While performing at this year’s Bluesfest last Friday in Ottawa, the US rap-rock group presented statistics on the violence experienced by members of the Indigenous community across the country. “An Indigenous person in Canada is more than 10 times more likely to be shot and killed by a police officer than a white person,” read a screen behind the band during the show, citing analysis conducted by CTV News. The band also highlighted statistics involving missing and murdered Indigenous women at the annual music festival in Ottawa. “In Canada, Indigenous women and girls are 16 times more likely to be murdered or disappeared than white women,” concertgoers could read elsewhere in the show. Violence against Indigenous women is a long-standing issue in Canada, with advocates calling on the federal government to do more to prevent their deaths. A report published in 2019 as a result of a national inquiry said the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada amounted to “genocide”. Other phrases also appeared behind the band as they played, such as “Settler-colonialism is killer” and “Land Back”. The politically outspoken group recently used its broadcasts in the United States to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, removing the constitutional right to abortion. “Forced childbirth in a country where black birth mothers experience maternal mortality rates two to three times higher than white birth mothers,” the screen read for several seconds during a concert in Wisconsin on July 9. The group cited a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistic. Their appearance in Ottawa was one of the band’s first live shows in more than a decade. The four-piece also performed in Quebec on Saturday night and will continue their “Public Service Announcement” tour with dates in Hamilton, Ont. and Toronto this week. With files from CNN.
