'They always targeted Nigel': Army veteran's family tells Indigenous inquiry of police harassment

"Nigel's dream was to join the Canadian Army. He succeeded. He fulfilled his dream," said his father, John Philip Bosum. "I just don't understand why the community and the police couldn't show him more respect."

Jesse Feith, Montreal Gazette

Published on: March 21, 2018
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Growing up in Mistissini, all Nigel Bosum ever wanted as a child was military toys — tanks, planes, soldiers and so on. When his parents gifted him anything else, he sought other children around the Cree community and looked to make trades.

By his early teens, he had already started what his family refers to as his “pre-military” training.

Bosum, 37 today, would build shelters in the woods and stay overnight. He’d lift weights, climb through ditches and run his own ruck marches: wearing camouflage, he would fill a backpack until it weighed at least 100 pounds, and then trek through town, exhausted, for kilometres on end.

That’s when he first felt targeted by the local police force.

At 14, he says, officers from the Eeyou Eenou Police Force started confronting him during his training. They would force him to empty out his backpack, then confiscate his hunting knives, boots, jacket or helmet and have him pay cash to get the items back.

This happened time and time again, Bosum told a public inquiry in Montreal this week. Known as the Viens commission, the inquiry is looking into the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and public services in Quebec.

Once of age, Bosum enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces through its Indigenous entry program. His training and work took him across Quebec and to Western Canada. In the mid-2000s, he deployed to Afghanistan for six months.

At home in Mistissini, meanwhile, his parents struggled to sleep. They cancelled their newspaper subscriptions and stopped watching the news. They feared phone calls and unexpected doorbell rings.

“When Nigel came home, he was different,” Bosum’s stepmother, Lorraine Beaton, told the inquiry.

He was quiet and more reserved. Whatever happened in Afghanistan, she said, he wouldn’t talk about it. He started drinking to cope.

After stints in and out of the army, Bosum was living in a small house in Mistissini with his parents, wife and their two young children — “housing was very limited on the reserve,” Beaton said — when the alleged police harassment started again.

“For some reason, they always targeted Nigel,” Beaton said of the police. “They wanted to get him on something, somewhere along the way.”

Without court orders, the family said, officers would visit and say they had to check on Bosum because he was drinking and, given his military experience, was considered dangerous. They’d confiscate his father’s hunting rifles for good measure, the family added. The police force could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The tension from it all aggravated Bosum’s post-traumatic stress disorder, the inquiry heard. He started having anxiety attacks and was prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication to help.

On June 23, 2016, Bosum spent the night in a shelter he built in the woods. Heavy rains forced him to return home sooner than expected. Come early morning, he said, he noticed a man on a four-wheeler and asked him for a ride. Bosum said he was holding his camping machete in one hand, near his chest, while also holding a blanket over his shoulders.

The man refused and rushed off. Police arrived soon after. From about 100 feet away, Bosum said, officers drew their guns and ordered him to the ground.

Bosum was handcuffed, put in a police cruiser and brought to the Mistissini detention centre. Once there, he testified, he was told he wouldn’t be allowed visitors and was barely fed. When he spoke up about being thirsty, he was handed an empty bottle and told to fill it with water from the cell’s toilet.

He was transferred to a detention centre in Waswanipi the next day, roughly two-and-a-half hours away, and then to one in Amos, another three hours away, for two more nights. He was charged with aggravated assault and weapon possession, Beaton said.

“The police described me as holding the machete in a threatening manner,” a straight-faced Bosum told the inquiry. “They insisted I was threatening.”

When released on conditions from Amos, four days after being arrested, Bosum was given a bus ticket home. The only bus going through that day had already passed. Without his wallet, he spent the night in a shelter.

At the inquiry, Bosum’s father, John Philip Bosum, testified about running into the man driving the four-wheeler. It was during the early stages of the court proceedings.

“This thing about your son,” he recalled him saying, “I don’t really want to do it. It’s the police that are forcing me to press charges against him.”

When it came time for the man to testify in court, the Bosum family said he told the prosecution he wouldn’t do it. At a court hearing in December 2017, it was announced the charges were being dropped.

“Nigel’s dream was to join the Canadian Army. He succeeded. He fulfilled his dream,” his father said, growing emotional. “I just don’t understand why the community and the police couldn’t show him more respect.”

Today, Bosum lives in northern Alberta with his wife and children. He flew to Montreal to testify at the inquiry and left the next morning.

He says he moved out west because he doesn’t feel welcome in Mistissini and doesn’t want his children growing up in the community. He cashed in his pension to afford the move, he said, and now works as a dishwasher.

“The overall effect of all of this — on Nigel, his partner, his children and us as well,” Beaton told the inquiry, “is that it has broken up our family.”

After the family’s testimony, Paul Crépeau, an attorney overseeing the hearings, briefly addressed Bosum. He wanted to tell him something, he said, in case no one else had: “Thank you, Nigel, for serving your country.”

http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/they-always-targeted-nigel-army-veterans-family-tells-indigenous-inquiry-of-police-harassment