Two Worlds Colliding

This film documentary discusses the ‘starlight tours’ conducted by officers part of the Saskatoon police service. Officers apprehended Indigenous men and drove them out to a remote location in temperatures as cold as -20° C. Darrell Night, one man to survive shares his terrifying experience of being dropped at city limits and left to freeze; he was able to call a cab from the Queen Elizabeth Power Plant which saved him from hypothermia. Rodney Naistus and Lawrence Wegner, both Indigenous men, were left in similar conditions by members of the SPS but did not make it home safely and perished in the freezing cold. This account, along with the recent deaths of Naistus and Wegner led to an investigation on the police's treatment and discrimination of Indigenous people in Saskatoon. Dan Hatchen and Ken Munson of the Saskatoon Police Service were tried and found guilty for these crimes, and a judicial inquiry into the death of Neil Stonechild was pursued. Hubbard's documentary illustrates the tensions between Saskatoon's Indigenous communities and the SPS, with a case study on the death of seventeen year-old Neil Stonechild in 1990. Stonechild's death had suspicious, strikingly similar circumstances.

The Documentary is available online: https://www.nfb.ca/film/two_worlds_colliding/