The Indian Residential Schools (IRS) system was a source of intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities throughout the more than 150 years these institutions were open in Canada. These federally-operated schools ran on neocolonial policies of assimilation via separation of children from their families, rendering Indigenous cultures ideologically inferior to Canadian settler colonialism.

Systemic discrimination exists in institutional processes, policies, and practices, and is entrenched within the criminal justice system. This article discusses the historical and structural issues that impact the policing of racialized communities, predominantly Indigenous and Black people in Canada.