Wolastoq Grand Chief says police racially profiled him in Ireland [video]

An Indigenous Elder says police racially profiled and aggressively questioned him in Dublin, Ireland earlier this month.

Wolastoq Grand Chief Ron Tremblay — also known as Spasaqit Possesom or morningstar burning — is asking for a written apology from the Irish police, also called the Garda Síochána or simply the Gardaí.

A Gardaí spokesperson said in an email that the police force “does not comment on named individuals.” The spokesperson added: “We are making enquiries and will get back to you in due course.” They had not responded by the time of publication to queries including how the police deal with complaints from the public.

Tremblay said the incident took place on March 2 on Grafton Street, a busy pedestrian thoroughfare known as one of the main shopping streets in Dublin’s city centre.

Tremblay, who is also an Elder-in-Residence at St. Thomas University, was travelling with three colleagues and six students from STU’s Wabanaki Student Centre. Their trip involved a visit to Trinity College and its School of Linguistics.

While some of his companions were checking out the shops on Grafton Street, Tremblay waited outside, enjoying some sunshine on an otherwise cool day. “I’m not a really big shopper so I stayed outside,” he said.

He noticed two police officers, a man and a woman, glancing at him as they walked by him on the busy street, and again as they returned in the other direction. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, as he stood among an ethnically diverse crowd. “There were literally thousands of people on the street.”

His group soon left the area, but they later returned to Grafton Street after lunch. Once again, Tremblay waited outside alone while his companions went inside the shops. The same two police officers walked by, glancing at him again.

“They went up to the end of the street, turned around and came back,” he said. “And I noticed they were coming right towards me.” This wasn’t Tremblay’s first time in Ireland — in fact, it was his fifth —and previously he had been travelling with his wife, who is Irish. Since he’d never had problems in Ireland, he assumed the police wanted a quick chat.

But that wasn’t the case. “The female police approached me. She said, ‘What are you doing standing here?'” When he explained that he was waiting for colleagues and students, the police officer replied that he had been waiting there for a long time, even though he had departed and returned to the area.

“I believe she asked me this three times, what I was doing there. And I told her the same exact thing,” Tremblay said. “Each time that she spoke to me, the male police started to get a little bit closer” until he was perhaps one foot away. “I’m thinking, am I going to get arrested here?” he recalled. “If the students and my colleagues don’t come out of the store and they arrest me, how will they know that I was arrested?”

The encounter was brief, lasting perhaps a couple of minutes, but it didn’t feel so brief for Tremblay. “You know, when you’re in that situation, it seems longer.” The police eventually walked away.

The incident unfolded near a cigar shop with a wooden Indian statue outside. He noted the irony of encountering the stereotypical, racist image shortly before his disturbing encounter with the police. “I’m thinking well, we’re taking back our place… and then 15 minutes later I get harassed by the police.”

Tremblay doesn’t know why he was singled out on the busy street, but he speculated that it had something to do with his appearance. He wore a hat with beadwork and a jacket featuring a Native design. Perhaps most importantly, he has prominent facial tattoos.

Speaking to the NB Media Co-op, he described the special significance of those tattoos. About 30 years ago, after fasting, Tremblay had a vision of a man with facial tattoos. He described this man to his teachers, and none of them had heard of him before.

“In 2017, when I was selected as the Grand Chief through the Clan Mothers, I was getting ready that morning for my installation and I looked in the mirror, and my wife was braiding my hair, and as I looked into the mirror, I realized the old guy that I seen 30-some years ago with facial tattoos was me in the future,” he said.

The tattoos themselves each represent a member of his family. Tremblay said they aren’t meant to attract attention but rather “to represent who I am and who my family is and what my responsibilities are.”

Tremblay says he isn’t new to racial profiling, or even being arrested. For example, crossing the border into the U.S., he has frequently been “randomly selected” for secondary questioning. Even at the UN in New York City, during his first visit, he was stopped by a security guard and told he couldn’t be wearing his T-shirt. The shirt said: “Never have so few taken so much from so many for so long! Wabanaki.”

In Canada, he was arrested near Elsipogtog during protests against shale gas exploration. “I was doing a ceremony when I was arrested, and I didn’t feel that anxiety back then, as I did this time, because I was in a foreign country,” he said.

He has support from faculty members including Shannonbrooke Murphy, a professor in STU’s Human Rights Department. Murphy forwarded information about the incident to the office of Matt Carthy, an Irish politician with Sinn Féin, the leading opposition party. The NB Media Co-op has reached out for comment to Carthy, who is Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Justice in the Irish Parliament.

Speaking to the NB Media Co-op, Tremblay reflected about the parallels between the historical experiences of the Irish and the Wabanaki people under British colonial rule.

“The Irish people have gone through pretty much parallel to what our people went through here, being attacked by colonialism and genocide and land stolen and so on, and that’s what I guess is a little confusing for me.”

Tremblay has been working to combat prejudice and bias, especially though education. He said there are often misconceptions and stereotypes, especially about the concept of a warrior in Indigenous Culture.

“The minute you talk about a warrior or a warrior society, they think guns and they think of Oka crisis, or they think of Wounded Knee,” he said.

In fact, he said “the first thing a warrior does is he sacrifices to protect the land, and the Earth, and the air, and the women, and then children, the Elders of the community, to be there to help them in any way possible. And to lift the fist is the last resort.”

He said more education is needed in schools and “colonial institutions of all levels” that means “talking about the uncomfortable topics… stealing of lands, stealing of resourses, stealing of our languages, our culture.”

Tremblay said he hopes his story will encourage others to speak out.

“I just want to give confidence to anybody else, [any] person of colour, of any race or religion, to stand up and to report injustices like this,” he said.  “Don’t be afraid to do this because [otherwise] you’ll just hold it in, and each time you see police, more and more, anxiety will build up inside you, and we have to start speaking the truth about what’s going on, not just locally but globally.”

Lance Francis is a St. Thomas University student and a member of Elsipogtog First Nation. NB Media Co-op staff journalist David Gordon Koch contributed reporting and editorial support. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS).