Encampment evictions: Another face of colonial violence in Canada

The encampment evictions in Toronto are a crystallisation of multiple layers of violence involved in sustaining settler control over Indigenous land.

Starting before 5am on the morning of June 22, more than 150 police officers and private security guards descended on Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto to evict two dozen residents of a homeless encampment. Armed with assault rifles, drones, pepper spray, mounted cavalry, and security fencing for caging the dispossessed, the operation lasted almost 20 hours. It was one particularly clear embodiment of the brutality embedded in Canada’s colonial capitalism, erected on a foundation of anti-Indigenous genocide, and fuelled by continuing “accumulation by dispossession”. The gross display of state aggression at Trinity Bellwoods was preceded by recent evictions at several other encampment sites across Toronto, and more evictions are planned for the days and weeks to come: a crystallisation of the multiple layers of violence involved in sustaining settler control over Indigenous land.