Indigenous Deaths In Custody Book Review

Introduction In the book, Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries Into Indigenous Deaths in Custody by Sherene H. Razack. Razack talks about the Canadian approach to Indigenous people and the different forms in which they are mistreated in the Canadian Justice System. Indigenous people in Canada have been viewed as “less of a person” than the normal white civilian. European Settlers have been trying to assimilate the Aboriginal community into the “white way of life” since they took over their land, when Canada first came about. Canada disadvantaged Aboriginal people by creating the Indian Act (1876). Razack has many arguments that arise throughout the book, I will analyze and critique them in regards to the history of Canada, racial profiling and Indigenous peoples encounters with authority and the law (most police issues).
History
Canada is known for its many cultures, ethnics, and races …show more content…
They plead guilty because they did not understand what was going on, they did not have a lawyer, and the justice system did not trust them therefore, they had lower credibility. There can be no encounter more typical in settler colonialism than the encounter between a police officer and an Indigenous person arrested for drunkenness. The relationship between the police and Indigenous people is one of regular, intimate, and violent contact, a relationship in which the indigenous boy itself is treated as a frontier. Parks and streets where indigenous people are to be found become a frontier, a place where law has authorized its own absence, and where the police can violate Indigenous people with impunity. The most iconic deaths of Indigenous in custody looks at freezing deaths. Indigenous men are found on the outskirts of the city of Saskatoon, where police all had encounters with them before their deaths. This misconduct has been seen as an extreme issue where Human Rights have been