Handout/Kenora Online Ontario Minister of Indigenous Affairs Greg Rickford poses with a police officer in Kenora, Ont.

Ontario’s minister of Indigenous affairs is being criticized for wearing a bulletproof vest in his own riding and for saying that residents want “our city back” from “transient folks” who don’t obey the law. Minister Greg Rickford, who represents the northwestern constituency of Kenora—Rainy River, made the comments in an interview with Kenora Online. “We want our city back,” he said. “What we see is a number of transient folks, who do their business and act outside of the law, and they’re very difficult — obviously — to deal with.”

We want our city back. Minister Greg Rickford

The article says police and businesses owners have noticed an uptick in crime and drug use by young people “who appear to be homeless after aging out of the child welfare system.” It was published under a photo of Rickford in a bulletproof vest. More than 3,000 of Kenora’s 15,000 residents are Indigenous. ‘It gets my back up’ Garnet Angeconeb, a residential school survivor and member of the Lac Seul First Nation, was “definitely offended at first glance,” he told HuffPost Canada. “Seeing that, it gets my back up,” he said. Angeconeb lives in Sioux Lookout, Ont. in the neighbouring riding of Kiiwetinoong. He said many northern municipalities, including Sioux Lookout and Thunder Bay, are experiencing the same issues as Kenora. “Certainly as an Anishinaabe person, as an Indigenous person, I know the depth of where these issues come from ... They are deep-rooted and they are very complex.”

GarnetsJourney.com Garnet Angeconeb is an Anishinaabe man and and residential school survivor. He says Minister Greg Rickford is sending a bad message to Indigenous people in northern Ontario.

He said that blaming the north’s problems on people with addictions and mental illnesses oversimplifies the issue. The root problem is colonialism, he said, and the “historical trauma” caused by residential schools and the child welfare system. “Dialogue can be tough. It can be so easy to get into a divide,” Angeconeb said. “We don’t need negative messaging at the offset.”

Dialogue can be tough. It can be so easy to get into a divide. Garnet Angeconeb