By Jacqueline St. Pierre, Local Journalism Initiative Manitoulin Expositor MANITOULIN—The files read like a nation whispering to itself in the dark—paper trails, code names, shadows parked across the street. But the story they tell is not new. It is an old habit, dressed in Cold War language. Long before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police began cataloguing Indigenous leaders under what it called a “Native extremism program,” it had already been deployed as an instrument of removal—enforcing a federal vision of land that required Indigenous peoples to be confined, managed and, when necessary, displaced. In the late 19th century, as Canada pushed westward, the North-West Mounted Police—predecessor to the RCMP—was sent to secure territory for settlement and the railway. They enforced the reserve system that followed the numbered treaties, restricting movement…
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