About 200 people in Moncton participated in walk to honour Chantel Moore yesterday.
Individuals of all ages and backgrounds came out to mourn the 26-year-old who was killed by police during a wellness check.
The group gathered at Bore Park where they sang songs of healing for her family and delivered speeches, demanding justice for indigenous people.
Their call was even louder following the news that RCMP fatally shot Rodney Levi, an indigenous man, near Miramichi on Friday.
Terry Richardson, Chief of Pabienau First Nation says he hadn’t planned on speaking but knew he needed to.
“As people, we can’t accept this anymore. As a leader of my first nation community, I have my young people coming to me asking ‘am I next, am I going to be the next person that’s going to get stopped by the RCMP and if I do something wrong I’m going to be shot?'”, he says.
Stephanie Simon, an Elder from Elsipogtog First Nation was also among the crowd.
She says her niece is studying to become a police officer but is doubting her career choice, now that people in uniform are being condemned.
“Myself I used to be a police officer, there’s things that I’ve seen, there’s things that I experienced and there’s things that I’ve experienced in other police forces. But I tell you, not everyone in a uniform is racist,” she says.
Greater Moncton MP, Ginette Petitpas-Taylor was there and says anyone who thinks that structural racism doesn’t exist is fooling themselves.
“When we look at our statistics of people that are incarcerated in our criminal justice system, when it comes to indigenous people, black people, visible minorities, we know that these numbers just don’t make sense with the reality,” she says.
Petitpas-Taylor vowed to be a voice in Parliament for marginalized communities.
Similar events were also held in Madawaska, Fredericton and Cape Breton.
