With concerts and music festivals in full swing once against, Rage Against the Machine are using the stage to highlight injustices against Indigenous people in Canada.
While playing this year’s Bluesfest last Friday in Ottawa, the American rap-rock band displayed statistics about the violence experienced by Indigenous community members across the country.
“Indigenous people in Canada are over 10 times more likely to be shot and killed by a police officer than a white person,” read a screen behind the band during the show, citing an analysis conducted by CTV News.
The group also highlighted statistics about missing and murdered Indigenous women at the annual Ottawa Music Festival.
“In Canada, Indigenous women and girls are 16 times more likely to be murdered or missing than white women,” concertgoers could read at another point during the show.
Violence against Indigenous women is a long-standing problem in Canada, with advocates calling on the federal government to do more to prevent their deaths. A report released in 2019 as a result of a national inquiry said the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada constituted “genocide”.
Other phrases were also displayed behind the band as they played, including “Settler colonialism is murder” and “Back to the land”.
The politically outspoken group has recently used its shows in the United States to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, removing the constitutional right to abortion.
“A forced birth in a country where black birth mothers experience maternal mortality rates two to three times higher than white birth mothers,” read the screen for a few seconds during a concert in Wisconsin on July 9. The group cited statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Their performance in Ottawa was one of the band’s first concerts in more than a decade. The four-piece also performed in Quebec City on Saturday night and will continue their Public Service Announcement tour with dates in Hamilton, Ontario. and Toronto this week.
With files from CNN.
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