A petition is calling for legislation that would require police to contact Indigenous crisis teams before intervening in situations like the one that resulted in the death of Iggy Dedam.
The online petition was launched after Steven “Iggy” Dedam, 34, of Elsipogtog First Nation was shot by an RCMP officer on Sept. 8. He was among six Indigenous people in Canada who died at the hands of police over the course of 11 days between Aug. 29 and Sept. 8.
Few details have emerged but police have said they were responding to a “a report of a man in mental distress with a weapon” when the deadly encounter took place at his home in Elsipogtog.
Following initial reports that police were conducting a “wellness check,” the RCMP issued a statement disputing that characterization, but a spokesperson refused to elaborate about why the term was inaccurate.
Elsipogtog First Nation had recently established an organization called Indige-Watch, which is intended to help police with de-escalation in crisis situations. However, the group has stated that police didn’t contact them until Dedam had already been shot, leaving them to manage the scene.
“Indige-Watch is a crisis line service that police departments are recommended to call before attending to anyone in crisis,” the petition states. “Tragically, Iggy was not met by his community crisis team.”
The petition, which had garnered more than 1,300 names by Thursday, calls for “a bill requiring the RCMP, provincial police services, municipal police services, and government to call Indigenous crisis teams or other crisis response teams before attending to anyone who is in a crisis.”
It also demands that “the Elsipoqtog service system be implemented in every Mi’kmaq community,” an apparent reference to the Indige-Watch program. The NB Media Co-op has reached out to the author of the petition for comment.
Those demands are similar to recommendations that emerged in the wake of earlier tragedies in 2020, when Rodney Levi of Metepenagiag Mi’kmaq Nation and Chantel Moore of Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation both died after being shot by police.
The coroner’s inquest into the death of Rodney Levi had specific recommendations about mental health-related calls. For example, the jury in that case recommended that “in situations involving mental wellness checks on First Nations, RCMP should not be the first responder – but be on standby for Mobile Crisis Units or an Aboriginal liaion for the community.”
It also recommended that “Mobile Crisis Units should be a 24-hour service” that would be dispatched alongside other emergency services. At the time, the Department of Health stated that similar mobile crisis services exist but aren’t available 24/7.
When New Brunswick anti-racism commissioner Manju Varma published her report in 2022, she called for the government to “address the recommendations from the Coroner’s Inquests of Rodney Levi and Chantel Moore without delay.”
READ MORE: ‘Chantel Was Sunshine’: Centralizing Indigenous Mothering in an Honouring Story of Chantel Moore
There were similar recommendations in a 2021 House of Commons standing committee report on systemic racism in policing, which called for “the use of persons specialized in victim services and mental health who would be available with first responders in situations requiring de-escalation.”
The RCMP has stated that it won’t comment on the shooting death of Iggy Dedam while an outside investigation by the Serious Incident Response Team is ongoing.
“It’s got to the point where we don’t even know as leaders in our community, should we be calling the RCMP in these situations, or should we be addressing it ourselves?” said Chief Terry Richardson of Oinpegitjoig, also called Pabineau First Nation. “We don’t want any more of our members to be deceased in our communities because of a police call.”
He stressed that his community has established a good relationship with the local RCMP. “We put a lot of effort into it,” he said.
Still, his community and other First Nations in New Brunswick have established Mi’gmaq Peacekeeping programs with members trained in de-escalation.
Watch the full interview with Chief Terry Richardson of Oinpegitjoig
Election issue
With an election scheduled for Oct. 21, the latest shooting raises questions about how New Brunswick’s political parties will address systemic anti-Indigenous racism in policing.
The Progressive Conservatives didn’t respond to a request for comment. The issue has been a political albatross for the government of Blaine Higgs, who refused demands from First Nations chiefs to commission a major public inquiry into systemic anti-Indigenous racism in policing and the justice system.
Higgs instead appointed a commissioner with fewer powers but a wider mandate to “examine the extent and scope of systemic racism in the province” within just one year. That process was marred by allegations of political interference and was eventually boycotted by First Nations leaders. The commissioner, Manju Varma, nonetheless called for changes including a “task force focused on dismantling systemic racism in New Brunswick policing.”
The Tories recently stated in a questionnaire from Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick that “work has begun or will begin soon to address over 75 per cent” of Varma’s recommendations. But they were light on details about policing, saying only that the “Department of Justice, Public, and Safety has been working on updating policing standards this year, and discussions around those will include systemic racism.”
A spokesperson for the Liberal Party declined to comment for this story. In their platform, the Liberal Party mentions systemic racism once, pledging to “immediately review and respond to the Systemic Racism Commissioner’s Final Report, working on a timely plan to implement its recommendations.”
In its response to the Wolastoqey Nation questionnaire, the Liberal Party said the province’s increasing diversity makes it “critical to combat institutional and systemic racism and discrimination.”
The Green Party has pledged to “fully implement” the recommendations from the Varma report. In particular, their platform says a Green Party government would create a secretariat led by a deputy minister tasked with the oversight of “the dismantling of systemic racism across government, its institutions and its Crown Corporations.”
The Greens would also commission an “Indigenous-led, independent public inquiry into New Brunswick’s justice and policing systems to identify and correct systemic racism against Indigenous people,” according to the platform.
In an interview, Green Party Leader David Coon said that as premier, Blaine Higgs has shown himself unwilling to “take key actions that would prevent further deaths in the case of mental illness calls or wellness checks.”
Following the deaths of Moore and Levi, he said, the Greens have been calling for the government to expand crisis teams into “fully fledged 24/7 mental health first responders” alongside police, firefighters and paramedics.
The provincial NDP’s platform also calls for a “full provincial public inquiry” and pledges to “work with First Nations communities on developing Self-Administered Police Services Agreements.” The New Democrats also promised to implement the recommendations from the Varma report.
David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Stations and Users (CACTUS).