amazingfhb:allthecanadianpolitics:La Loche School Shooting Highlights Systemic Poverty and Racism: F
amazingfhb:allthecanadianpolitics:La Loche School Shooting Highlights Systemic Poverty and Racism: First Nations Leaders On a morning in mid-October, a young man living in the Bridge River (Xwisten) First Nations near Lillooet, BC, entered his band office carrying a hammer and violently assaulted 10 people inside. The perpetrator, David James, 22, died at the scene, reportedly of cardiac arrest. His attack sent ten people to the hospital, including two who were placed in critical care. Amidst cries of horror and shock, there was another reaction: resignation. James was extremely poor; band staffers, the same ones he beat with a hammer, had been trying to help him find a way to pay rent and find housing. “He had complex social and health needs that our staff did not have the resources or training to adequately respond to,” said Xwisten Band Chief Susan James, at the time, while Regional Chief Shane Gottfriedson remarked the same thing could happen in any band in the country. In a way, it has. Continue Reading.“When you have circumstances like that that are a function of and a consequence of structural poverty, you’re going to have these kinds of situations develop,” Phillip said. Usually, these “situations” quickly vanish from the public’s memory, if they ever register in the first place, he added, a result of systemic racism. “People shrug their shoulders and say, ‘What would you expect, it’s a First Nations community?’” Had the La Loche shooting taken place in a white community, or one of Canada’s urban centre, “governments would move heaven and earth to make investments to ensure it never happened again,” he said. -- source link