, C.S. Belshaw, and S.M. Jamieson, The Indians of British Columbia: A Survey of Social and Economic Conditions (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1955), Vol. 3, pp. 754.
2. H.B. Hawthorn, C.S. Belshaw, and S.M. Jamieson, The Indians of British Columbia: A Survey of Social and Economic Conditions (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1955), Vol. 3, pp. 761.
3. Philip Drucker, The Native Brotherhoods: Modern Intertribal Organizations on the Northwest Coast. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, US Government Printing Office, 1958).
4. Robert A. Campbell, “Making Sober Citizens: The Legacy of Indigenous Alcohol Regulation in Canada, 1777–1985,” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes, Volume 42, Number 1, Winter 2008, pp. 105-126.
5. “ H.B. Hawthorn, C.S. Belshaw, and S.M. Jamieson, The Indians of British Columbia: A Survey of Social and Economic Conditions (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1955), Vol. 3, pp. 731
6. “Committed for Assaulting Police,” Interior News, June 22, 1950.
7. “Dismiss Assault Case at Rupert Assizes,” Interior News, October 5, 1950.  
8. “District Natives Urged to Obey All Laws,” Interior News, October 8, 1953.
9. “1000 Rupert Rioters ‘Bombed’ in Streets,” Prince George Citizen, August 4, 1958, p. 1.
10. “The Riot Act – Prince Rupert: Are the Police Peacemakers … or?” Native Voice, September 1958, p. 4.
11. “Two Indians Sentenced after Rupert Riot,” Prince George Citizen, August 5, 1958, p. 1.
12. Harold Sinclair, “Northern Natives Fight Rupert Charge of Riot,” Native Voice, October 1958, p. 4.
13. “‘Native’ Discrimination Alleged at Prince Rupert,” Prince George Citizen, August 7, 1958, p.1.
14. “Pr. Rupert Riot Partly Fault of the Whites,” Prince George Citizen, June 24, 1959, p. 3.
15. “RCMP Brutality Charged in B.C.,” Kainai News, November 15, 1969, p. 16.
16. Jessica McDiarmid, Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2019).