He remembers seeing the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in custody worsen when he worked with STR8 UP, a Saskatoon-based organization that helps people leave gang and street lifestyles. A lot of it had to do with issues such as poverty and addictions, he said.
Beaudin, now the National Vice-Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, said the federal government is looking at strategies, but substantial policy changes are necessary within the system itself, right up to the Criminal Code and how policing is done in Canada, to start bringing the numbers down.