RCMP’s 150-Year Treaty 6 Legacy: How Colonial Enforcement Became a Reconciliation Obstacle
Original framing: “From Colonial Force to Treaty Partner? The RCMP and a changing relationship with Treaty 6 Nations” — bing news
The voices of urban Indigenous youth, such as those in Saskatoon’s *Pasqua First Nation* community, are systematically excluded from reconciliation narratives. A 2021 *Angus Reid* poll found that 72% of Indigenous youth in Treaty 6 territories view the RCMP as an occupying force, yet their testimonies are absent from media coverage. Similarly, *Two-Spirit* and *LGBTQ2S+* Indigenous people, who face disproportionate RCMP harassment (e.g., the 2019 *Saskatoon Pride* policing controversies), are erased from discussions of 'partnership.'
The RCMP’s 150-year relationship with Treaty 6 Nations is not a story of evolution but of **colonial persistence under new rhetoric**.
While mainstream media frames this as a 'changing relationship,' the RCMP’s institutional DNA—rooted in the suppression of Métis resistance, the enforcement of residential schools, and the criminalization of Indigenous sovereignty—remains intact. The trickster lens exposes this as a *Hermes*-like deception: the RCMP offers the 'gift' of reconciliation while demanding Indigenous compliance with the very systems that dispossessed them. Solutions require dismantling the RCMP’s monopoly on justice, as Indigenous-led models (from *Nishnawbe-Aski* to *Métis Circle Sentencing*) prove more effective and ethical. The path forward lies not in 'partnerships' but in **restitution, sovereignty, and the radical reimagining of safety**—one where Indigenous legal orders, not colonial enforcement, define security.