Warning: The story contains a video that may be disturbing to viewers
The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) is calling on the RCMP to lay charges after a man was attacked Sunday in Battleford, Sask., about 125 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
The FSIN, which represents Saskatchewan’s First Nations, made the call in a news release Tuesday.
“We are sickened and saddened by the anger, violence and racism that was brought into our yard,” Eleanore Sunchild, a high-profile lawyer who owns the land where the attack took place, said in the FSIN release.
Colby Tootoosis, 40, a friend of Sunchild’s, was unhooking a trailer he had borrowed while his six-year-old daughter was sitting in his truck.
Surveillance video from the home shows a man approach Tootoosis and punch him in the face. The man then pulls Tootoosis to the ground by his braid and knees him in the face.
The man repeatedly shouts, “where are my f—ing pants?”
Two other men were there but did not participate in the attack.
WARNING: This video may disturb some viewers. This surveillance video, taken in Battleford, Sask., and provided by Eleanore Sunchild, shows three men approaching another as he unhooks a trailer. One proceeds to punch him and pull him to the ground by his braid.
In a written statement on social media, Tootoosis said he believes the man was searching for a phone, bag and pants that had been stolen.
Tootoosis said the men told him they had tracked the phone to the location he was at.
Attack racially motivated: FSIN, Eleanore Sunchild
Sunchild and the FSIN say what happened to Tootoosis, who is from Poundmaker Cree Nation, was racially motivated.
“One guy jumps over and brutally attacks him and pulls him by his braid and holds him to the ground. That to me screams racism,” Sunchild told CBC News on Tuesday.
“If it was a non-Native man … I don’t think that they would have attacked him.”
Sunchild said she has provided RCMP with additional surveillance footage that shows another male biking down the alleyway behind her property and dropping something off. She said that video also shows the three men present during the attack finding a bag with a phone in the carport at the back of her home.
“They find the bag and then they go back up on the street. And then Colby arrives to return the trailer. He’s standing out there and unhooking it. And then those guys come in. The one guy attacked him,” Sunchild said.
Tootoosis’s brother Mylan Tootoosis said Colby’s face is swollen around the nose and that he has a bit of a black eye.
“He’s feeling physically and mentally and emotionally exhausted,” Mylan said in an interview with CBC.
“What really bugged me is the fact that he targeted the hair. That’s a no-no in Indigenous culture.”
RCMP say charges have not been laid at this time.
“Investigations take time to complete,” Saskatchewan RCMP wrote in a statement. “North Battleford RCMP are continuing their investigation into this incident, including working to identify and locate the suspects involved.”
Betty Nippi-Albright, the NDP critic for First Nations and Métis Relations and Truth and Reconciliation, said she is “absolutely appalled” by the incident and that “racism has no place in our province.”
She said she’s “heartbroken that a six-year-old bore witness to this unprovoked attack. Sadly, attacks such as this one occur all too often in Saskatchewan. I stand with the FSIN in urging a swift investigation and appropriate charges.”
“I also implore the people of Saskatchewan to write their MLAs and demand immediate action on the disproportionate levels of violence facing Indigenous people,” Betty Nippi-Albright said.
