Indigenous political activism and civil rights struggles in the early 1970s were at least partially concerned with drawing attention to problems with state policing and the criminal justice system. These concerns were to take on an even more urgent focus in the 1980s, particularly in the context of a more punitive political approach to law and order (Clark and Cove, 1999; Cunneen, 2001).

Growing out of Indigenous political pressure, in the late 1980s and early 1990s both Canadian and Australian governments established judicial inquiries that either focused directly on, or substantially considered, the criminal justice system (and particularly police) treatment of Indigenous peoples. Included in this list is: the Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCADIC); the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP); the Nova Scotia Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr, Prosecution; and the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba (Hickman et al, 1989; Hamilton and Sinclair, 1991; Johnston, 1991; RCAP, 1996a, 1996b). In Aotearoa New Zealand, an important step in understanding the problematic relationship between Māori and the criminal justice system from a Māori perspective was a report to the Department of Justice by Moana Jackson (1988). In the US, while there were no similar judicial inquiries, the struggle around criminal justice and policing issues was galvanised through what many, including Amnesty International (n.d.), saw as the unjust conviction and imprisonment of Leonard Peltier for the murder of two FBI agents in 1975 (Matthiessen, 1992). Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement, has been in federal prison for 39 years and remains there as at the beginning of 2016, despite a broad and ongoing campaign for his release. The policing of Indigenous people remains as divisive today as it has been in previous decades.

It is perhaps not surprising that state policing of Indigenous people is controversial, given that it is an activity deeply implicated within the wider historical trends of colonisation and nation building (Cunneen, 2001). As outlined in Chapter Three, the historical roots of policing in settler societies were embedded in colonial relations – from enforcing the laws of the coloniser, to acting as a ‘civilising’ force of assimilation.