OP-ED: Does colonialism explain the Hollow Water stabbings?

"The man police say killed his sister and stabbed several others on Manitoba’s Hollow Water Indian Reserve was recently ordered by the court to stay away from the girl while he was out on bail."

Source: Rawpixel

Author: Hymie Rubenstein

The man police say killed his sister and stabbed several others with a knife on Manitoba’s Hollow Water Indian Reserve on September 4 was recently ordered by the court to stay away from the girl while he was out on bail.

Tyrone Simard, 26, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon for offences that allegedly took place on June 8, according to court records. He also faced charges of sexual assault and sexual interference from alleged incidents in 2017. Records show Simard pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and mischief in connection with offences in 2017.

Court records also say a Winnipeg court granted his release on June 12 on both matters, with various conditions, including a curfew and an order not to use drugs or alcohol or to possess weapons.

He was also ordered not to contact four people — all victims of the alleged September 4 crimes — which included his 18-year-old sister, Marina Simard, who died in Thursday’s attacks.

Simard’s bail release was likely prompted by the application of the 1996 Gladue principles. This requires Canadian courts to consider the unique background and systemic factors, such as alleged intergenerational trauma, poverty, racism, and the legacy of colonialism when deciding on bail for an indigenous person.

Following the stabbings in the 1,000 member community on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg, Simard fled in a stolen vehicle and died in a highway crash with an RCMP cruiser.

A vehicle is pulled out of the ditch on Thursday after a collision with an RCMP cruiser on Highway 304 south of Black River, Man. The driver of the southbound vehicle, who was killed, was the suspect in a knife attack that killed an 18-year-old woman and injured at least seven others in Hollow Water First Nation. (Jeff Stapleton/CBC)

Messages of condolences and support have poured in for the Reserve, including from the James Smith Indian Reserve in Saskatchewan, where there was a mass stabbing exactly three years earlier. Eleven people were killed and 17 injured in the deadliest mass killing in Canada’s history — and the deadliest ever in modern history on aboriginal land.

Like Simard, Myles Sanderson, the suspect in the vicious James Smith Indian Reserve attack, died following a police chase.

The Hollow Water and James Smith tragedies may be linked in more ways than those, namely, their underlying cause.

The James Smith murders were explained by indigenous journalist Niigaan Sinclair, an associate professor of native studies at the University of Manitoba, as follows:

“Every single indigenous person carries trauma in this country, whether it be from poverty, bigotry, displacement or living under the Indian Act…. All are residential school survivors in one shape or another, whether it be experiencing that nightmarish system firsthand or intergenerationally…. Too many times, this turns into violence.”

Unsurprisingly, he has just offered a similar explanation for the Hollow Water stabbings: the “intergenerational effects of colonialism,” compounded by “the community’s 70 percent unemployment rate” and “deep, lasting poverty.”

As reductionistic and simplistic as Sinclair’s analysis is, stock explanations like it are habitually offered by radical activists for every indigenous adversity or pathology.

But they are wrong.

To begin with, the Indian Act carefully defines and protects indigenous status and rights and has been repeatedly amended to address aboriginal demands. Many, if not most, indigenous leaders do not want to see it repealed.

As for the Indian Residential Schools (IRS), they were established to overcome the adversities on the reserves caused by the colonial experience. That included poverty, the loss of traditional livelihood practices, high disease rates, orphanhood, child neglect, abandonment, and abuse. Though these tragic features continue to this day, both the Indian Act and IRSs are embedded in the overarching issue of British colonialism, which brought a swift end to lethal combat between bands and tribes in which mass slaughters were commonplace for centuries.

As well, there is not a single authenticated case of murder at any of the schools during their 113-year government-supported history.

Though Sinclair’s pseudo-psychology has no historical support, it also denies basic human agency among indigenous people — the right to determine their fate on their own terms — a racist assertion if there ever was one. If it were true, such mass murders would be common on and off Canada’s reserves.

They are certainly not. In 2016, for example, police reported 142 aboriginal victims of homicide, or .009% of the indigenous population, among the lowest murder rates in the world. Moreover, from a global perspective, there is no connection between national homicide rates — including mass murders — and a history of colonialism.

Why people kill impulsively is still disputed among researchers, but may have to do, in part, with a neurological inability to properly control feelings of disappointment, frustration, and anger as they interact with those around them, especially under the influence of mind-altering substances such as drugs and alcohol.

There may also be a mass-murder connection to years of personal disappointment and failure, which results in a combination of profound hopelessness and deep-seated resentment.

As one expert on the subject wrote: “Socially or psychologically isolated, mass murderers lack emotional support and encouragement from confidants. Moreover, they have no one around to help provide a much-needed reality check on their warped perception of constantly being the victim of injustice. Tending to externalize blame, they seek to punish those whom they hold responsible for their miserable life.”

These potential causes, singly or combined, may produce enough hatred and sufficient motivation for a killing spree against certain groups or categories of people.

Of course, most people — including indigenous ones — can control their impulses most of the time, even when drunk or stoned. So hardly any of these interactions end in violence, let alone murder. Sometimes, however, cognitive control mechanisms required to guide behaviour are weak, damaged, or ignored, with disastrous consequences.

Mental illness and brain damage can also be aggravating factors.

Simard struggled with low cognitive function and alcohol abuse, according to court recordings reviewed by CBC News, also two factors making it a near certainty that Gladue principles were used to facilitate his release, resulting in the tragic death of his sister.

Like Sanderson, Simard certainly had deep-seated problems with self-control and anger management, issues found in people around the world. Still, none of these has any evidential or logical relation to either colonialism or boarding school attendance.

Overall, then, Canada’s colonial past and the legacy of the Indian Residential Schools do not explain the Hollow Water stabbings.

Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.