10 June 2020
On Thursday, June 4th, Chantel Moore of Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation (on Vancouver Island, British Columbia) was shot and killed by a police officer in Edmundston, New Brunswick during a well-being check.
The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, which serves 14 Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations including Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, has issued calls for immediate action for justice, including:
- “immediate action in our request for an independent investigation on the police fatally shooting a 26-year-old Nuu-chah-nulth woman in the early hours of Thursday June 4th in Edmundston, New Brunswick.”
- “immediate action on this request and to be updated throughout the entirely of the process. We call for action on implementing measures to ensure conduct and police practices are done in a way that de-escalates a situation and to use trauma-informed practice when doing so. We ask that changes be made to police conduct in this sense to ensure more lives are not lost in this devastating manner.”
The Women’s Council echoes these calls to action and expresses our deepest concern and support for the family and communities of Chantel Moore. We bear witness to the grief, pain, fear, and outrage caused by ongoing systemic and institutional violence against Indigenous women. Her death is a stark reminder that there is so much more work to be done to address colonialism in our province. We join organizations and individuals in naming that Chantel Moore was killed the day after the one-year anniversary of the publication of Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
The Women’s Council commits, as per our mandate, to study and consult the role of policing in our communities and to bring our findings and recommendations to the attention of government and the public. This work must not be limited to considering who should be conducting well-being checks; it must also examine the role of police and the funding provided to them. This work must also be grounded in anti-racism and decolonization – as all our gender equality work must be.
The Women’s Council recognizes that we are making this commitment while protests and action take place worldwide in support of the Movement for Black Lives and to address the role of policing in perpetuating anti-Black racism and upholding white supremacy. While anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Black racism, and other forms of racism have distinct histories and are perpetrated differently, they are also interconnected – all these layers and complexities must inform our analysis and recommendations.
