Defunding police is the only way to protect Black and Indigenous communities, panel hears

WATERLOO REGION - To comprehend what is going on today means understanding Canada's entrenched history of erasing Indigenous peoples and anti-Black violence, a panel heard Thursday.

At the virtual panel discussion on anti-racism and changing current systems, speakers addressed Canada's legacy of trauma and hurt inflicted on Indigenous and Black peoples.

That start of Canada with trafficking and enslavement of Africans and clearing Indigenous people from their territories so the land could be enclosed within a fort and taken for profit tells a lot about what is going on with us today," said panellist Ruth Cameron, executive director of The AIDS Committee of Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and Area.

Panellist Ciann Wilson, assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, agreed with Cameron that Canada was built on enslavement and genocide, clearing the land of its original inhabitants for exploitation and profit, and financed through proceeds from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Erasure is part of the whitewashing of history," said Wilson. We need to acknowledge that bloodshed and that really vicious and violent history."

The violence is still faced by the two groups, she said.

Cameron and Wilson were one of six speakers at the discussion, which was organized by the Kitchener Waterloo Community Foundation and attracted more than 300 remote attendees.

There is a long history of Black people in Waterloo, particularly the settlement of Queen's Bush in the 1850s, but it is often erased in the retelling, said panellist Fitsum Areguy, co-founder of Textile Literature.

We talk about Mennonite settlement histories, German histories. We do not talk enough about deep Indigenous histories. We do not talk about Black histories here," he said.

Lori Campbell, director of the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre at the University of Waterloo, said the police forces were created in Canada to clear the plains of Indigenous peoples.

That's how we got locked up on reservations," she said. The police force was against Indigenous peoples. The service is for the settlers and the colonizers."

Campbell said the police have never protected us." Police hunted us, confined us and dragged us back to the reserves."

Campbell said Indigenous people teach their children how not to get killed by police. The narrative is different for white settler Canadians and what they teach their children about police, she said.

The first police in the U.S. were started to control and surveil enslaved African people and haul them back to their masters if they sought freedom," said Wilson.

Campbell said no equity or diversity program is going to lead to outcomes that Black and Indigenous peoples are looking for because systemic racism is built within the existing systems. Hiring more Black and Indigenous officers is not a solution, she said.

Instead, Indigenous communities need the resources to claim back their own legal systems, education and kinship to make their peoples healthy again, she said.

For the panellists, defunding the police is the only way to move forward to help the Black and Indigenous communities. Money would be reallocated from police to services that are trained to deal with social and mental health issues.

Folks are so deeply entrenched in white settlerism that they cannot for the life of them imagine a world without the police," Wilson said.

We are not sacrificing community safety," Areguy said.

Wilson said some people get their backs up against the wall" when they hear calls to defund the police.

When we say defund the police, we mean abolish," said Cameron. The police were created to kill us in the name of profit. The police are an invention."

Before police were created, Black and Indigenous communities had rules, laws and practices on looking out for another, she said.

We know how to take care of one another in a world without police," she said.

Cameron said police reform is not an answer and she won't have a conversation with people who want to blend reform and abolition.

It's (police reform) continuing to kill us in fewer numbers," she said.

Donna Dubie, executive director of the Kitchener-based Healing of the Seven Generations, said Indigenous peoples don't need to be confronted by armed police.

When we call for support services for people suffering, we don't need guns pointed at us. We don't need to be Tasered," she said.

We need to put money into services that are truly going to benefit people who need compassion," she said.

Liz Monteiro is a Waterloo Region-based general assignment reporter for the Record. Reach her via email: lmonteiro@therecord.com