The Saskatoon freezing deaths were a series of deaths amongst Canadian Aboriginal people in Saskatoon. There have been accusations these deaths may have been caused by members of the Saskatoon Police Service, indeed, some of them were (see case of Neil Stonechild below). The accusation is that officers would arrest aboriginal men and drive them out of the city in the dead of winter to abandon them. The practice is known as starlight tours.[1]
Some of the Aboriginal men that have died of hypothermia are Rodney Naistus, Lawrence Wegner and Neil Stonechild. Rodney Naistus and Lawrence Wegner died in 2000 and their bodies were discovered on the outskirts of Saskatoon. However, inquests in 2001 and 2002 into their deaths were unable to determine the circumstances. The inquest jury's recommendations all related to police policies and police/Aboriginal relations.[2] Neil Stonechild's body was found in 1990 in a field outside Saskatoon. A 2003 inquest was not able to determine the circumstances that lead to his death.[3][4] In January 2000, Darrel Night was dropped off on the outskirts of Saskatoon but was able to survive. The two officers involved were convicted of unlawful confinement in September 2001 and sentenced to eight months in prison.[5]
The Saskatoon police initially insisted these were isolated incidents. But in 2003, Police Chief Russell Sabo admitted that there was a possibility that the force had been dumping First Nations people outside the city for years, after revealing that in 1976 an officer was disciplined for taking a Native woman to the outskirts of the city and abandoning her there.[6]
The incidents were documented in two films: Tasha Hubbard's National Film Board of Canada documentary Two Worlds Colliding, winner of the Canada Award,[7] [4] and the half-hour drama Out In The Cold, directed by Colleen Murphy and starring Gordon Tootoosis.[1]