Discourse on Indigenous-Police Interactions

A long tumultuous history between Indigenous Peoples and police continues to negatively impact Indigenous Peoples in the criminal justice system. In collaboration with the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing, the current research explored how Indigenous-police interactions are represented in news, social-media and scholarly literature. A content analysis was conducted on news articles (n = 51), Tweets (n = 347) and scholarly articles (n = 37). The main findings revealed news often favoured police in their depictions, while social-media favoured Indigenous Peoples in theirs. However, both sources lacked representation of Indigenous perspectives and voices. Scholarly literature was more representative of both police and Indigenous perspectives while focusing on overall issues within the criminal justice system opposed to a singular party. These findings highlight the differences in depictions across media and the importance of well-rounded media consumption on Indigenous-police interactions.