The Colten Boushie case should be a wake-up call for Canadians, says Jerilynn Webster, an activist from Nuxalk and Onondaga nations who did much of the planning for Vancouver rallies Saturday and Tuesday. Hundreds of people came to Saturday’s rally to show their dissatisfaction with an all-white jury’s decision to find farmer Gerald Stanley not guilty of all charges in the killing of Boushie and lament yet another young Indigenous man lost. Similar rallies were held in at least 13 other Canadian cities. On Tuesday, people gathered outside federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould’s Vancouver office to keep the pressure on in another event Webster helped organize.
“This is not a surprise to us of how our people are being treated in the justice system,” Webster said. “This case just brought it to light for non-Indigenous people to realize what state we actually live in. Which is a state where the racist system was not built for us, but to delete us, to take us away. It wasn’t built for Indigenous people. It was built for, essentially, white supremacy.”
“It just showcases that, with the verdict, with the all-white jury, with…” Webster pauses to collect her thoughts. She’s still grieving, and the last few days have been a whirlwind of planning the rallies and arguing with people who are telling her it’s not a racist issue, that she shouldn’t be so mad.
Read the whole article in The Tyee here. Published February 14, 2018.
