Saskatchewan's battle against racism is making some progress

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If rural and urban Saskatchewan can agree on one thing, it’s likely how we are often unfairly portrayed as unwelcoming and downright racist toward both newcomers and the Indigenous population.

Yes, we have problems we can’t ignore. We must be vigilant. We must work to improve.

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Saskatchewan's battle against racism is making some progress Back to video

But what’s frustrating is that we do seem to be an easy target for others, who neither really understand us or don’t always give us credit for who we are or the progress we’ve made.

A lot of good people here do small things every day to fight the perception of racism because neither they nor this province are that way. Quietly, the government is also doing things for which it doesn’t get credit. It might not seem like much, but it may say more about us than we realize.

“There is a sense we are a right-wing people that don’t think (about racism),” Justice Minister Don Morgan said in a recent interview. “I don’t think it’s like that at all. There is a desire to be understanding and supportive.”

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It’s been 13 years since Maclean’s magazine dubbed North Central Regina “Mississippi North” — an image that’s especially hard to shake, given that this story is embedded in the Canadian Encyclopedia. But credit should go to the North Central Regina community, itself, that is doing its utmost to deal with both the issues and problems.

More support from government would help, but inner cities all over North America struggle with the same issues. An arbitrary designation by a media outlet as the “worst” doesn’t prove the worst or define us. Nor does it capture the reality that we are doing a lot of little things to be better.

It’s still an uphill battle because such a big issue requires both a societal rethinking and restructuring — no easy task for any jurisdiction.

The not-guilty verdict after the murder trial of Biggar-area farmer Gerald Stanley in the shooting death of 22-year-old Red Pheasant First Nation resident Colten Boushie “exposed a seam of racism that was hidden before” among some Saskatchewan people, Morgan noted.

And one can certainly argue that the Sask. Party government’s poor handling of the Justice for Our Stolen Children teepee protest that popped up on a lawn across from the Legislative Building was a missed opportunity.

But while it often seems we’re just spinning our wheels or going backwards on issues of race relations, we also don’t give ourselves credit for the progress we are making.

While last year’s Sixties Scoop apology may have been imperfect, it was a step forward. That First Nations culture is fully woven into the school curriculum and we have a Lieutenant-Governor in Russell Mirasty are both practical symbolic steps. So is the appointment since March 2018 of four provincial judges of Indigenous ancestry — Judges McAuley, Brass, Pelletier and Crooks, with Crooks since elevated to the Court of Queen’s Bench. (Another judge of First Nations ancestry is expected to be appointed within days.)

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Tomorrow marks the three-year anniversary of the Quebec City mosque shooting, with the Islamic Association of Saskatchewan calling for a National Day of Action Against Hate and Intolerance rather than a day of Remembrance and Action Against Islamophobia — a testament, Morgan noted, to how the newer communities in this province have a deeper understanding of each other’s struggles.

Synagogues in Saskatchewan cities invite imams to special events, and mosques often invite rabbis to their special events, the justice minister noted. “That doesn’t happen in a lot of places of the world,” Morgan said.

Saskatchewan’s population boom of the last 15 years is literally changing the face of the province with the influx of visible minorities. Morgan noted that any initial apprehension over the 800 Filipino nurses and their spouses taking good-paying jobs here quickly faded into the notion that this province was getting a “two-for-one deal” with hard-working new Canadians contributing to our province.

We still have racism here but we are, ever so slowly, making progress. Perhaps we just aren’t getting credit for it.

Murray Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post.