Structural Violence in Unexpected Indigenous Police Custody Deaths; Canada & Australia

Abstract

The police incarceration for petty offences like intoxication includes many instances where missed medical conditions have resulted in unexpected deaths. I argue through exploratory research Indigenous cases, primarily from no-fault, no-blame Canadian and Australian Inquests that the attribution of the ‘drunken Indian’ trope results in cursory inspections of prisoners that is structurally differential care than mainstream society. This is only preliminary inductive logic. I treat these cases as latent structural violence. I peel away the layers of the onion to posit how colonial reasoning such as the ‘drunk Indian’, the ‘noble savage’, Said’s Orientalism, social Darwinism, and Eugenics have a role in police inhumanity. These assimilationist colonial constructs are confounded by police work’s normal stresses. Police officers should help facilitate individual and community Indigenous self-determination in order to break these cycles.