by M. Gouldhawke (as “Sabaté”)
Redwire Magazine, Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2002
Gerald Kaboni, a 43[*] year-old Indian [Native] man, died of a fractured skull in a Victoria [British Columbia] hospital on June 3, 2002. His death was caused by either criminal negligence or outright murder as a result of the actions of the Victoria Police Department.
Gerald was arrested by Victoria police officers on May 30, 2002, while he was walking down the street with a companion only a half-block from his home. His companion said that Gerald’s shoulder was injured during the arrest and that the police knew where they lived. Gerald was arrested for being drunk in public.
Paramedics were called to the scene but did not treat any head injury at the time. Many of Gerald’s friends report that he was fine in the days before the arrest and had no head injuries. Police put Gerald in a cell for several days.
Eventually police called paramedics who took Gerald from the jail to the hospital where he would die. Gerald’s body was immediately cremated after his death, since he had no next-of-kin in the city.
Gerald’s murder has reopened wounds in Victoria’s Indian community, as the family of Anthany Dawson, a 29 year-old Native man who was murdered by Victoria police in August of 1999 continues to struggle for justice.
At a recent gathering and memorial for Dawson on August 12, 2002, his aunt Yvon Gesinghaus declared, “The system wants us to forget! I believe the silent majority wants us to press on!”
[*Note: This source on Kaboni’s age at the time appears in “The Province” newspaper, June 11, 2002, but other news reports list Kaboni’s age as 44 or 45.]
See also:
Aboriginal man’s short life strikes too-familiar sad refrain
[regarding Gerald Kaboni]
Saturday, June 8, 2002
Jody Paterson, Times Colonist
http://www.turtleisland.org/news/news-jody1.htm
“Murdered Daily”
by Lawrence Y Braithwaite (via the UB Poetics online discussion group), 12 Aug 2004
Here’s the tenor what was the tone of a writ:
Native peoples and the poor, the Latinos and Blacks have been and are
murdered
daily on this stolen land — stealing land cleansing it of their
Original Peoples tends to be habit with certain shade (Y) sets of people.
…the innercity concentration camps, barrios, ghettos to reservations
and “occupied’ TERRORtory and I’ll mention the
ghettoization/gentrification of my hood and iraq and afrika possibly all
of al jazeera
in this the pimped portion of the jazzy era sampled into activity be it
for Freedome Justice Equality all of whom are divinity
… are not seperate issues B.U.T a singularity nor are their
oppressors seperate for the oppressors claim the same gang
“so go call upon your gang” = tyrannts
do you view yourself as a tyrant?
4 U Cee
Anthany James Dawson (11 Aug 99), Gerald Kaboni, Frank Paul, Neil
Stonechild,
over 500 missing native women, 60 + 1 murdered native, black women and
poor
white women by a white man (w/ a pig farm = swine herder) in kkkanada
alone not to mention the united snakes
are the issue.
not sitting pretty in academia and kvetchin about being impotent over
israel
oh people
We shall call the guards of hell
…and go tell/it/the story/on the mountain tops
stout like momotaro
how low can U go
we gon chase devilz
…now for the tenor
what was a poem concerning tone:
…theres nothing gentle about a bomb
“…and an outer struggle begins with an inner struggle
As our peoples are being assaulted and bullied physically with bombs and
shelling and radiations poisoning, as well as, rapes and disease, we are
being attacked by the pen and the net and in public with harsh words
cruelity and dumb founding callousness. …and it makes us afraid cuz we
live among these people — it’s like discovering that you have walked
into nieghbourhood of serial killers and vampires who consider such
conduct as normal and civilized. All our morality has been turned round.
Killing the poor is good and so is greed as is mass murder. …and
belief in kindness courtesy and compassion is considered foolish. TO be
loyal and ethical is something for fools, so we are told. …and all our
passion can be wiped away with a “hit and run” quip and cyber smirk and
lowbrow joke to make the bored romans seated in the arena giggle — we
are told today that this is courage. …B.U.T. what about the thousands
dead in Iraq? what about the murder of our native bredden (which our so
called ‘activist’ and ‘anarchist’ remain impotent in their “activISM’ to
address)? what about the killing of the poor in British Columbia by the
jakes? what about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the ever
growing middle-east and the whitemail and harassement by north
amerikkkan zionist that we should say nothing about it? what about the
gentrification of our hoods? what about using the poor as babymaking
machines? what about the left so called activists, who act just like the
aryan nation, only they hide behind privialge, white feminism, the
gaygousie, consume tofu and claim a safe cause celeb to attack all the
samo niggers that the powers have always attacked? What about all the
supremacy of the great white north who when confronted or criticized are
the first to holla “racism”? as they call a kkkop gang to kill the
niggers and the natives and poor? …again – what about Anthany James
Dawson (11 Aug 99)? Gerald Kaboni, Frank Paul? Jeff Berg and the
countless others and the daily deaths of our shahada/our martrys? in
this the ethnic, cultural and economic cleansing in the western puscht
for power and property”.
1425 Lawrence Y Braithwaite (aka Lord Patch)
New Palestine/Fernwood/The Hood
Victoria, BC
See also:
An Exchange Between Sam Greenlee and Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite (2007)
ANTHANY DAWSON FACT SHEET
by Rose Henry, August 2002
August 7, 1999
Ceremony at Police Station with Totem pole raising to enhance and reinforce a better working relationship between Aboriginal people and law enforcement personnel.
August 11, 1999
Mid afternoon: Anthany got into his car and headed for home to meet his mother. He was fit, in good health and with no injuries to his body. Near Victoria High School Anthany seems to have pulled his car over and at approximately 4:30 phoned and left a message for his mom saying he was on his way.
We do not know what happened from the time he called his mother until the time the first 911 call was placed.
At Stadacona Park Anthany was seen clutching his head as he walked. He was moaning and groaning and seemed to be in great pain. He appeared to be extremely hot and started to remove his clothing and run in and out of rush hour traffic. He fell to his knees and toppled over several times finally collapsing at Davie Street and Oak Bay Avenue in front of a number of businesses.
It was at this point that several witnesses report seeing what appeared to be excessive physical violence done to Anthany by police officer(s): “When I saw him being punched it made me feel sick.” It is alleged an officer said, “When I tell you to roll over, you fuckin roll over.” Witnesses also say police appeared to be joking and laughing as they stood behind the ambulance once Anthany had been put inside.
It is at this point where Anthany’s medical distress became secondary to the possible view it was just another drunken Indian being beaten up by police.
It is at this point we have to ask ourselves whether the actions taken by the professional medical and law enforcement officials were at their best?
We need to question whether Anthany received adequate medical attention. Did his ‘racial’ identity and gender play a part in decision making? Would it have been different if this had been a white middle class woman? These are the types of questions that have arisen through the persistence of Anthany’s family to find out the reasons why Anthany had to endure this brutal death.
He remained in a coma after being placed on life support August 11th. Forty-eight hours after his first interactions with the medical team and police, Anthany James Dawson’s life support was turned off at 4:21pm, August 13th, 1999.
This should never have happened to him, it should never happen to any family. The coroner’s jury found that he died of anoxic encephalopathy with tonsillar herniation due to restraint-associated cardiac arrest, agitated delirium and hyperthermia die to episodic metabolic crisis and positional asphyxia. In English, he was choked to death during a seizure. Contrary to media reports, Anthany was not drunk or stoned. He did not die of an overdose or a simple heart attack. A toxicology report found very minute amounts of marijuana in his system that was five days old.
Nancy Dawson has continued to push for justice for everyone experiencing discrimination of all kinds. She is seeking a public inquest into Anthany’s death. Her family is still in need of support to find out what happened so they can begin their healing journey and eventually to have closure. Would we as parents have done anything different if this had happened to our child?
If you have experienced any kind of discrimination don’t be afraid to exercise your human rights and seek help from your local MLA, anti-racism centre, the human rights coalition or your family church.
For more information:
See Turtle Island articles
Capital Region Race Relations
250-380-7311
Vancouver Island Human Rights Coalition
250-382-3012
racialism (ray-shal-izm) n. 1. belief in the superiority of a particular ‘race’. 2. antagonism towards people of other ‘races’.
racialist n.
racism (ray-sizm) n. 1. = racialism. 2. the theory that human abilities are determined by ‘race’. racist n.
See also:
Anthany Dawson | Turtle Island Native Network
A Concise Chronology of Canada’s Colonial Cops (2020)
Review: Reading the Riot Act, A Brief History of Riots in Vancouver (2006)
Police Murders & Inquiries: State hand-wringing over killings of Indigenous people by cops (2005)