THE EFFECTS OF THE RCMP’S POLICING ON INDIGENOUS SELF-DETERMINATION IN CANADA

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), initially called the North-West Mounted Police, was founded by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald in 1873 for the express purpose of controlling and displacing Indigenous peoples (Lajtman, 2020). To what extent does policing, in practice and in policy, affect Indigenous self-determination movements in Canada? I argue that the RCMP’s policing interferes with Indigenous self-determination in three ways: policing affects the perception, criminalization, and victimization of Indigenous peoples. To illustrate my argument, I will first contextualize the relationship between Indigenous self-determination and the RCMP in Canada with history and policy. I will then elaborate on each of the three factors.

Given the history and policy context of the relationship between policing and Indigenous self-determination, Canada must first address the role of the RCMP to implement and affirm the Indigenous right to self-determination. In 2007, the right to Indigenous self-determination was formally codified, in Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Article 3 states that Indigenous self-determination includes the freedom to determine political status and the freedom to pursue “ economic, social and cultural development” (United Nations, 2007, p. 3). In Canada, the right to Indigenous self-government is protected under section 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act (Reinders, 2019, p. 3). The Canadian government has consistently published documents to implement UNDRIP, such as the 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) final report, the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) final report, and the 2021 Bill C-15, but does not address the interfering factors of policing by the RCMP. Despite all of the Canadian government’s efforts to implement UNDRIP and affirm the Indigenous right to self-sovereignty, its policy documents and action plans fail to emphasize the principal role the RCMP plays in exercising state power against Indigenous self-determination.

The RCMP historically and presently antagonized Indigenous communities as agents of colonialism. Canada’s action plans and policies should provide special care to address the role of policing because both the historical and present relationship between the RCMP and Indigenous Nations have implications that interfere with implementing UNDRIP and contradict the Canadian government’s affirmations of Indigenous self-determination. Specifically, Canadian government policy and reports fail to take into account the following three factors that interfere with Indigenous self-determination. First, the RCMP constructs a perception of Indigenous peoples as a domestic terror threat through strategic incapacitation and surveillance of Indigenous activists. Indigenous movements that protect their self-determination are seen as disruptive to the extractive industries central to the Canadian economy because Indigenous protests tend to challenge settler-colonial land allocation, resource use, and supply chains (Dafnos et al., 2016, p. 332). As a result, the state responds with strategic incapacitation policing strategies from the RCMP that are pre-emptive, target Indigenous groups, and label them as threats to social control (Howe & Monaghan, 2018, p. 326). A key instance of such targeted risk assessment strategies is the RCMP’s secret operation entitled Project SITKA (Howe & Monaghan, 2018, p. 326). Project SITKA depended on surveillance and data banking to collect personal information and sent 89 profiles of Indigenous activists most likely to “threaten public order ” to frontline officers and other police databases (Howe & Monaghan, 2018, p. 333). Notably, the RCMP’s investigation breadth extended past just crime and targeted Indigenous activists and groups for surveillance based on their political beliefs and criticisms of settler colonialism (Howe & Monaghan, 2018, p. 333). The targeted noncriminal surveillance by the RCMP in Project SITKA and the lack of transparency with such types of investigations illustrate how the policing of Indigenous peoples antagonizes Indigenous self-determination and therefore interferes with Canada’s implementation of UNDRIP. Second, the RCMP plays an active role in criminalizing Indigenous peoples, which systematically contaminates Indigenous peoples ’ social and political rights. Criminalization is used as a state tool to maintain social order, reinforce the moral boundaries of the state, and racialize those moral boundaries to exclude certain groups (Hocking & Cunneen, 2005, p. 50). The criminalization of Indigenous peoples occurs through the colonial values and practices embedded in policing institutions. For instance, the aforementioned practice in Project SITKA of pre-emptive surveillance is rationalized by colonial value systems that aim to coerce and control Indigenous communities. Pre-emptive surveillance leads to targeted Indigenous criminalization in a self-fulfilling prophecy. This effect is illustrated in the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system in Canada, where Indigenous people are only 3% of Canada’s total population but 17% of inmates in the federal penitentiary system (Cunneen, 2011). Indigenous peoples are targeted and thus both racialized and criminalized in Canada by the RCMP. Indigenous criminalization undermines the political rights and social participation of Indigenous individuals (Hocking & Cunneen, 2005, p. 51). The RCMP’s role in criminalizing Indigenous people must then be addressed for Canada to implement Indigenous self-determination.

Third, the RCMP systemically and directly victimizes Indigenous peoples to violence. Systemically, the RCMP’ s policing fails to protect and serve Indigenous peoples. Such failure is evident in how Indigenous peoples are three times more likely to be victims of crime and five times more likely to be victims of a sexual offense than non-Indigenous people (Cunneen, 2011). As well, the RCMP’ s policing has historically acted as an oppressive force to Indigenous communities, with frequent cases of RCMP harassment of Indigenous people, particularly young Indigenous girls (Lajtman, 2020, p. 5). Directly, the RCMP victimises Indigenous peoples to disproportionately frequent instances of police violence historically and presently. The RCMP’ s current unwarranted aggressive response to Wet' suwet' en land defenders is an example of direct violence (Armao, 2021). Thus, the RCMP’ s victimisation of Indigenous peoples violates not only the Indigenous right to self-determination, but is a direct and systemic threat to the personal security and safety of Indigenous peoples as well. It is then crucial to address the RCMP’ s participation in this victimisation to implement UNDRIP.

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Indigenous self-determination. The RCMP historically and presently antagonized Indigenous communities as agents of colonialism. Canada’s action plans and policies should provide special care to address the role of policing because both the historical and present relationship between the RCMP and Indigenous Nations have implications that interfere with implementing UNDRIP and contradict the Canadian government’s affirmations of Indigenous selfdetermination. Specifically, Canadian government policy and reports fail to take