'On the inside': Why some Indigenous officers stick with the RCMP despite struggles

Dean Gladue says he never experienced racism until joining the RCMP.

The 26-year veteran began his career with the force in 1989 as special constable, a role assigned to police First Nations reserves. It was a rank below his non-Indigenous colleagues, who were better paid.

It felt like he was "a second-class citizen," he said in a recent interview.

After the program shuttered, Gladue transitioned into a job as a regular constable. The 25-year-old Métis man would then overhear offhand comments around the office, with ones like how a "dead Indian's a good Indian" later brushed off as stress when raised to a supervisor.

"You just take the beating. You just take it," he said. "Then as you get older, you start to realize, 'Why did I do that?'"

Gladue had been interested in policing since childhood, and saw the RCMP as a good career, especially once his pay improved. He also knew he could retire before 50, which he did.

And he enjoyed the work, particularly after joining British Columbia's drugs and organized crime unit, where he focused on education.

Despite there having been a time when he would convince others not to join, Gladue, now a leader with Métis Nation British Columbia, has come to feel the opposite — especially when it comes to prospective Indigenous officers.

"If we as Indigenous people want to make change in Canada, we have to be on the inside," he said. "We cannot run from it."

That representation remains a challenge for the RCMP, which marks its 150th anniversary on Tuesday. It is struggling with the recruitment, but also the retention, of Indigenous members.

Roughly seven per cent of its members identify as Indigenous, according to the force's diversity statistics from 2020, down from almost eight per cent a decade earlier.

Nadine Huggins, the Mounties' chief human resources officer, chalked some of that up to how it used to graduate Indigenous-only classes like the one that Gladue first belonged to, and whose members have now hit retirement.

She said the RCMP hopes to see cohorts of between eight to 16 Indigenous cadets learning together, with groups staggered over time to avoid a similar situation.

Huggins could not say how many are in a typical troop, but an internal report shows the number of Indigenous candidates enrolling at Depot, the RCMP cadet academy in Regina, dropped to four per cent from six per cent, as of 2020.