Indigenous police services in Canada are police forces under the control of a First Nation or Inuit government.
The power of Indigenous governments to establish independent police services varies, and only First Nations and Inuit communities governed by the Indian Act can establish their own police forces. Métis governments, First Nations, and Inuit governments that have completed the comprehensive land claims process can only contract police services to a third-party police force.
The powers of Indigenous police services also vary; some cannot complete criminal investigations without outside consultation, or maintain specialized resources such as police dogs or crime labs.
History
Background
The policing of Indigenous communities in Canada has long been fraught with racial tension, inequitable police service delivery, and the enforcement of colonial laws and practices. During the federal government's imposition of municipal-style elected councils on First Nations, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided the government buildings of traditional Indigenous hereditary chiefs’ councils and oversaw the subsequent council elections — the Six Nations of the Grand River Elected Council was originally referred to as the "Mounties Council."
The RCMP was also involved in enforcing Canada's residential school system—a system that sought to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture, and was later found to have amounted to cultural genocide—by serving as truant officers, citing parents who refused to allow their children attend residential schools, and routinely assisting Indian agents in bringing children to the schools, sometimes by force.
During the Gustafsen Lake standoff in 1995, an RCMP commander reportedly told a subordinate to kill a prominent Indigenous demonstrator and "smear the prick and everyone with him," and an RCMP media liaison officer was quoted as saying that "smear campaigns are [the RCMP's] specialty." That same year, an Ontario Provincial Police sniper shot and killed an unarmed Indigenous activist, Dudley George, during the Ipperwash Crisis. Between 1990 and 2000, officers of the Saskatoon Police Service took at least four Indigenous people for wintertime "starlight tours," which involved driving drunk or disorderly Indigenous people to Corman Park or distant industrial areas and abandoning them there without suitable clothing.
Indigenous-led policing
Many Indigenous peoples lived in rural and/or remote locations, which were often served by the same agencies that provided rural policing to the provinces such as the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), and Sûreté du Québec (SQ).
Announced in the early 1960s and beginning in the mid-1960s, the federal government began to withdraw RCMP officers from reserves in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in favour of provincial control over First Nations policing. The pull-out was officially completed when the "Indian agent" role was abolished in 1971.
At the same time, individual First Nations began to establish self-administered police services, employ non-sworn "band constables" to assist police, or participate in special constabulary programs that facilitated the hiring of Indigenous police officers, creating a decentralized patchwork of police service delivery across Canadian First Nations.
In 1968, the Kahnawake Mohawk Nation established the Kahnawake Peacekeepers, which is the only Indigenous police service in North America composed entirely of Indigenous staff. After the killing of stick-holding Mohawk steelworker David Cross by SQ officers in 1979, Kahnawake leaders warned that SQ officers would be arrested if they tried to enter the territory again.
In 1975, the Ontario Indian Special Constable Program was established by the federal and provincial governments in response to the Ontario Task Force on Policing in 1972. The officers were appointed at the request of chiefs and councils, and these community officers were supported, administratively and operationally, by the OPP. By 1988 the program included 132 officers in over 66 locations. The Amerindian Police Program was also established in 1975, in Quebec.
Dissatisfaction began to grow throughout the 1970s and 1980s with Canada's approaches to policing Indigenous peoples. Although, several communities had established their own independent police services by 1978, these communities, for the most part, were served by the same agencies that provided rural policing to the provinces.