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A university-based anti-racism group is calling out Mayor Drew Dilkens for referring to holdout protesters in the dying days of the Ambassador Bridge blockade as “the last of the Mohicans.”
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UWindsor RAACES sent Dilkens a letter following his comments Sunday on CTV’s Question Period.
“When you say racist things and refer to racist concepts, it’s evocative of a really problematic thought process,” said group member Natalie Delia Deckard, also an assistant professor of criminology. “When we have elected officials that engage in that type of conversation, it’s concerning that we have elected officials that are seeing Indigenous issues and issues of racialized communities and people in a problematic and concerning way. We’re hoping this letter draws attention to that for the mayor.”
Dilkens made the comment in response to a question from host Evan Solomon about why it was taking so long to clear out protesters.
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“It is very, very frustrating and I understand police have a difficult job to do,” Dilkens told Solomon. “There have been calls of bomb threats. You have people who are here, sort of the last of the Mohicans, using that term to say these are people who are saying they are willing to die for the cause.”
UWindsor RAACES (Racialized Academics and Advocates Centering Equity and Solidarity) sent Dilkens the letter on Monday.
“Your use of the phrase, at best, creates a false equivalence between alt-right movements and Indigenous claims and at worst, is hate speech that celebrates the genocide of Indigenous peoples,” the organization stated in the two-page letter.
RAACES members said Wednesday they had not received a response. But Dilkens sent the Star a statement including a link to an online dictionary defining “last of the Mohicans” as “the final remaining or surviving person or thing…
