Integrated Community or Racist Hotbed?

"It's small-town Saskatchewan. Hell, let's face it, the last Ku Klux Klan rally [here] was in Lemberg, Saskatchewan in 1964. White sheets and all on Main Street."
"If you move into town, like I did, you get shunned. This town is very cliquish, very clannish -- not with the white sheet [kind]."
"Me, I don't care. I don't care if he puts up an ISIS flag."
Stan Mantik, Kelliher, Saskatchewan

"In the Saskatchewan countryside you can have an Indigenous community within kilometres of a white community, and these two communities really don't know each other, understand each other, sometimes don't have anything to do with each other."
"For the last 120 years, there's been a gap in understanding between the settler population and the Indigenous peoples ... There's been such a history of racial oppression in Saskatchewan and we can't deny it."
James Daschuk, associate professor, University of Regina

"I don't know why a person would even hang a sign like that in town here, with all the Ukrainian and Polish people that are here."
"They don't like natives really. I mean there's a few living in town here ... They got to come here to cash their treaty cheques."
Varian Carson, local business owner

"I know some people that come in here and they're sorry Hitler lost the war. And I've known these people all their lives."
"[There are] racists in every town."
Gerald Faye, owner, Club15 Cheers Tavern, Kelliher

"It's not getting any better. But the racists are being louder because they feel they can be now very open in their views and nothing will happen to them."
"Consequently, Indigenous people now feel unsafe in Saskatchewan. And I think that they're justified."
"[Rural Saskatchewan is] probably the worst [with respect to the prairies divide between whites and Indigenous because of limited contact]."
"And I think people are comfortable with that here. But it's got to change, otherwise things are going to get worse."
"I don't want to say everyone's racist in Saskatchewan because they're not. But people need to speak up when they see something ... Like the hanging of that Nazi flag, that's a symbol of hatred. That should not have been allowed."
Eleanore Sunchild, lawyer, thunderchild First Nation, Battleford Saskatchewan

Truus and Gerrit de Gooijer, 92 and 90, look out the window in their Kelliher home, from where they could see a Nazi flag flying last week. They were 12 and 14 respectively when the Nazis invaded their country on May 10, 1940. (CBC News)

Kelliher is a small town of 200 inhabitants. They represent a mixed population of ethnic Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Dutch and other Canadians of diverse European backgrounds. When Truus and Gerrit de Gooijer first saw the Nazi flag that a neighbour had erected on his property they were shocked and profoundly disturbed. Disbelieving might best reflect how they felt, that the symbol of a racist, destructively deadly ideology they had fled as children had somehow been resurrected a lifetime later in the quiet comfort of a semi-urban sanctuary in Canada.

People took notice and they complained. And the fact that a Nazi flag had been raised in the town became a news story all over Canada. Police spoke to the resident who had raised the flag and he agreed to remove it. A short while later an Indigenous man posted a Facebook video with the flag, he was setting it on fire and wanted it shared on social media. The event shone a spotlight on racial tensions between those now termed 'colonialists' and the Indigenous native population.

Photo of a Nazi flag flying over a house in Kelliher, Sask., led to complaints to the village and to the RCMP. (Facebook)

"It's this no-brainer kid — 34 years old and never grew up."
"I contacted his parents ... and they didn't know it was happening. He's living in his grandpa's house and, as soon as it quits raining, he's going to take it down."
Darcy King, mayor, Kelliher Village

Several First Nations groups live close to Kelliher; the Muskowekwan First Nation for one, 20 kilometres northwest of the town. A town which Stan Mantik described in an interview as insular with people loyal to their particular groups, disinterested and dismissive of other groups; nothing like what a community should be like, particularly one with such a small population. But, he said, not only does the white population have no contact with the Indigenous one, even Ukrainians and Poles remain distant from one another.

Some of the village residents complained to the RCMP. "considering the amount of First Nation kids that attended that school in that town I did it for not only them but for us and First Nation people", the man who burned the Nazi flag and posted the video to Facebook explained. The in-bad-odour individual named by several village residents as the person responsible for flying the Nazi flag made himself unavailable for comment.

According to the village pub owner, it's a friendly village with both a strong German and Metis community. Residents of the village are friendly, inclusive and welcoming. Lawyer Sunchild has a vastly different impression. The Nazi flag incident should have been recognized as an incitement to hatred. A hate crime as in the criminal code. That police failed to take the kind of action they should have, pressing a criminal case against the homeowner who flew the flag, were "complicit in the status quo".

"How many soldiers fought for years, how many soldiers gave their life, and then [to] see that bloody flag hanging up there? That was disgusting."

"Why have Remembrance Day and say, 'Lest we forget'?"
"At the same time, we allow those flags up. That's impossible."
"I hope those people in government, they get their heads together, and bring in a law that forbids any flags of that nature. That's what I hope."
Gerrit de Gooijer, 92, Kelliher, Saskatchewan

"It really shocked me. It made me sick to my stomach."

"I don't know why this individual felt comfortable putting that flag out there. It represents so much hate and racism, I don't know why he felt it was OK to do that."
"For people to move on so fast like this didn't happen, it's upsetting."


Frederick O'Soup, teacher, Muskowekwan First Nation

A Facebook video appears to show the burning of a Nazi flag that had been raised last week by a resident of the village of Kelliher, Sask. (Caleb Beaudin/Facebook)