Warriors Off The Res: Aboriginal Gangs in Winnipeg

a lot of our people our young nation are leaving to find their place and they weren't ready for our people rival gang pull the gun around me stuck in my face talking to my kids mom's face I didn't care mine he loaded he cocked it I wrestled it from when and Charlotte was like I'll put it so in their minds I think they're forming a brotherhood of like-minded people people that all feel disadvantaged and outcasts or the outside of society and they decided they were going to take theirs Winnipeg is the capital city of Manitoba Canada it's a prairie city with a population just under a hundred thousand about ten percent of which are of Aboriginal descent in addition to having the largest urban Aboriginal population in the country when a peg is also known for something else it's been Canada's murder capital 16 times since 1981 officers showed off today a huge haul of guns and drugs and the source of the majority of this crime isn't exactly something that people would expect in the middle of Canada Aboriginal street gangs the only thing I ever wanted to be you know I mean chuckles only hate is when one of my first being in you know so there was no other way then the gang with their kids and what part of that did you look at and say like yeah I want that belonging money first belong in the woman gangs like the Manitoba Warriors Indian Posse a native syndicate are the most infamous of Winnipeg's 35 active gangs only you step up first gun fight you know in the way they with you so that's what I did I just oh man all that you know it was in it being stab you up after you know so think twice bullfight mean you know I may be a little guy but you know think twice about trying to muscle me think twice for trying to tell me something and think twice for try that take something in mind I think twice for trying to talk to me like I'm a punk you know any weakness you know I'll stab yourself nationally we have the reputation of being the murder crime capital of Canada and violent crime capital a lot of people refer to Winnipeg as murder pig we met up with James jewel a former Winnipeg police officer he served 25 years on the force and eight years in homicide first someone who's never heard about Aboriginal gang violence in Winnipeg how would you explain what's going on in the city to them when I started policing in 1987 Winnipeg we really didn't have Aboriginal street gangs and there was an evolution that took place with the yellow motorcycle gangs they needed to build relationships with people to do their dirty work for them to push their drugs and move their drugs so doing the gangs heavy lifting they were always looking for someone to step in and play those roles to to insulate themselves from law enforcement and when it came to a lot of these Aboriginal kids they came from disadvantaged homes and the opportunity to make fast money real money appeal to a lot of them and the level of violence that they were using was escalating and and really waking us up to the reality that Winnipeg had a gang problem and why does it seem like there's so many First Nations and métis members engaged in creating their own Aboriginal specific gangs in the city a common denominator I think that they would have is poverty the gang makes a lot of promises and they promise money they promised employment by virtue of drug trafficking they promise Brotherhood respect love all these things that the gang promises to these kids that don't get it in their lives and in reality all of those things are false promises as with most of the Americas the land that's now Canada was once inhabited by a number of Aboriginal tribes when Britain colonized Canada irreversible conflicts and divides were created between those native to the land and newcomers and it's this fallout from colonization that many believe is the root of the wide range of issues that Aboriginal people face in Canada today we went to the sagging First Nations reserve outside of the city to meet with an elder and community teacher named Eric Christian my father they listened to his stories they were independent they had independent thinking they didn't rely on anybody to to feed them at themselves they looked after themselves in it and they did it from the land so what ended up happening was that the government kind of created this dependency right when they forced our people onto this reserve in addition to essentially imprisoning Aboriginal people on reserves Canada also systematically tried to strip them of their culture and way of life with the creation of what we're known as residential schools Indian Residential schools were created as early as 1840 and by 1884 attendance was mandatory for all Aboriginal people under the age of 16 large numbers of Aboriginal peoples children were forcibly seized by the government and and in my opinion incarcerated in residential schools where they were told that to be an Indian was bad and were prohibited from speaking their language or practicing their cultural beliefs separated from their families we did this deliberately Canada did this deliberately to try to eliminate Indians to try to get rid of Indian nests to kill the Indian in a child as one Ottawa bureaucrat put it in the 1960s Manitoba's hydroelectric projects flooded and devastated the traditional hunting and fishing grounds of Aboriginal people that forced them to move in droves from the reserves to the city many of them arrived without job skills and settled in the poorest most dangerous neighborhoods my mom was in residential school at the age of four up until she was 16 then she ran away from there Bonnie's mother was one of the more than 150,000 children who were forced to attend residential school while she was in residential school she was abused like physically mentally emotionally was loved to speak her language what would happen if she spoke her language should we get beaten with a ruler or with are they chopped off all her hair so then when she was out raising us kids she became an alcoholic she didn't know how to deal with her abuse and then all the abuse she went through she would have used us children leave and then I grew up like that like not abusing my kids but I became an alcoholic a drug addict I joined a gang because that's where I found like security and I'm probably identity like you had no idea about I didn't know who I was and and how have you seen that you know impact your son for example look at him no he's only gained the north end Winnipeg's infamous inner-city neighborhood is where Bonnie son David grew up we met up with him and his friend Ian both of them have been in gangs for most of their lives we were really bad car thief's in the city was a notorious car thief hear us to a high ranking yeah like they were on us every day like you said this was fun we would park like 10 cars it's chilling like this it's on the side it'll be a whole whole group of us take about ten cars and we'll just smash them up crash into each other just for fun months just we didn't give a uh-huh and like how do you you know like how do you go from like stealing cars to like being affiliated with a crew like we were always affiliated we started our own as kids and everybody that was close when we were younger we started our own we just went from and gradually we moved on to a different gang as we got older bigger gang yet yeah what was the gang you're anywhere near your kids the ones you started Oh money over whatever huh and would you guys join after mental wars yeah yeah why did you start a crew when you were kid dude where is that even a thought in your head is that something you just just did one born into it - yeah just everything you seen growing up huh like I said my mom was affiliated with the words when I was younger and my dad was in the epoxy and my daughter was at the los Bravos yeah sorry just went on from there so like when you were you know growing up going from starting your own career to being a part of Manitoba Warriors like what was were you making a lot of money is that what you want it like what's the you know what's one of the big reasons that you'd be in a mourning here yes all moaning I 16 years old I own four cars dirtbike side quad ride everything ya know if teen is the gold chains coal raceless rings and that ring on every finger cars and down though the chain and seem like after a while you get sick of all that you know yeah you grow out of that right there cuz you were just so fascinated by it as a kid now you just started to realize them it's all heat no tracks attention so like growing up like you know what was that like liked was there get to fend for yourself you have to look after yourself promotion table yeah I was just almost paying my mother's bills like 13 14 because she was so inviting for drug habit like I pretty much raised my younger ones to a point tell they were old enough to take care of them so so was that normal with most dear friends like mr. dad most of us were we were like that we were providers that's why we did what we did yeah because our parents weren't capable of doing what do you make of how some of these gangs are co-opting identity and their crew so for example they have names like Indian posse native syndicate Manitoba Warriors trying to take their culture and creating it into something different historically as part of our nation there is a process in life where we all are warriors and we become warriors for for the people that teaching that being a warrior hasn't left our people but it but it's coming up within our young people because they form these relationship gains unfortunately it's built upon some part of our family networks that were damaged but it all comes down to identity but lots of our people are hungry for is that identity in that drug life gang like that's there two experts say that continuing high dropout rates and little Economic Opportunity means that membership in gangs for Aboriginal youth could double in the next ten years the age structure of the Aboriginal population is much much younger than the age structure of the population at large and it's growing more rapidly and so the factory in which the street gang guys are being manufactured that factory just keeps getting bigger and bigger and the kinds of things that are being done now to try to address the problem are futile as a society we're simply not prepared to deal with the source of the problem and the source of the problem is the severe racialized poverty that we allow to continue to exist it will continue to be violent young people will continue to kill other young people they'll continue to be incarcerated this story will just go on and on and on unless somebody who decides to take some serious action dealing with the roots or the problem despite only making up 3 percent of Canada's population about a quarter of incarcerated men are Aboriginal David served five years at Stony Mountain penitentiary there he only became more involved with the Manitoba Warriors so where are we right now we're at I was throwing impenitent she this is where I did my five-year sentence here yeah and what did you do while you were at Stoney you're telling me about how you made money and stuff like that there's a lot of drug activity I made a lot of money in there I did what I had to do surviving there yeah but it also helping who I was with the crew and so but anyway this is where I did my five years for bow shooting that guy I feel like you know the reason why Canada has prisons as you know the idea is you go in there you do your time you think come out as a you know better person you're not gonna be affiliated anymore do you think that's true you know you actually go in there learning a lot more than what you knew before oh yeah it's not your place where you Realty yourself some people I guess do but a lot of it is just playing the system to get out of it Aboriginal culture identity like does that it all play into gang culture and Winnipeg no no was this you know for the select few like we do take interest in our culture or not and we do learn to ceremonies and everything but other than that we just go that's not gonna necessarily keep you away no no because none of that's gonna solve the poverty issue or the fact that you haven't had nothing to eat today or I can go sit in a pack shark or something sell some drugs make a park full of cash and I go I got my new clothes new shoes stuff my mom's not giving me a like that what do you think could could be done to and gang culture in Winnipeg I'll never end plain and simple or whatever then never form any gang culture has become the only culture they know oh my let's take care of me my bonuses on follow nobody knows I don't want to be like me what I don't really know how to show any difference you know one's kind of heartless you know it's Lisa focus focus on my skin but you know it's the way I talk it's the so my friends you know I mean my kids uncles are all all my bros are off up you can gang members you know what I mean like that scares me in a way because I don't know got to teach my son right from wrong because myself don't know right from wrong you know what I mean I thought it myself I don't even know what I do but I don't even though I don't want to show my boy I wear like my boy still gonna know what's up I ain't no what I am is you know is you notice how we do it here Canada's succeeded in mostly destroying the cultural traditions and identity of Aboriginal people and the legacy of colonization has only replaced them with inner-city poverty and violence with the last residential school closing in 1996 the memory of segregation is still fresh in their minds and unless the government does something to address the racialized poverty in urban settings gang culture and Winnipeg will continue to erode the Aboriginal community from within

Channel: VICE News

Views: 3,304,693

Rating: 4.6380315 out of 5

Keywords: aboriginal gangs in winnipeg, aboriginal gangs, winnipeg, canada aboriginal, Aboriginal, manitoba canada, gangs, canada, murder, prairie, discrimination, native american, indian, turf war, warrior, urban crime, crime, drugs, guns, VICE News, news, VICE, documentary, interviews, breaking news, happening now, documentaries, interview, culture, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice presents, vice news, vice, vice mag, vice videos, vice news documentary

Id: TlUcsKSbpNI

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 10 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/TheLibraryOfBabel]

Intersting video. Surprised to see winnipeg on Vice. Thanks for posting OP

[u/Travesty204]

Glad Vice is reporting on this and bringing light to this situation we have here in Winnipeg.

Another issue that keeps this vicious cycle going is our prison system and laws. The prison system is broken and doesn't do anything but harm to our society, especially if you can get out for murdering someone in 5 years. Busting gang members for drugs and sending them to jail only relieves the problem temporarily, and I'll argue makes the problem worse in the long run. I see it as like putting a band-aid on a broken dam and hoping it will hold. One by one those band-aids keep falling off and more water keeps spilling out until the dam becomes irreparable because we haven't actually fixed the dam in any way shape or form. Then the dam bursts and breaks, flooding the entire city.

That may be a bit dramatic but it seems like it's going in that direction with all the shootings and stabbings recently. Canada needs to step up and remove the power from the gangs by removing the drugs from the gangs. Make every drug legal or at the very least decriminalized, it's a wild concept to most but I think can actually relieve some of the problem. There will always be drug users and instead of profiting the gangs, make some profit for our own government. That way we can spend more on places like this, the Winnipeg Drug Treatment Court and Addictions Foundation Manitoba and less money spent on prisons, policing the streets; and raiding gangs for drugs, guns and money.

If you can take power away from the gangs, then you take away the allure to join one.

[u/_mrtoast]

Thanks

[u/alkalinev]

In the 1950s, Aboriginal children represented 1% of those within the child welfare system and by the late '60s increased to represent 30-40% of all cases. It was probably the worst social policy ever instituted in the Western world. These idiots are their children. Mix poverty with bad parenting, neglect, lack of enculturation and antisocial personality traits and you get these stereotyped gangstas.

[u/sparky204]

funny i watched this earlier. I was going to post about how it is being hyped up. Ive lived in north end since i was 7 im 33 now, im raising my family here because its overall safe.

Then my dog had to chase some punk out of my yard at 4 in the morning today (my dogg is rott husky cross and very mean looking)

these gangbangers need to compete for canada in the olympics. Ive never seen someone jump so high so fast and do a 100m dash that would make usain bolt jealous

[u/barkeepjabroni]

Well, I guess the comments in this topic shows how much we feel about this overall issue. Quite sad, really.

[u/JetsandtheBombers]

I live in the northern end of Winnipeg and work during the day in the north end. I know that the north end is getting better everyday. You will see, in 20 years the north end will be how it used to be 30 years ago. Immagrants, Aboriginals, and Old North Enders will save that neighborhood.

[u/hiphopsicles]

This is an impossible to stop problem which stems mostly from poverty.

If you don't have enough money to enjoy life, you are forced find a way to get it or perish. If you lack the skills and other things needed to get an education and great paying job, you'll either fade into mediocrity or worse unless you can come up with some other way to get money.

The natural step from there if you aren't will to fade, is crime.

If you want to be an earning criminal, the best way is often trafficking drugs, guns, etc. and to do that, you pretty much have to be in a gang. So if most of the other "successful" guys in your neighborhood are in gangs, you'll just follow their path.

Short of handing out a series of amazing jobs with freedom and huge pay to pretty much everyone, crime and gangs go hand in hand with capitalism. Its here to stay.

[u/piraten]

Racists getting banned yet? Didn't think so.