In this op-ed, nehiyaw policy analyst and writer Emily Riddle, and Cree-Métis-Saulteaux writer, editor, and academic Lindsay Nixon speak to the death of Colten Boushie, a Cree 22-year-old, and the trial of Gerald Stanley.

On August 9, 2016, Colten Boushie was fatally shot in the head by Gerald Stanley. It happened after Boushie and four friends from Red Pheasant Cree Nation drove onto Stanley's farm after getting a flat tire, according to testimony for the prosecution's side. Boushie was asleep in the vehicle when they arrived on the farm, according to additional testimony, and was the only person killed. Others fled after Stanley and his son approached them, with two of the passengers testifying that they heard bullets "whizzing" past them as they ran. Both sides offered different testimony on what occurred that day, but Stanley insisted in court that the gun fired accidentally and “went off,” killing Boushie, after he attempted to chase the group off his property with his son.

Boushie was only 22, still a youth within Cree life cycles. Some of the diary writings shared by Boushie’s family show a deep understanding of intergenerational trauma and the importance of Cree culture in his life.

The Globe and Mail reported that one of Boushie's friends later said to his family that she heard Stanley's wife say, after being asked why Boushie was shot, “That’s what you get for trespassing on private property" (according to the the official police report obtained by the publication, the friend said Stanley's wife had uttered "something about property"). According to trial reports, after Boushie was killed, the Stanley family then proceeded to silently wait for police with a pot of coffee. According to Royal Canadian Mounted Police testimony during the trial, the 22-year-old's covered body laid face-down in gravel on Stanley’s farm for 24 hours while the RCMP waited for a warrant.

Stanley’s farm is in Treaty Six territory. Treaty Six is an agreement made in 1876 that Colten’s community, the Red Pheasant Cree Nation, is party to, in which Indigenous people gave settlers the rights to live and farm in the area in exchange for other terms—including peace.

When the judge announced on February 9, that the jury had found Stanley not guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter, many of our Indigenous relations from the prairies weren’t surprised. We knew that a Cree understanding of justice wouldn’t be reached with this trial. As Indigenous folks spread across social media in response to the verdict, quoting KRS-One, we’ve always known “there could never be justice on stolen land.“ We’ve witnessed firsthand the devaluation of Indigenous life in the Canadian prairies, wherein the predominant racial tension is between Indigenous communities and the largely white settler communities who settled there. Settlers see themselves as the descendants of pioneers, the families of individuals who survived the harsh terrain of prairie seasons for over a century, and now believe they have a right to protect what’s there’s at any cost—even if it means ending Indigenous life.

Following Stanley’s acquittal, a GoFundMe page was set up to offer financial support for his legal costs, with some support expressed from white nationalist circles.

As Métis academic Chelsea Vowel noted on her Twitter, “The scalp bounty never ended. Today it's collected through GoFundMe.” Passivity in the form of liberalism is a Canadian tradition—perhaps now most famously spread vis-à-vis Justin Trudeau’s smiling face meant to represent Canada as the kinder, gentler neighbor of America—and one that continues to cost prairies Indigenous communities countless lives.