This episode discusses the recent collective trauma experienced by the James Smith Cree Nation as a result of the murders of 10 community members and the tendency of justice system participants to demonize and blame Indigenous communities when tragedies such as this occurs.
This episode discusses the recent murders which occurred on James Smith Cree Nation and the town of Weldon in Saskatchewan. The focus of this conversation with Dan Jones is primarily on the subject of racism and stereotyping Indigenous communities as we have sometimes seen in the justice system, media reports and Corrections Canada as well as the National Parole Board of Canada decisions.
Myrna McCallum:
I'm Myrna McCallum, Metis Cree lawyer, and passionate promoter of trauma informed lawyering. Welcome back to the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast Season two, folks. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum, trauma informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma informed lawyer will among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases, call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others, and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now.
Myrna McCallum:
Transcripts for season two have been generously sponsored by the BC Law Foundation. Welcome back to another episode of the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast. Today's episode is a bit of a heavy one. We're going to talk about what's occurring right now on James Smith Cree Nation in my home province of Saskatchewan. For those who are in Canada, you would probably know by now that there was a massacre that occurred there over the weekend. And for those outside of Canada, all you have to do is Google and you will learn more about what has occurred.
Myrna McCallum:
I don't want to take up too much time getting into all the details, but I want to say that for some people, this episode just by nature of the topic Dan and I are going to discuss, maybe triggering. I want to just identify number of resources that are available for folks that I have found on CTV News Regina's website. The Hope for Wellness helpline 1-855-242-3310 is available to all Indigenous people across Canada. It provides 24 hours, seven days a week service for those who need to connect. They also have services available in Cree and Ojibwe.
Myrna McCallum:
The James Smith Cree Nation is also in need of support. I understand that they are accepting checks that are made out to them, but at this time they're not accepting e-transfers. And there are a number of organizations that are collecting donations on their behalf. So in Regina, the Friendship Center is collecting donations and non-perishable food items for use at the wakes, funerals, and community gatherings. Donations can be dropped off there until Friday, September 9th at 4:00 PM. And Saskatoons White Buffalo Youth Lodge is also collecting donations. They're asking folks to drop off clothing, cash, activities for kids, care packages, et cetera. Okay, so let's get into today's episode. Hi, Dan Jones. Welcome back to another episode of the Trauma Informed Lawyer podcast.
Dan Jones:
Thank you for having me.
Myrna McCallum:
Well, I really wanted to have a conversation today with you specifically because of what's happening right now in my home province of Saskatchewan. So for the folks who are either outside of Saskatchewan or outside of Canada who are less familiar with what's happening here right now, I want to say that over the weekend there was a series of murders that occurred an Indigenous community First Nation Reserve called James Smith Cree Nation, which is in Saskatchewan.
Myrna McCallum:
And since that time, they're still looking for one of the individuals who went on this killing spree. And now that we're all back at work, and it's Tuesday morning after the long weekend, a lot of news stories are talking about Damien Sanderson, who was recently found deceased, and his brother Miles Sanderson, who was still on the run. So there's a lot of stories cycling about who's to blame.
Myrna McCallum:
And I've heard this morning listening to a news broadcast, a guest on this news broadcast and the host we're talking about how the criminal justice system is to blame. And also in a really kind of sneaky way, the guest had also indicated, as well as the host, that the First Nation community is to blame for really allowing their youth to become these murderers. And I just want to squash a bunch of myths and stereotypes and talk about alcoholism and talk about addiction, and it's connection to trauma. And how offending behavior really is an indication of something deeper.
Myrna McCallum:
And I thought that's why Dan would be perfect for this conversation. Before we get into this conversation, Dan, and thanks for making time for me on such short notice, I also just want to say everything that we're about to talk about, I know it's going to be triggering. I know it's going to be sensitive, particularly right now. I just want to say that anything Dan and I talk about here is in no way excusing the conduct of the Sanderson brothers. And is in no way overlooking or disregarding or dismissing or denying the pain, the suffering, the grief and the horror and the terror and the fear that is going on right now for our community members in James Smith. So with that, Dan, I want to know what's been going through your mind as you've been hearing the stories coming out of Saskatchewan?
Dan Jones:
So much that's been going through my mind. You start hearing this and it's happening on a reservation and a community and all of a sudden for me I start thinking, you're going to start seeing stereotyping. People are going to be like, that's well. And I remember years and years ago when [inaudible 00:05:55] prior to being named [inaudible 00:05:56] was called [inaudible 00:05:57] and there was 360 shootings in a six month period.
Dan Jones:
And I was at a meeting with senior officers in the RCMP and the [inaudible 00:06:04] police service, and one of them made a comment, well, that's just life on the res. And I remember thinking back then, if there were 360 shootings in a six month period in any part of any city in this country, there'd be a state of emergency declared. But this to me is always scary because this does this whole stereotype confirmation of what happens in these spaces and places for individuals.
Dan Jones:
And I'm fearful of this becoming another excuse to keep people incarcerated if they're trying to go to their home place. And right now we know 23%, you're 23% less likely to get parole in this country if you're Indigenous. And now you have an Indigenous person who's on parole who's now charged with murder. And it becomes now this fear mongering, well, we can't release individuals because they might do this and they might be like the Sanderson brothers. And all of a sudden you have this increased risk.
Dan Jones:
And then I think even reading some of the articles, it looks like they started delving into the Indigenous social history of these individuals. And all of a sudden we can see this starting to be weaponized again by the Parole Board of Canada. And I think the Parole Board of Canada already does that when they see this, and all of a sudden you have this one off incident. And again, like you said, this isn't taking anything away from the pain of the victims and the suffering, nor is it excusing the behavior of the individual, but you see this all of a sudden becomes making the individuals who are Indigenous higher risk to reoffend if they're trying to get parole.
Dan Jones:
And that terrifies me because I've seen it firsthand where the parole board is fearful of an individual because they're Indigenous, because there's nobody on the parole board that looks like that person. And we fear what we don't know. We fear what we don't look like. So to me, I worry that this is going to be one of these incidents that creates even more hardship for individuals who are Indigenous that are incarcerated. And it's going to be flipped on its head and create more trauma and more likelihood of individuals not being able to go home to their families.
Myrna McCallum:
Definitely the parole board of Canada I think needs a lot of overhaul and training, particularly when it comes to understanding the origins of a lot of offending behavior. When I was listening to the newscast this morning, nowhere in that conversation when they were exploring who's to blame for these two brothers doing what they've done. Nowhere in that conversation did they discuss colonization or the government or Indian residential schools or childhood trauma. How did we get here? No one's really having that conversation. Immediately, the default is either blame the community, blame the family, blame the parents, blame the justice system.
Myrna McCallum:
Let's have a conversation about what you have learned about First Nation communities. You are now in this new awesome role at NorQuest College, but before that you were a longtime police officer with Edmonton Police Service. And following that, you spent a bit of time at Stan Daniels Healing Lodge. You have had years and years of exposure working with Indigenous people, and from that has come a commitment from you to actually build meaningful relationships with Indigenous people off reserve and on reserve. What do you have to say about people who are immediately going to think, yeah, the res is a dangerous place, the res is where criminals are made, the res is where violence lives? What would you say to folks who would immediately default to that?
Dan Jones:
Yeah, that's a great point. And it's this, again, lack of understanding. And if you ever hear me talk, I talk about proximity and proximity breeding care and love and distance breeding fear, which is something I stole from [inaudible 00:09:48] But proximity, if anyone ever has a chance to go on for a powwow or for a ceremony, I encourage everyone to do that because you need to be proximate to these things to understand people and human behavior.
Dan Jones:
But I look at, when I go to different places to do ceremony, it's a community that holds each other accountable. It's a community that holds each other close. It's communities that will tell someone you need to sober up. There's this really strong identity in these places and people don't see it. And this is an example of why I see this as such a problem. And I think this is going to be more of a problem because of this.
Dan Jones:
I have a young guy that I've worked with and I know quite well. He's currently on day parole and he was trying to get full parole. But he wanted to get full parole back to his community where his mom was. He was denied that because his community they said was unsafe and his community, it was on a res. And it was interesting because the day after he got denied parole, him and another one of the individuals who was on day parole were driving with one of the escorts from Stan Daniels and they're driving down the street on a hundred 18th Avenue in Edmonton, and a naked likely very high individual jumped out in front of the car and almost caused them to crash.
Dan Jones:
And the one individual looked at the guy who just got denied full parole because his community was unsafe and said, I guess this street's a little bit safer than your mom's place. And they made a joke about it. But in really reality, he made a very good point. There is stuff that's going on in major cities that is absolutely tremendously dangerous, and we have the Parole Board of Canada denying people going home because they're afraid of what's going to happen on the res. And I said it like that on purpose because there's a lack of understanding of what goes on there.
Dan Jones:
I truly believe, and it's interesting when me and my brother went out to a sweat at one of the places close to Edmonton, and we parked in this lady's front. And my brother's like, "Well, this is weird." And I'm like, "No, this isn't." Because it's such a community and we're going to walk through this lady's yard to go to the sweat to hang out with the fellas. And people from the community are there and guys from Stan Daniels are there and you're like, there is nothing more accepting and no place that you feel less like a stranger, less like an outsider than when I've been on the rez. And it's one of those places that bring you in and welcome you.
Dan Jones:
And when I see things like this happen, I worry that that continued stereotype is just going to happen. And you made a great point. Who's to blame? Well, the community is definitely not to blame. And until we start to deal with the root causes, the individual's own trauma, the individual's own stuff. And I see this all I see this, unfortunately I see this too many times, is I'll sit there with a guy who's on day parole or has inmate status or whatever and they're sober and they're awesome, and they're just these amazing human beings.
Dan Jones:
But we still fail to address the root causes. They're sober when they're inside maybe, for the most part. And once they get out and they lose that structure, that trauma starts to seep through, the usage starts to happen, using starts to happen again. And then this becomes this re-offending behavior, because we've never addressed the reason behind what's happened.
Dan Jones:
And I think this is a perfect example of that, is Miles Sanderson has a history that's obviously not been dealt with, not an excuse for the behavior. But him then using and this stuff happens, and all of a sudden he becomes somebody that's uncontrollable in his own way. And that uncontrollability starts to hurt and harm and create violence. And all of a sudden you have this wake of trauma that's gone behind him.
Dan Jones:
The other part of this is every single offense he does, he adds to his own trauma. And a lot of people don't like to talk about the trauma of offending. Harold Johnson explained it to me more better than anyone else ever did at a thing I was with him years ago. But that trauma of offending, now you're just compiling it, compiling it, compiling it, and you have this individual who's now just very, very hurt. And hurt people, hurt people. I know as cliche that is, but it's very true.
Myrna McCallum:
It is very true. And I'm just thinking about, for folks who are outside of Canada, because we know now I have a bunch of listeners across the world, for those of you who are listening and who are hearing Dan and I refer to the rez, what we're actually talking about are reservations. In Canada and as well as United States, when the colonizers came, they put a lot of Indigenous people on reservations. These tiny little pockets of land where in many cases nothing grew, there was nothing there. It was really intended to deprive us of our connection to land, our ability to thrive and grow.
Myrna McCallum:
And here in Canada, a lot of those communities, these reservations continue to exist and people continue to live on them. And more commonly today, a lot of us refer to them as the rez. So they're these segregated little pockets of land that we live on and there's a lot of stereotypes about what happens in these locations. I just wanted to clarify that for listeners who are less familiar with that language.
Myrna McCallum:
I also want to just say, Dan, I'm really glad that you brought up Harold Johnson because all weekend I've been thinking lots about Gabor Mate and thinking, what would Gabor Mate say right now? I know what he would say. Next time I talk to him I'm going to bring this up. But I was also thinking, what would Harold say?
Myrna McCallum:
And so for folks who were familiar with Harold Johnson, and for those of you who've heard him on my podcast, he was such a force. He passed away earlier this year and I just, what would Harold say right now, for so many things that have come up in the last several months, but especially this weekend. And so I pulled up his book that I have on my little e-reader. He wrote a book called Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People and Yours. I really recommend that folks who are quick to judge and stereotype, or who just don't know and who are really interested in learning more, and particularly every member of the Parole board of Canada, if you haven't read this book, you really should.
Myrna McCallum:
One of the things that he says, he says, the trauma most often pointed at to explain our destructive drinking habits is residential school. Yes, it happened. Yes, horrible things occurred there. Yes, many people who attended residential school were severely traumatized, but traumatic events did not end when the residential schools were closed. Alcohol creates its own trauma. More often than not, the trauma our relatives experience occurs as a result of excessive drinking. While trauma might cause drinking, it is more often that drinking causes trauma. And I think that's what you were getting at, Dan.
Dan Jones:
100%. And it is. I miss Harold and he was one of the wisest people I know when he would make that comment. It even makes me think of, there was Chief Cadmus Delorme of the Cowessess First Nation, I was at a conference with him and he talked about vertical versus horizontal lineage. And he talked about how residential schools tipped your vertical lineage down, the Indigenous people's vertical lineage down so now they were horizontal.
Dan Jones:
So there was no learnings from other people, from your great great-grandmother, to your great-grandmother, to your mother. And I think that combined with alcohol, combined with substance use disorder, combined with continuous trauma as a result, and you're 100% right. I'm literally thinking of an individual right now, she killed her domestic partner. She had several offenses related to alcohol and domestic violence where she would stab her partners.
Dan Jones:
And sober, she is one of the most lovely, amazing human beings you'd ever meet. Intoxicated, she becomes super violent. And it's the change that alcohol creates in people or drugs create in people that we, and again, this is not an excuse of the behavior, but it's an understanding of, do we really as society know when that trunk is opened up inside you? And my brother talks about trauma being in a trunk. My brother Scott Jones, who's been on this podcast before, but he talked about trauma being a trunk and it's locked up and it's pushed down you.
Dan Jones:
I think sometimes what happens is when we consume alcohol or when we do drugs, we open up that trunk and those demons come inside of us and we don't know what to do with them. So we act out violently. And you see it across the board. This isn't just an issue for Indigenous people. You see this in domestic violence cases with all kinds of different people. When alcohol or drugs are introduced, things change in the way we act. Things change in how we behave.
Dan Jones:
And oftentimes our ability to manage our anger goes away. And sometimes that becomes a domestic violence situation, sometimes it's domestic homicide, and unfortunately sometimes it's a killing spree where 11 people are dead and 18 people are injured in a First Nations community and just outside the First Nations community in Saskatchewan. And we have to really look at what creates and causes this and not look to blame the community, not look to blame the justice system, not look to blame the. But let's understand that this behavior and this event has occurred as a result of a whole bunch of things trickling down that ended up with this young individual, Miles, on the run and hurting people.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, definitely. One of the reasons I decided to record this podcast today was because of the newscast that I saw and also a news article that I read from, I believe it was CTV. CTV News published in article where they talked about Miles Sanderson's history and they said that his childhood was marked by violence, neglect and substance abuse and led to a cycle of substance abuse, seeking out negative peers violent behavior.
Myrna McCallum:
They went on to talk about how he lived between his father's home in an urban center and his grandparents' house on a First Nation. There was violence and abuse in both households. They said he started drinking and smoking marijuana at the age of 12 to cope with problems and that cocaine followed soon after. And they also noted that he could be easily angered when drunk, but he's a different person when sober.
Myrna McCallum:
The board went on to say, presumably that's the Parole Board of Canada, because this guy has been on parole, but he's been on the run since May. The board said many of his crimes happened when he was in a state of intoxication. That really just validates what you've just said, Dan. But one thing I just want to get into for a moment is, I can't underscore enough or put in bold and asterisk it up and put massive arrows pointing to it, that when we're talking about who's to blame, who's to blame, I really think people need to ask the government.
Myrna McCallum:
Why? We now know through the work of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, through the work that I was involved in as an adjudicator in the settlement process, now that we know about the history of residential schools and we're learning more and more about it with the discoveries of these grave sites at all these former school locations. I just don't understand why people are not asking loudly enough, what are you going to do as the government to put these people back into a place of empowerment where they could heal their community, heal their people from all of the harm, the trauma, the genocide, the pain, the suffering, the abuse that you perpetrated?
Myrna McCallum:
Because it's the government of Canada and the churches that are the perpetrators here. They are the perpetrators who caused this trickling down effect to what we see today. What we're seeing today is directly connected to colonization, to genocide, to the residential school system, to the reservation system, to all of it. And I'm not sure why when people are talking to Justin Trudeau and saying, can you please issue a statement, what have you done to contribute to a healing fund so that First Nations and Indigenous people across this country can heal their communities, can heal all the trauma that you've perpetrated?
Myrna McCallum:
Because we know, and as you've said Dan, there are healers in our communities, there are ceremonies in our communities. There are people who are invested in relationships and in healing and bringing community together and bringing their youth back to their community, and making it a place where folks can thrive and overcome and connect back to the land and back to their ways. And I just don't understand why there's no accountability when it comes to the church and the government to offer people the opportunity to become whole again.
Myrna McCallum:
And that requires funding. We need healing facilities. We need people to be able to access the training necessary to realize their full healing potential as providers and as recipients of programming. That's what enrages me, is that we're not having those conversations.
Dan Jones:
I share that and as a settler in this space and as a visitor to these lands. I was so frustrated when I saw, and I'm not trying to be political here, but when I saw Justin's Trudeau's tweet basically thoughts and prayers. I would get very frustrated when bad things happen and people send thoughts and prayers. In my opinion, that's crap. That means nothing. What are you going to do?
Dan Jones:
And I 100% agree with you, there's issues here. There's massive issues here. The access to ceremony for Indigenous people, specifically Indigenous people that are marginalized in urban settings, don't have access to ceremony, don't have access to healers, don't have access to elders, don't have access to. So that's one of those things. That's the problem.
Dan Jones:
There was an apology issued by Steven Harper, I think it was 2008, what's changed? The Truth & Reconciliation Commission, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, the Thunder Bay Police Report, the RCMP report, nothing has changed. All we are doing is thoughts and prayers. The papal visit, and I don't believe I actually have a right to have an opinion on this as a [inaudible 00:24:25] as a white man in Treaty 6 territory. But what I see is the Pope coming, and I think I did some math and I figured out that how much money that visit cost. Why isn't that money being put into healing? Why isn't that money being put in the community? Why isn't that money being put into things?
Dan Jones:
And just one thing, I look at one thing, what was the first thing we took? We took language. How hard would it be to take some of that money and give it to every university in this country and say, Indigenous folks or anyone who wants to learn Indigenous languages can come and for free learn Indigenous languages. Why is it that to this day an Indigenous speaking person does not get the same quarter or anything or advancement or pay as a person who speaks French?
Dan Jones:
If you speak Cree, you should be considered bilingual. Those were the original languages of this country. Start there. Start with language, move towards ceremony, give people opportunities to have roles as elders in all of these spaces. I look at policing, the vast majority of police services still have a chaplain. I haven't seen a police service, maybe I could be wrong, but I don't know of a police service that has an elder.
Dan Jones:
That has an elder on onsite to address some of these issues and start working towards these systemic issues that create this incident that occurred. That create the mass trauma that Saskatchewan and the prairies are going through, and people are going through, and the nation is going through, and the folks on the rez are going through. And we are going to just try to blame the individual, we're trying to blame the community for creating the monster that is. Instead of going, what do we need to do to address?
Dan Jones:
And like it says in the news, obviously we started looking at stuff from the parole board that says he's a different person when he's not using. How do we get back to making sure that people are in safe spaces where they aren't going to use? And one of the things that I get very frustrated with when I look at government's response to addiction is it's very linear. It's abstinence based treatment. Well that abstinence based treatment addresses the usage, but it doesn't address the reason for the usage.
Dan Jones:
And that reason for the usage obviously will come back up, creep back out, and someone's going to start using to push that thing back down. One of the great ways to deal with the reasons for usage is to be in ceremony, is to spend time with elders, is to go to elders and say, this is what I need and this is what I need assistance with. And I've watched it work. I've watched individuals go and bring prints and tobacco to the elder and ask for specific things in ceremony and watch people heal. I've been very fortunate to see that.
Dan Jones:
And we don't put any resources into that ceremonial healing for Indigenous people. We don't put anything into that. We have our white ways of doing things and the province of Alberta has a government that says, all this addiction stuff is all, we're going to work on this. But it's working on it for whom. And it's not asking the individual who's suffering from the trauma and using to address the trauma what they need. It's telling them what they need, which is the history of this country.
Dan Jones:
We've walked in and told Indigenous people from the moment we got here what they need to be, less, I don't know, less Indigenous. I don't know what the right less is. But we've walked in and we've told and we've told and we've told, and we continuously do that. We are continuously doing that as governments, as policing, as justice systems, education systems. We go and tell people what they need rather than asking what they need. And we need to change that. We need to flip that on its head because that will prevent things like this from happening in the future.
Myrna McCallum:
As you were talking, I was just thinking about this community and how the loss extends beyond all the lives that were lost. This community is going to be really dealing with grief and trauma for a long time because of what has happened. Because people have lost brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents. And all these relationships that are really critical to wellbeing and connection and community been are gone. And I'm thinking about that devastation.
Myrna McCallum:
And I really hope that if Justin Trudeau opens up his mouth one more time, it's to offer money to this community. To send a check to say we're sending trauma therapists and we're sending all this money so that you can have access to the healing that you design, that you develop, that you want delivered in your community. And I really hope that that happens. Anything less than that is going to really just compound the trauma that this community is going through.
Myrna McCallum:
This default to demonize Indigenous people or Indigenous youth or Indigenous community and do all the stereotyping, those people over there. Those people. Those people always have these problems. These are the voices that I'm hearing. This is the stereotyping that you would read in Harold's book, Firewater. But I also want to just say, you people too. Addiction, alcoholism is not an Indigenous problem. It's a societal problem. I really wish this country, this government would talk about how highly addictive alcohol is, how alcohol is a drug, how alcohol is devastating to not just your body but your brain.
Myrna McCallum:
I want to say, for folks who work particularly in the justice system, the lawyers, the judges, the adjudicators, the police officers, this is also your problem. Let's not turn a blind eye to the fact that many of us have spent many a night drinking a lot of alcohol to resolve whatever we went through that day or that week, and we normalize it. But this is also a you problem. It's not just an Indigenous problem.
Dan Jones:
Well, you bring up a good point about a you problem. And I think about when we started to shut things down due to the pandemic and we only maintained what was the necessities, liquor stores stayed open. There is a lot of functioning alcoholics in society that require alcohol to sustain. And if you shut down liquor stores, what you have seen is, I think you'd have seen a crazy amount of issues going on because the people that need alcohol to subs to survive are plentiful. And that's the other thing about addictions.
Dan Jones:
And this is the other thing about the whole concept of the drug trade. And working in policing for as long as I did, I spent time in gang unit working on drugs and working in relations to drugs. And our goal was always to get the kilos off the street and stand in front of a bunch of kilos on a table, which is absolutely bullshit when you look from a policing perspective. Because it's an output, not an outcome.
Dan Jones:
And no matter how many kilos of cocaine we seized, I never saw a reduction in the cost. And I'm not an economist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do understand supply and demand. And if you take a huge amount of drugs off the street and it doesn't change the price, well, you're not affecting supply and demand.
Dan Jones:
But I think there's a huge, huge issue when it comes to even the stereotypical person who uses drugs. And we have this image of, in Edmonton, we have a high homeless population, unfortunately a very significant part of that population as Indigenous. And people think those are the people who use drugs. Well, this billion dollar year industry isn't built on the backs of people living on the streets of Edmonton. It's built on people of all walks of life. People that live in high end places like the Sherwood Park Estates near Edmonton, which is a high end, million dollar homes.
Dan Jones:
I knew drug dealers who went to those houses and sold drugs to those people. And I have one specific incident, and it rings true about stereotypes, it touches on our child welfare system. I had a drug dealer call me once from the Sherwood Park Estates sitting outside of a probably $3 million home. And it was the third time he was there that day. And it was a white lady and she didn't have the money. So she offered her young daughter to him in exchange for the drugs.
Dan Jones:
He called me up and said, basically said, "Jones, I'm ratting myself out right now. I'm dealing drugs over here, but I can't. Someone's going to take her up on this offer." I got child welfare involved. And child welfare refused to apprehend that young lady because she was in what they felt was a safe environment. Well, the safe environment was not a safe environment. It looked like a safe environment because there was white people and money.
Dan Jones:
The same thing, not the same thing, significantly less things would happen on 118 Avenue when I walked [inaudible 00:33:20] there. And child services was very, very willing to seize children for much less than that in marginalized communities and that are Indigenous. So this wovenness of racism and systemic racism and all this stuff and that goes through society and goes through our systems, is so blatant and it's so wrong. And we have all of these things and you like said, everybody from all walks of life drinks.
Dan Jones:
And it's also when you look at the opioid crisis, and I think of Esther Tailfeathers in Blood Tribe, she's the doctor down in Blood Tribe. And she made a comment in a meeting I was at talking about how opioids weren't a problem when it was just creating deaths on the res. And all of a sudden death started occurring in suburbs and white football player kids and white hockey player kids started dying of opioid overdoses. And all of a sudden it became a health crisis, not a crime crisis.
Dan Jones:
And it's interesting, you look at the crack cocaine. Crack cocaine in the United States was very much a black issue. So it was say no to drugs and smash, and police and war on drugs. And now you have individuals who are the dominant white population dying of opioid overdoses, now all of a sudden it's a health issue. And I think we're blind if we don't admit that these are exact reasons why systemic racism is brutally out there and we fail to address it as a result of our ignorance.
Dan Jones:
And now if we actually look at this and take a step back from it and start going, you know what, this is actually a real problem for everyone. Let's address this a real problem from everyone, and let's look at justice from a public health lens rather than justice from a smash and throw everyone in jail lens.
Myrna McCallum:
It's interesting how anytime I hear reports about murderers, like I'm thinking about white people who commit murder, I don't think I've ever heard of news broadcast or news reports that want to focus on the community. How did the community fail this person? Or how did this community create this person? The conversation is oftentimes on the individual, but sometimes if the murderer is white, not even then. There's different labels attached to describe that individual. But when it's an Indigenous person, it's always the community. The community is to blame.
Myrna McCallum:
And I just really wanted to do this episode right now to really just put my voice out there, our voices as out there as a counter to this trend that I'm sure we're going to continue to see. Of how these communities, First Nations communities and the reserves should be demonized or how they should be blamed for what has occurred. And the blame is really truly rightly on the government and on the church, and their failure to fund healing initiatives that are rooted in culture, ceremony, language, return to community.
Myrna McCallum:
And I can't emphasize enough how much I think that's what we need. That is where the key to healing lies. And I honestly also think that we need to get really real about alcohol and addiction. And there's no better place in my mind to start than to read Harold Johnson's book, Firewater, and to read Gabor Maté's book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. Because those two books at the very least are going to give you a bit of a balanced insight into how alcoholism and namely addiction work. Not just on Indigenous communities, but on your own community, your own family, your own self.
Myrna McCallum:
And I would really love to just invite people, before you think about pointing fingers at Indigenous people or at First Nations communities, think about your relationship with alcohol, think about your relationship with addiction. I really think that we need to just be honest and real and support this community and support Indigenous nations so that nothing like this ever happens again. And that support means money.
Myrna McCallum:
So yeah, when the Pope came here, I went to residential school, Dan, and there were people who wanted my opinion about his visit. My community is deeply Catholic, but I'm not Catholic. And I thought the visit was bullshit. That apology does nothing for me and it does nothing for my brother, and it does nothing for my grandmother. But what you know what could make a difference, is if he brought a few bags of gold with him and said, here you go, let me try to make this right. Unfortunately, that's the world we live in.
Myrna McCallum:
The world we live in caters to cash, and it's going to take cash to build healing centers. It's going to take cash to bring in the best trainers. It's going to take cash to create programming. It's going to take cash to build sustainable healing communities that are empowering and that are safe. And anytime anyone wants to look at a First Nation or Indigenous or Metis community and blame them for the addiction, for the drugs, for the crime, you need to look at what the government has done to fail those communities, the original habitants of this land. I am so enraged and so I'll just stop with that.
Dan Jones:
You said a couple things when you were just talking, and I just want to touch on, and I agree 100% with you. When you look at white people who do mass murders, and I've done this when I've taught other classes and the comparator between non-white people or people of color and white people, there's always two words that come out when a white person commits an atrocity like this, it's mental health. Like Dylann Roof, Chapel Hill, North Carolina kills nine people in a church, he's mentally ill according to the system. You look at Sandy Hook, where you have an individual who goes in and shoots multiple young children, white male, all of a sudden he's mentally ill.
Dan Jones:
Every single time a white person does one of these atrocious mass murder events, they are mentally ill. No one blames their community, no one blames their mom and dad, no one blames anything. Everything is always mental health. And you look at Dylann Roof's history, when you go back to North Carolina, Dylan Roof, when you start looking at his media, he was on stormfront.com Blood and Honor, he was an absolute white supremacist. And he went and committed those murders as a white supremacist, not as a mental ill individual.
Dan Jones:
But when this happens, you start to see Miles Sanderson, no one's talked about his mental health. Everyone's talking about his Indigenous social history and life on the res and addictions, and he was a federal inmate. No one said mental health. So why is it that white people always seem to get quarter from the community and quarter from the media and quarter from everybody that we're mentally ill when we do something like this? We're not going to blame my mom and dad for the traumas that occurred in my childhood, we're going to blame my mental health and my mental capacity.
Dan Jones:
Which I think is absolutely ridiculous because all it does is lend into stereotypes. So white people when we do bad things that we have an excuse, but when it's an Indigenous person or a person of color, they're evil and their community's evil. And we need to reperate that for whatever reason. And that to me is one of those things that just continues to build that stereotype. And part of that is, again, as white people as the dominant culture in this country, we aren't proximate. We aren't proximate to communities. We don't go to powwows, we don't go to communities to visit. We don't go on the res. We don't have a clue what we see on the res.
Dan Jones:
And I have been on multiple reservations and First Nations communities and been nothing but loved and accepted. And that's one of those things that really frustrates me, is this is going to just continuously perpetuate these stereotypes for individuals in these communities. And it just angers me. We need to really start looking at the root cause. We really need to really start looking at what creates these things. And we need to really start addressing addictions, and we need to start finding ways for individuals to be connected to ceremony.
Dan Jones:
And you made one other comment, and you talked about money for healing lodges. I was standing outside of the Stan Daniels Healing Lodge with an individual who's roughly in his 40s and has been incarcerated since he's 15. And he made a comment to me, he says, "Why don't we have places like this for youth?" Why is it that we wait until someone's incarcerated?
Dan Jones:
This individual I was talking to, my friend, Art, who was on mine and my brother's podcast, his first sweat was in incarceration while he was inside. Why are we not taking some of this bags of gold from, the papal visit, like you said, he should have brought bags of gold and built centers where communities can go and sweat and meet and spend time in ceremony and learn about their culture and learn about their community. We have Catholic churches, we have Anglican churches, we have a United Church, we have all of these churches that don't pay taxes for the land that they're on. They have all get all benefits for being a church. When are we going to give the Indigenous community in this country an ability to have places and spaces where ceremony is accessible?
Myrna McCallum:
1000%, Dan. I was just thinking now every Indigenous community I've been on, whether it's reserve or non-reserve, there is always a church there. There's a church there. And that's intentional. That's intentional to convert us, to colonize us, to perpetuate this effort to turn us into something that we're not. I would love to see a healing center on every community just like we had the same commitment to build a church on every community. If there's a church on that community, there needs to be a healing center on that community. I think that that's enough of an assessment to decide who needs a healing center.
Myrna McCallum:
And so my heart just goes out to the community of James Smith Cree Nation and the people of Saskatchewan, Indigenous and non-indigenous. And I really just hope that in all of this trauma and pain and loss and fear, I hope that there are people who will still also seek to look for the love and the support and the connection, and the relationship building, and the commitment to eradicate racism in our communities. And recognize that we are more alike than we are different. And when you look at Indigenous people, I want you to see yourself, to see yourself in them. And it's only when you humanize my people that your life will just open up so much more and your own humanity will evolve to the next level. So I just want to say, please consider doing that.
Dan Jones:
My only one thing that I want to say is, and this is something I've said recently to a lot of people, is for any white people out there, all of the settlers on this land of Turtle Island, that we have benefited and are still benefiting from the ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples. And it's now our responsibility to do something. To do something to build relationships, to build community, and to become, we're all treaty people according to the treaties. We are all treaty people. So we need to honor that and we need to honor each other and we need to build relationships with each other, and realize that together we are better. And we need to learn about each other and spend time in these places and spaces so that we can love each other, and proximity is necessary.
Myrna McCallum:
Thanks for tuning in. Some of you may know that I have announced recently that I'm going to be winding up this podcast after season two. So I've got a handful of episodes yet to deliver to all of you, and I hope you stay with me to the end. For folks who I'm wondering why, part of it is I think the recent bout of burnout I've gone through and recognizing that this show is a one woman show. I have such a heavy workload that it's really hard to find balance. I can't do it on my own, and I don't know how to garner the support to sustain this podcast.
Myrna McCallum:
I love this podcast, I'm proud of this podcast, I just don't know how to keep doing it on my own anymore. There's a lot that goes into podcasting. It's not just recording my voice and dropping it on a platform. There's editing, there's transcripts, there's marketing, there's social media, there's messaging, there's vetting guests, so much that goes into it.
Myrna McCallum:
In any event, thank you all for sticking with me. Lots of gratitude to you. I hope you come back and listen to what I have left for you. And if you're in a position to support James Smith Cree Nation, please do so. Send in donations, cash, write letters to the government, to your local MLAs. Our communities need healing and hard to achieve healing these days without the support, financial support to do so. This episode was recorded on Treaty 6 territory in the homeland of the Metis, also known as the city of Saskatoon.