Law enforcement for Indigenous Peoples has always been a subject that mainstream Canada rarely pays attention to. In fact, many Canadians are not aware of the different ways that justice is applied toward Indigenous members of society.
Most Canadians know about warrants required for searches of homes. In Mistissini at one time, the RCMP would go into homes without a warrant, search clothes and packets of yeast. The clothes to try to determine if they were hiding children that they would grab for the residential school system. If there were a certain number of yeast packets the man of the home would be arrested and fined under suspicion of brewing beer.
The fine was small – around $10 or so. In many cases, as my grandfather was a fur trader, he would pay the person’s fine. If he wasn’t around, then the person was taken to Amos where he would spend some time in jail and then have to find his way back to his community without money or food.
That was part of the reality we lived under. A reality that ignored the legal rights that non-Indigenous people enjoyed. It is systematic racism that continues to this day.
Take the story of Allan Woodhouse, a young Indigenous person with no criminal record who moved to Winnipeg to work in the early 1970s. In 1973, a man named Ting Fong Chan was killed by persons unknown. Woodhouse, who spoke little English, wasn’t in the area and had nothing to do with the murder, but police forced him to sign a confession.
Woodhouse, along with three others, always maintained their innocence. But they faced an all-white jury. Never a welcome moment for any Indigenous person or family looking for justice.
Fortunately, decades later Woodhouse heard about the Innocence Canada group and asked for help. That organization went to work and contacted then-federal Justice Minister David Lametti, who ordered a new trial in 2023 for Woodhouse and co-accused Brian Anderson after concluding there had been a miscarriage of justice in their case. Both men were acquitted this July.
Meanwhile, Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal acquitted Woodhouse’s brother Clarence in the same case on October 3. The court heard testimony that the case against Woodhouse and the three others convicted involved systemic racism, police brutality and forced and false confessions.
“I’m sorry on behalf of the entire administration of justice and the institution I lead and the system in which I’m proud to work,” Justice Joyal told Clarence Woodhouse. He said every court should be looking at “judicial reconciliation” where matters of racism are concerned.
A third Woodhouse brother convicted in the same case, Russell Woodhouse, died in 2011. His case is under review for a posthumous acquittal.
Innocence Canada has raised important questions about systematic racism that need to be addressed not only in Manitoba but all across Canada. They would like to talk with both federal and provincial governments about righting wrongs that the criminal justice system has done to Indigenous peoples, not only in the past.
Allan Woodhouse and Anderson have filed lawsuits against the system that wrongfully convicted them. Part of the lawsuit says that despite the lack of speaking English fully an interpreter was never provided. It is something many Indigenous people have experienced in the just us system within the different tiers of the Canadian justice system.