Collecting grief: Indigenous peoples, deaths by police and a global pandemic

Abstract

For centuries, Indigenous people in North American have endured a vast array of interruptions and disruptions affecting all aspects of our culture and societies. As a result, Indigenous people have had to respond by continuously adapting traditional ways and have grieved these losses individually and communally. The ongoing conditions directly associated with settler colonialism are revealed in systematic and systemic racism and violence in the present. The global COVID-19 pandemic revealed more publically these structural inequities that are experienced by Indigenous people living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In April 2020, three Indigenous people were killed by police, causing Indigenous people to adapt the ways they participate in end-of-life ceremonies. Through our communal connections, when something happens to one Indigenous person, it happens to all of us. As the community addresses these losses, they do so under the constraints of the pandemic and the systemic racism propagated through the colonial lens of the police and the news media which continues to misunderstand and critique Indigenous people’s ways. This essay will explore the ways in which grieving is a communal experience for Indigenous people and how the global pandemic COVID-19 further complicates grieving for Indigenous peoples.