Thousands of children perished while attending these schools, and the physical, mental and sexual abuse many endured is well documented. In Saskatchewan, tensions between indigenous and non-indigenous people run several generations deep.

Yet for many people in Canada, the reaction to the Boushie verdict has come as a surprise. A study in 2016 found that Canadians have only recently begun to understand the discrimination faced by indigenous people, and many feel it is no different from that faced by other minority populations in the country.

This can be explained partly by an urban-rural divide. Eighty percent of Canadians live in cities, and half of indigenous people reside in rural areas, leaving many urbanites unaware of the systemic and longstanding racism plaguing indigenous people. But if you look beyond the urban enclaves to Canada’s rural backyard, you see a more complete picture.

I grew up in a small Saskatchewan town two hours east of where Mr. Boushie was killed. As a Dene girl of 7, I was accused of stealing while I was browsing the aisles of a girls’ accessories store. I was 15 when a friend, a Cree hockey player, said a white man spat on him during a game.

When I was in college, a young man (whose father, brother and uncle were members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) declared one night that he wanted to be a police officer so that he “could shoot” some Indians. I was young, trying to make friends, and didn’t challenge the comment. Later, when I mentioned the incident to a person there that evening, he told me that the comment wasn’t about race, but the fact that “natives just commit more crime.”

Failing to call out racism makes it easier for people to believe there isn’t any. Worse yet, racism becomes so acceptable we stop being able to recognize it. In November, a major political candidate said that when he was growing up in Saskatchewan he “didn’t even know that racism existed.”