If you\u2019ve ever seen a news article about an Indigenous person being convicted of a crime and the judge considering a Gladue report in determining a sentence, you\u2019ve probably seen the white backlash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\u201cDo the crime. Do the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo one gets special treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEveryone gets treated the same.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s just it though. We aren\u2019t all treated the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We haven\u2019t all had to deal with the cascading effects of generations of our ancestors experiencing the mental, physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, and cultural abuse of residential schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We haven\u2019t all had to deal with living our entire pre-adult life in and out of foster homes because we were stolen from our homes, just like the other 90% of the youth in foster care, who are also Indigenous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We haven\u2019t all had to deal with poorer health outcomes, higher poverty rates, lower education completion rates, higher substance abuse rates, and prevalent crime, all a result of your community being vastly and chronically underfunded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which isn\u2019t to say that every Indigenous person who commits a crime has, but that\u2019s the point of the Gladue report: determine if they have and how that may have influenced their life choices that eventually led them to commit that crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019d be wonderful if we were all treated equally, but that\u2019s hard to do when the system already doesn\u2019t treat us all equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n