Last night the Canadian settler state exonerated Gerald Stanley for the racist murder of Colten Boushie. Once again the settler-colonialism of Canada is proven as fact: there are different laws for the colonized and the colonizer. The following is a statement from PCR-RCP’s Saskatchewan branch whose mass members are involved in this struggle.

We are all saddened by the result of the trial, but must not necessarily be surprised by the cold and calculated processes of the Canadian Colonial state. And from this we must conclude that Indigenous sovereignty will never be achieved on this land without the total destruction of Canada as a political entity. Its existence was born from the desire to colonize, control and destroy Indigenous populations on this land to create an Aryan settler state. Thus, the liberation of Indigenous people cannot come from agreements with it, but only come from its total destruction. This is not to say the destruction of all settlers or foreigners, but those that wish to uphold an apparatus of colonization of Indigenous people are against our struggle undoubtedly.

Colten was not simply a victim of murder, but yet another casualty in the colonization of Indigenous people in the name of Canada’s project to dispossess the Indigenous population from their land and to subject them to the domination of the settler-colonial state. Thus, we are also here to stand against the unjust systems of oppression that led to Colten’s death: Settler-colonialism and its continuous dispossession of Indigenous territories, and capitalism that treats land as commodity and prioritizes private property over human lives. We believe it is our duty to overthrow these systems and create a world where racism is a thing of the past. To do this, we must work together and build a united front of all oppressed peoples for a shared goal of anti-capitalist and anti-colonial revolution, and the return of land to Indigenous nations in Canada.

The events surrounding Colten’s death highlight the forces that oppose us in this end, and lines are never more clearly drawn than when a gun is fired. And perhaps never more when one is fired, and justified by the exact system we live under. Whether it is the Canadian state that attacks Indigenous people, or the Canadian state defends those that, technically, act illegally given there laws but do so in their interest – the result remains the same.

Given this situation of violence, we must then stray from even our own best intentions of peaceful interactions and respect and conclude that

-We must combat the racism in rural settler communities, and defend Indigenous communities from its power to inflict violence against them.

-We must combat the police practices that assumed the guilt of Colten before his death could even be investigated, and offered greater protection to Gerald Stanley after his heinous crime than it ever has given care to Indigenous peoples. How the state apparatus itself defends settler-colonialism and protects its agents.

-We must also acknowledge that the Canadian state’s call for reconciliation is a deceptive colonial tactic, just as the treaty process was, to dupe well meaning Indigenous Nations into accepting the ruling classes colonial and capitalist project of dispossession.

-Similarly we must take the RCMP’s recent calls for civility in response this the horrendous outcome of this trial as another aspect of control in the colonial process. That the Canadian state will preach peace when they inflict and support violence; that they will preach the rights of ownership and law when they commit forceful dispossession; and that the Canadian legal system preaches the rule of law when there is no fucking justice.

-We also must combat the idea that the oppressor does not benefit from their position of domination – as if oppression is a mistake rather than an intentional goal; we must not accept the idea that the oppressor will not be defend colonialism with violence; and lastly, we wholeheartedly must accept ,that our struggle to overcome the colonization in this country will not be not be overcome easily – but instead that it requires our confidence to physically fight for a world to correct that conditions that lead to deaths like Colten’s. Of which, there are countless.

-And lastly, we must accept that the colonizer is not what we perceive: The police that we have been taught or coerced to trust are our enemy. The Canadian state, which preaches unity and reconciling our differences, is our enemy; and that the state apparatus of Canada will never serve Indigenous people, and thus is our enemy. And finally, that this means that our hope is not found in the possibility of our enemy becoming sympathetic, when they have so much to gain from domination, but that our hope lies in the confidence of justice and solidarity that exists among those that oppose this monstrosity to exist. That our work is defined by our power to fight, and our ability to convince those to our side. Otherwise, we are left without an army, while Canada justifies its own.

Rest in Power, Colten

The above statement is available as a PDF Pamphlet