Crazy Indians Brotherhood deal in good deeds in Saskatoon

A new chapter of the ‘Crazy Indians Brotherhood’ has formed in Saskatoon and their leather-clad members are certainly no ‘Sons of Anarchy.’

Rather than drugs and guns, the CIB deal in good deeds.

“We’re going to do lots for the community and show these younger people what it is to grow up here in Saskatoon and how to be a better man,” one of the founding members of the Saskatoon branch, Chris Martell, told CBC News.

Despite their biker-gang appearance, the similarities between the CIB and organized crime ends there, the broadcaster reports.

The CIB was founded in 2007 and consider themselves a support group for Aboriginal and Metis men looking to put some distance between them and life in a gang, according to The Manitoban.

“It was done with the idea of basically helping ex-gang members get out of the gangs and start living a better life, like finding jobs,” a CIB member told the Winnipeg Free Press in 2013.

“A lot of us, when we got out of the penal system, we were forced back into our old way of life,” said another member who described it as a ‘revolving door’.

“Our main objective is to help those who cannot help themselves,” the group’s main Facebook page says. “We always watch our brothers’ backs and if one falls we all fall. We always get back up and become even stronger.”

The band of brothers gets their name from a former stereotype they look to reclaim.

“Crazy Indian, it was such a negative name,” CIB member Christopher Merazty told CBC News. “It was a name given to Aboriginal people dated back in the early time like ‘you crazy Indian’ or ‘you crazy drunken Indian’. So now we’re using this name to turn it into something positive.”

Membership isn’t exclusive to aboriginals nor is the brotherhood only focused on helping native communities.

Members across charters are currently collecting Halloween costumes for kids whose parents can’t afford them, organizing a charity steak night aimed at raising money to buy Christmas hampers, and often hand out paper bag lunches they’ve bought having pooled their own money together, according to CBC News.

“They seem pretty shocked when you walk up to them, they don’t know what they’re getting,” Justin Bird, who was recently homeless, told the broadcaster. “It means a lot to me… We can go to each other for help, you know, hang out, do stuff. It’s a brotherhood, you know?”