Chiefs say First Nations have a ‘broken relationship’ with police
SIOUX LOOKOUT – Relations between police and First Nations in Ontario are desperately in need of repair, according to the chiefs of the Shibogama First Nations Council.
First Nations need to see “efforts to remedy this broken relationship before any other community members have their lives taken by police,” the chiefs said in a joint statement regarding the shooting death of Wawakapewin First Nation member Bruce Frogg.
Frogg, 55, was shot by provincial police on June 25 in Kenora’s Anicinabe Park. He was taken to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries.
Wawakapewin is one of five member communities in Shibogama First Nations Council, which has offices in Sioux Lookout. The others are Kingfisher Lake, Wunnumin Lake, Wapekeka and Kasabonika Lake.
Provincial parliament member Sol Mamakwa, whose Kiiwetinoong riding includes the Shibogama communities, said Tuesday that the incident in Kenora was “shocking” and “hurtful.”
“These things keep happening to Indigenous people, where they get killed by the OPP without really addressing the root causes of what the issue may have been,” he told Dougall Media.
Mamakwa noted that Frogg was a victim of Ralph Rowe, a former Anglican priest and scoutmaster who abused hundreds of First Nations children in Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario in the 1970s and ’80s.
Frogg was also a residential school survivor.
Residential schools had adverse impacts on many people, said Mamakwa, “and I think we need to be able to address those things with the proper supports, healing centres, healing initiatives.”
“For far too long,” he said, “we continue to see First Nations people getting killed by the police.
“We need to be able to find a better place as a society to be able to make sure that we treat everyone as a human being. I think that's most important.”
The Shibogama chiefs called for the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency and the Office of the Inspector General of Policing to conduct “a thorough, independent review.”
Shibogama executive director Matthew Angees said they want those bodies looking into the matter because they have little faith in the provincial Special Investigations Unit, which is investigating.
SIU investigations are “kind of narrow in scope . . . and a lot of the times nothing really happens,” Angees said.
The Law Enforcement Complaints Agency is a provincial civilian organization whose website says it “is responsible for receiving, managing and overseeing public complaints about misconduct.”
The Inspector General of Policing’s website says the office is focused on “sector performance and accountability” in Ontario policing.
Mike Stimpson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Thunder Bay Source
