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Facebook Live panel event to include reflection on Gerald Stanley trial three years ago

Feb 8, 2021 | 5:59 PM

An online panel event on Facebook Live is planned on Tuesday starting at 5 p.m. to reflect on the Gerald Stanley trial of 2018.

The focus of the event will also look back on the award-winning documentary Nipawistamasowin: We Will Stand Up. Tasha Hubbard’s film takes a deeper look at the death of Colten Boushie, and the Canada judicial system.

Boushie, a 22-year-old from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation, was fatally shot on Gerald Stanley’s farmyard near Biggar in August 2016. Stanley, who faced a second-degree murder charge in Boushie’s death, was acquitted by a jury in Battleford’s Queen’s Bench Court Feb. 9, 2018.

The panel discussion marks the third anniversary of the acquittal.

Last year there was a free screening of the film We Will Stand Up, and a discussion at a community event, but that is not possible this year due to the pandemic restrictions.

This year’s online event will feature two panel discussions instead.

The film’s outreach team, the Boushie family, and Boushie family lawyer Eleanore Sunchild are organizing the event.

“The first panel discussion is on peremptory challenges and how they were eliminated by Bill C-75,” Sunchild said. “That is one positive change that has resulted from the Gerald Stanley trial, and the injustice that was felt by Indigenous people across the country.”

The focus of the second panel presentation is the book Storying Violence: Unravelling Colonial Narratives in the Stanley Trial, by authors Gina Starblanket and Dallas Hunt.

“[It is] about the narrative of stereotypes and racism that we see in rural Saskatchewan, and really any rural Prairie setting,” Sunchild said.

“It talks about the racism and the discourse around colonization, and the Indigenous lands which were colonized,” she added.

People can view the Facebook Live event here.

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW

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