Compass Gender: Police Target Indigenous Anti-Pipeline Protesters in Vancouver

Red dresses symbolize missing and murdered Indigenous women. (Flickr).

Vancouver Police arrested four protesters and disbanded an Indigenous group organizing against the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion on February 19. A video of the police shoving and grabbing the hair of protesters has sparked criticism against police conduct. 

Vancouver Police Department’s Professional Standards Section has received the video and passed it onto the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner.

The youth protesters occupied the insurance company offices backing the pipeline project. They protested in lobbies and outside the buildings for three days holding banners, singing songs, and hanging red dresses, which symbolize the murdered and missing Indigenous women in Canada.

A 2014 survey of Indigenous women found that the rate of self-reported sexual assault of Indigenous women was more than triple the rate of non-Indigenous women, while the rate of violent victimization was double the rate of Indigenous men.

Canada does not keep national data on missing persons, making it difficult to compare numbers between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women and girls. However, the Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police reports that close to 59 percent of missing women and girls in the province are of Indigenous ancestry, while Indigenous women only made up 16.1 percent of all women in Saskatchewan as of 2011.

The Canadian government has announced its intentions to work with Indigenous communities to create a National Action Plan to protect Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, and LGBTQIA+ people. The government intends to fund organizations to support the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls by creating culturally-responsive, trauma-informed, and community-based services.

After protesting for recognition of these gendered and racialized disparities and against the pipeline, four adults were arrested and taken to jail for mischief and obstruction. They were later released, but they have court orders for May 19. The protests were organized in part by Braided Warriors, a group of Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and other First Nations.

The group stated that the police violently took them from the building where they were peacefully protesting and damaged ceremonial items.

The Vancouver Police Department promises an internal review of the arrests. However, Harsha Walia of the BC Civil Liberties Association argues that the review can’t be independent, claiming, “Despite the immense amount of power that police hold, there is no fully civilian, truly independent, enforceable police accountability mechanism in this country.”

Supporting Walia’s claim is the fact that the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, the supposedly civilian agency that will be monitoring the investigation, is headed by a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer.

According to Walia, internal reviews are not enough to ensure accountability or the prevention of future harms: “Police are a colonial force, and the only accountability is to disarm them and reduce the scale and scope of their power especially in relationship to Indigenous peoples.”