Republica Press

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REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Winnipeg’s New Showcase and Meeting Place for Inuit Art and Artists

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Winnipeg sits far from the territory of the Inuit. But the Winnipeg Art Gallery has long been the leading collector of their art.

Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk and associate professor of art history at Concordia University in Montreal, took a break from the last-minute preparations for the opening exhibition, on which she was one of curators, to speak with me. A researcher on circumpolar Indigenous arts, she was the co-leader of an Indigenous advisory circle that the gallery created early in the planning for the new center.

“Because it is in southern Canada, I didn’t want it to be just another place to show non-Inuit about Inuit art,” she told me. “I really hoped it would be a place where Inuit, Inuvialuit and global circumpolar Inuit would know that it was for them when they were inside. So they would see their language, things would be designed in such a way as to be inviting for Inuit.”

What visitors see as soon as they walk in is partly the result of Professor Igloliorte’s vision. Like most art galleries, Winnipeg has stored the overwhelming majority of its 14,000 Inuit works in storage, viewed only by curators and visiting scholars. The Qaumajuq center has brought the vault up into a three story high space, encased in glass and lined with artworks on shelves for all to see.

Michael Maltzan, an architect from Los Angeles, joined him in the north after he was commissioned to design the sculpted building which, on the outside, evokes an iceberg.

Domaine de la Florida where 520 Quebecers, surrounded by plastic palm trees and snow, are dreaming of prepandemic times when they spent winter in much warmer climes.

  • A scathing independent review detailed the callous, discriminatory treatment by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of the family of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man who was shot and killed by a farmer in Saskatchewan in 2016.

  • In a significant victory for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate change program, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected claims by the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario that the mandatory federal carbon pricing plan was unconstitutional.

  • A court in Beijing secretly tried Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat held since 2018, on espionage charges this week. Like the earlier secret trial of another Canadian, Michael Spavor, also held since 2018, the verdict in Mr. Kovrig’s case has not been announced. More than two dozens diplomats from various countries tried to attend but were turned away.

  • Alphonso Davies, the Bayern Munich soccer star who grew up in Windsor, Ontario and Edmonton, didn’t learn his own refugee story until his parents talked about it in a team video. It prompted him to lend his support to the work being done by the U.N.H.C.R., the U.N. refugee agency that helped to organize his family’s resettlement in Canada. This week, the agency appointed Mr. Davies a good-will ambassador.

  • Canadian Pacific, the railway that provided Canada with its first transcontinental land link, is now part of a deal that will create the first railway linking Canada, the United States and Mexico.

  • The head coach of Canada’s national artistic swimming team is stepping aside while the sport’s governing body completes an independent review of allegations that his hiring added to the sport’s history of abusive coaching.

    • A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

    nytcanada@nytimes.com.

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    Mother of Killed Indigenous Man Told to ‘Get It Together’ by Canadian Police

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    OTTAWA — When seven police officers arrived at the home of Debbie Baptiste in August 2016, encircling the house and carrying rifles, they informed her that her son was dead. Then, instead of comforting the grieving mother, they asked if she had been drinking and told her to “get it together.”

    The callous treatment of Ms. Baptiste, a Cree woman, as well as other incidents of racial discrimination by the police against her family, were detailed in an independent review released to the public Monday that inquired into police conduct and their investigation of the death of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man in Saskatchewan.

    The scathing report by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found that the officers treated Ms. Baptiste “with such insensitivity that her treatment amounted to a prima facie case of discrimination.” The watchdog group, which has no power to penalize, also found that the police failed to protect evidence at the crime scene where Mr. Boushie was killed and destroyed records related to its handling of the case.

    “It felt like I was forever fighting a battle that could never be won,” Ms. Baptiste told a news conference on Monday. “The injustices of racism in the courtroom, the discrimination needs to stop. Things need to change. We need a change for the future generation.”

    posted a message of support and met with Mr. Boushie’s family following the 2018 trial.

    On Monday Mr. Trudeau told reporters that the treatment of Mr. Boushie’s family and friends “was unacceptable,” adding, “We have seen, unfortunately, examples of systemic racism within the R.C.M.P., within many of our institutions, and we need to do better.”

    R.C.M.P. union is still asking people in this country not to believe this woman,” Chris Murphy, a lawyer for the Boushie family told reporters. “Shame on them.”

    The killing and the acquittal remain sources of anger for many Indigenous Canadians who have argued the case exposed significant flaws in Canada’s legal system. Mr. Boushie’s family and others said that police were racially discriminatory toward them while being deferential to a farmer who was ultimately charged with murder.

    Mr. Boushie had gone swimming with friends when a tire went flat on their Ford Escape near Mr. Stanley’s farm in central Saskatchewan. Mr. Stanley testified that he and his son thought the group, many of whom were intoxicated, was trying to steal vehicles. The two men came out with guns and also attacked the Escape with a hammer. After Mr. Boushie was killed, the others fled.

    As a result, the commission found, police descended on Ms. Baptiste’s house on the Red Pheasant Cree Nation, her Indigenous community, with two goals: to inform her of Mr. Boushie’s death and to search for a member of Mr. Boushie’s group of friends as part of a related investigation into theft and attempted theft. No one from the group was ultimately charged with theft.

    Officers armed with rifles encircled Ms. Baptiste’s house and told her about her son’s death when she came to the front porch. After hearing the news, Ms. Baptiste collapsed and was brought inside by police.

    “Ms. Baptiste displayed distress at the news they had just given her, one member told her to ‘get it together,’” the report found. “One or more RCMP members smelled her breath” apparently for signs of alcohol.

    Saskatchewan division of the mounted police said in a statement, adding that it plans to carry out the recommendations in the commission’s report.

    In addition to recommendations that involve reviewing procedures with the officers involved in the case, as well as reviewing the general practices of the Mounties in that part of Saskatchewan, the commission said that cultural awareness training should be provided for all employees of the police force “bearing in mind the factors identified in recent inquiries.”

    The Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner, Brenda Lucki, who was given the opportunity to comment on the commission’s findings in advance of its release, said that she accepted its main findings although she rejected some small points in the report

    “This whole justice system from the top down needs to be restored,” Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents First Nations in Saskatchewan, told a news conference. “Brenda Lucki, what are you going to do rather than just say we agree with what’s been found? Big deal. Brenda Lucki, do something.”

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