The Daily UbuntuThread 03 · Racialized but Human · September 23, 2026
A mother who was not believed
On the night her son Colten Boushie died, police officers treated Debbie Baptiste as a suspect. An oversight body found discrimination.
1 · The scene
A November evening in Trois-Rivières. At the end of the intensive care corridor, a night nurse already knows what she has to tell the man waiting, his cap in his hands.
She does not stay standing. She pulls up a chair, sits beside him, waits until he looks at her. Then she says his son's first name before saying the rest. Later, he will not remember the exact words. He will remember that she sat down, and that she did not look at the clock.
Original vignette
2 · The documented case
The night a mother was suspected
On August 9, 2016, Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man from the Red Pheasant First Nation, was shot and killed on a farm in Saskatchewan. On February 9, 2018, an all-white jury acquitted the farm's owner of murder and manslaughter. During jury selection, the defence had used five peremptory challenges, without having to justify them, to exclude visibly Indigenous prospective jurors.
On the night of the tragedy, RCMP officers went to the home of Colten's mother, Debbie Baptiste. According to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, they surrounded the house, gave very little information about her son's death and searched the premises. One officer asked her whether she had been drinking; at least one other smelled her breath. In March 2021, the Commission concluded that this treatment amounted to discrimination based on race and made 17 recommendations. The RCMP Commissioner accepted this finding.
The country also changed its rules. Since September 19, 2019, peremptory challenges have been abolished in jury trials, a reform the Supreme Court found constitutional in 2021 (R. v. Chouhan). The hardest part remains: that every Indigenous family be received, at the worst moment of its life, as a grieving family, and not as a suspect.
3 · The voice
“They compounded her suffering by treating her as if she were lying.”
4 · The question
At the most fragile moment of a life, what difference does it make to be received as a mother rather than as a suspect?
Sources
- The Colten Boushie case (The Canadian Encyclopedia) thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
- Civilian Commission report on discrimination against Colten Boushie's mother (Global News, 2021) globalnews.ca
- Report on the RCMP investigation in the Boushie case (The Canadian Press, CJME, 2021) www.cjme.com
- R. v. Chouhan, 2021 SCC 26 (Supreme Court of Canada, 2021) www.scc-csc.gc.ca
Every figure on this page links to a verifiable public source.
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