The Indian Posse (IP) is an indigenous street gang set in Western Canada based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It is one of the largest street gangs in Canada.
Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) has designated the IP as being a member of indigenous-based organized crime (IBOC), along with Redd Alert and the Manitoba Warriors. CISC asserts that the Indian Posse, in addition to engaging in marijuana cultivation, auto theft, illegal firearms activities, gambling, and drug trafficking, also supports and facilitates criminal activities for the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and Asian-based networks.
The Wolfe brothers
The gang was founded in the summer of 1988 in Winnipeg as a street gang by the Wolfe brothers, Danny and Richard. Richard Daniel Wolfe was born in 1975 and Daniel Richard Wolfe was born in 1976. The Wolfe brothers were Cree, but spoke English as their first language though Danny Wolfe as an adult expressed the wish to learn the Cree language. Danny Wolfe was born premature and suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome as his mother drank during her pregnancy. Throughout his life, Danny Wolfe displayed poor self-control, anger issues and a tendency towards aggression, which are typical of those born with fetal alcohol syndrome. The father of the Wolfe brothers, Richard Wolfe Sr, was an alcoholic while their mother, Susan Creeley, was a drug addict and an alcoholic who by her own admission failed dismally at being a mother. As a father, Richard Wolfe Sr, was only irregularly involved in raising his sons, and was last seen by them in 1988. Richard Wolfe Sr. ended up living on the streets. Creely's father was the chief of the Okanese First Nation reservation in Saskatchewan and he was a highly respected World War II veteran. But his life fell apart due to his alcoholism, and he regularly beat his wife and children. Creeley attended a residential school from the age of 6 onward and was raped by her teacher, causing her to engage in heavy drinking from the age of 12 onward. In an interview, Creeley defined her mothering as: "I just went to the party and got drunk. I didn't give a shit. I did that because I didn't have any love in my heart and I didn't have parenting skills. I lost that in the residential schools". In sentencing Richard Wolfe Jr. in 2015 following his convictions for rape and assault, the judge stated: "He was raised in an environment where substance abuse and domestic violence was prevalent. Richard was repeatedly exposed to violence which occurred during his parents' house parties. He was sexually abused at the age of seven, once by a stranger and twice by a neighbour. The episodes of sexual abuse left Richard confused, ashamed and full of hate".
Creeley lived on welfare, but spent so much money on alcohol and drugs that her sons were usually hungry. To feed themselves, the Wolfe brothers started stealing, smashing the windows of cars to steal whatever money happened to be in the car in order to buy food, leading to frequent arrests. By the age of 10, Danny Wolfe was already an accomplished shop-lifter and stole his first automobile. The Wolfe brothers grew up in the "howling chaos of the North End" of Winnipeg where the people live in a Third World level of poverty and where arson, shootings, heavy drinking on the streets, prostitution and drug abuse were daily occurrences. The journalist Jon Friesen wrote about the Wolfe brothers: "By the time they were about ten or eleven years old, Danny and Richard were quite accustomed to raising themselves. They had no regard for conventional rules or morality. They saw themselves as survivors and were prepared to do whatever it took to make it". Creeley, who stopped her substance abuse and drinking in 2001, believes that if she had been a better mother, her sons might have chosen a different path, and now works as an youth counselor, trying to save troubled First Nations young people from the fate of her sons.