According to a new report from the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), discrimination, racism and confusion are “almost universal” experiences for Indigenous people who use status cards in their daily transactions.
A survey released with the report found that 99% of respondents had been mistreated when they used government-issued cards to purchase goods or services, either with subtle microaggressions or overt racism.
“This experience is deeply negative, especially for those who experience other forms of oppression that compound and overlap and shape people’s behavior for life,” reads the 72-page report, released Tuesday. .
UBCIC commissioned the independent report as part of its stance on the human rights complaint since filed by Maxwell Johnson, a Heiltsuk man who was wrongfully arrested when he tried to use his status card open a bank account in 2019.
A status card is government identification for someone who identifies as a Status Indian, as defined by the federal government. Indian Act.
The cards, which have been a valid form of identification in Canada for over 65 years, can be used for health insurance, dental expenses, to cross the Canada-US border, to open bank accounts and to specific tax exemptions.
In some institutions, such as banks, customers need a second piece of identification. In Johnson’s case, bank staff phoned the police, mistakenly believing his status card was fake.
“It will eventually happen,” says the author
As part of its report, UBCIC surveyed 1,026 people in June about their experience using status cards for tax exemption or as identification at five different types of retail businesses and services, such as clothing stores or insurance brokers.
All but four respondents said they had experienced discrimination.
“It doesn’t happen every time, but it will eventually happen if you use your status card repeatedly,” said report author Harmony Johnson, or sɛƛakəs.
“This experience of racism and discrimination using status cards is particularly acute for those experiencing other overlapping forms of oppression – people of diverse genders [or] diverse people are experiencing this double whammy of oppression,” she said.
Respondents said racism was often more subtle than bold: nearly three-quarters said clerks acted like status cards were an “annoyance”, while 63% said staff didn’t believe or did not understand that cards were acceptable identification.
More than 60% said the clerks were simply rude after seeing the cards, despite being polite to other customers.
Some respondents gave examples of treatment they had experienced.
“It’s not just retailers that have a problem with our official government status cards. I’ve had police station staff refuse to accept my ID card as proper ID. .I had shopkeepers take my ID and I had to call the police to get it back.. They thought I stole it or made a fake ID Hospital staff also had a problem with me using my status card as ID,” one wrote.
Nearly 60% of those surveyed said they had no complaints about the treatment because they didn’t think it would make a difference. Most said they went the extra mile to be polite or research store policies ahead of time in hopes of avoiding confrontation — a burden Johnson said is not theirs.
The study also involved fieldwork and media analysis.
The latter found that anti-Indigenous stereotypes were “often reinforced by media coverage of status cards.” A disproportionate number of stories about status card fraud between 1980 and 2010 contributed to the “delegitimization” of status cards as valid identification, he said.
Comment sections on news articles about cards can be filled with racism and harmful misinformation.
“There really seems to be a problem that leads to the belief that indigenous peoples are being unfairly advantaged and that this [topic] seems like a much freer way for people to share their anti-Indigenous racism,” said Johnson of the Tla’amin Nation.
“There is no measure by which indigenous peoples are unfairly advantaged that I know of, and yet this seems to be a very widespread social belief that is freely shared on the media, by commentators on platforms, and c is harmful.”
The report says the federal government needs to do more to call out racism and educate retailers because the administration of status cards is “entirely a construct” of government.
“Ignorance is a big part of it — and I don’t mean stupidity. I mean lack of knowledge,” Johnson said.
“They are not necessarily malicious human beings. It comes from a lack of information, education and awareness.”
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