WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
A sea of tall grass and wildflowers marks the way to the final resting place of Colten Boushie. Although his ancestors have been coming here for generations, few people outside of his immediate family know the location.
“I didn’t want nobody to hurt him,” said William Baptiste, Boushie’s older brother.
“I wanted to put him in a calm place where only our loved ones can find him.”
On Aug. 9, 2016, Boushie was killed by a single bullet to the back of the head. His body was then pulled from the vehicle he was in and left in the grass for a full day, unprotected from the elements as RCMP began investigating.
“At that time, my brother was laying dead somewhere in a field while it was raining. And there was nothing that I could do to retrieve his body,” Baptiste said.
Five years later, an independent RCMP oversight commission determined that the RCMP racially discriminated against his mother, Debbie Baptiste, on the night he died.
That same investigation would find deficiencies in the RCMP’s response, including their treatment of witnesses, unreasonable delays in obtaining search warrants and the loss of evidence.
William Baptiste said by the time his brother’s body was returned to the family, his main focus was protecting Colten from further harm.
“We were in fear that somebody would desecrate my brother’s grave, given how much media coverage it got [and] how much people were upset over the situation,” he said.
The killing and the subsequent trial revealed deep divides between First Nations people and non-Indigenous people in rural Saskatchewan. Gerald Stanley, the man who shot Boushie, was a white farmer from Biggar, a town just down the road from Red Pheasant Cree Nation.
At Stanley’s trial, his lawyer Scott Spencer argued Stanley’s handgun went off accidentally. On Feb. 18, 2018, a jury found him not guilty of either second-degree murder or manslaughter.
CBC News cannot verify the race of the 12 jurors selected for the trial, but at the time, the Boushie family said they were angered that Indigenous-looking jury candidates were challenged and excluded by Stanley’s defence team.
“That case received a lot of attention across the country because it encapsulated all of the injustice that has been done to Indigenous people across Canada,” said Eleanore Sunchild, the family’s lawyer.
Sunchild agreed to represent the family in the early days of the RCMP investigation into Boushie’s death. Although Stanley was eventually charged with second-degree murder, Sunchild said early communications from RCMP framed the investigation as a “theft-related” incident rather than a murder case.
She said it was clear from the start that Boushie’s family was being discriminated against — a common experience for Indigenous families facing the justice system.
“Colten put a face to that injustice.”
Early on, the case captured the attention of Indigenous rights movements like Idle No More, with thousands pouring onto the streets to rally for justice.
On the other side of the racial divide stood those who defended Stanley’s actions. They gathered in town halls and spoke about the right to bear arms. A GoFundMe account in support of Stanley’s legal costs surpassed its goal of $200,000.
The not guilty verdict sent shockwaves across the country.
“As long as I live, I will never forget the moment of the verdict because it felt like something hit the courthouse,” said Sunchild, who remembers the tears and the stunned silence on the family’s side of the courtroom.
“I had hoped at least that they would find manslaughter because that would have given the family a sort of closure, not complete, but some sort of closure, some sort of justice.
“But that wasn’t what happened.”
Trauma triggered every time it makes the news
Ten years later, old wounds are quick to re-open, including this past May, when Tory MLA Josh Guenter called Gerald Stanley a victim during a legislative debate about the use of force to protect a person’s home. When that news broke, the impact on Boushie’s family was swift.
“We get the news on TV and it just hurt. It was just like a punch in the stomach and it was just happening all over again,” said Debbie Baptiste, who was packing lunch for a day of swimming with her grandchildren when Guenter’s comments hit the news.
“And I started feeling sick and I kept saying, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do this again. It hurts too much.’”
Debbie says every time her son’s death is brought up online or in the news she has to endure hateful comments and slander, especially through social media.
“Somebody always has to criticize my son, Colten Boushie, and they have to bring him out from the grave,” she said.
“And then they start saying things about him — that he was a gangster, and he was no gangster. He walked alone, he did his own things, he made his own money. He didn’t need to go around stealing. He didn’t need to go around with the gang.”
This weekend marks a decade since Colten Boushie’s death. The young man from Red Pheasant Cree Nation was killed after entering a Saskatchewan farmer’s yard in August 2016. His family hopes he can be remembered for more than the way he died.
When Debbie thinks of her son, she remembers him as a child with Harry Potter-style glasses who loved to read.
“He said this world would get along if everybody just grabbed a good book and found a shaded tree to sit under to read it.”
Family wants him remembered as an educated, loving young man
Sunchild says she often has to remind people that Boushie was never on trial, but it often felt that way in the court of public opinion.
“Right from the start … we had to take every step, especially Debbie had to take every step she could to show Colten’s humanity,” Sunchild said.
“So she would always talk about who he was as a person, you know, to make him real, because to them, to people in this province — not all of them, I must say, because there were allies that came forward — but to a lot of people in this province he was not seen as a human. He was seen as a drunken Indian, a thief, a savage Indian. You know, all of the stereotypes that have been attributed to Indigenous people since colonization, we’ve seen in this case.”
Debbie and William want the world to remember Colten as a loving, hardworking young man who had a bright future ahead of him.
“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” William said.
Despite the hateful things Debbie continues to hear about her son, she says she won’t stop fighting for him. And she encourages others who are facing similar injustices to do the same.
“Get up and fight. Don’t lay down. Don’t let this take you down, take your life away,” she said.
“You get up and fight, ’cause then there’s a whole generation behind us. There’s young people that are gonna be here when we’re gone.”
