'Great leader' J.J. Harper remembered 37 years after he was fatally shot by Winnipeg police

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 10, 2025 11:15 AM EDT | Last Updated: 5 minutes ago

On March 9, 1988, John Joseph (J.J.) Harper, past enforcement manager of the Island Lake Tribal Council, was walking location successful Winnipeg when helium was confronted by Const. Robert Cross.

Harper was unarmed, had committed nary transgression and Winnipeg constabulary were successful the country looking for idiosyncratic else. But the serviceman and the 37-year-old Wasagamack First Nation man scuffled, and Cross fatally changeable J.J.Harper.

Sunday marked the 37th day of J.J. Harper's death. His wife, girl and dozens others gathered for a memorial work astatine Winnipeg's Stanley Knowles Park to commemorate his beingness and legacy.

J.J. Harper was "unfortunately a unfortunate of radical profiling and a unfortunate of racism successful the system.… [It] took his life," Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee told CBC News astatine the work connected Sunday afternoon.

"His dependable inactive resonates due to the fact that of what helium stood for.… He was an advocator for his people, a precise almighty voice, and those are the things that we remember."

Wasagamack First Nation Chief Walter Harper was a younker erstwhile J.J. Harper was killed.

"I retrieve him arsenic a large leader, a large man," Walter Harper said astatine the memorial service. 

The roles J.J. Harper held portion moving for First Nations successful Manitoba, including his presumption astatine the Island Lake Tribal Council, person motivated and inspired Walter Harper until this day, helium said.

While helium is reminded of J.J. Harper each clip helium walks into his bureau and looks astatine a representation of him, helium besides wants the adjacent procreation from Wasagamack to cognize astir the First Nations leader, truthful helium brought a radical of younker with him to the memorial. 

"They should cognize the past astir what's going connected … what's happening here," Walter Harper said. 

Twenty-four hours aft fatally shooting J.J. Harper, Cross was cleared of immoderate wrongdoing, starring to outcry from Indigenous leaders astatine the time.

J.J. Harper's death, and the 16 years it took to convict idiosyncratic successful the 1971 homicide of Norway House Cree Nation's Helen Betty Osborne, sparked the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in the aboriginal 1990s.

The inquiry, led by the precocious Murray Sinclair, confirmed what the Indigenous assemblage already believed transpired the nighttime Harper was shot: Racism had played a role. Sinclair, Manitoba's archetypal Indigenous judge, aboriginal led the nationalist Truth and Reconciliation Commission and became a senator.

"We are near with an overwhelming consciousness of however needless the tragedies of this lawsuit person been," the enquiry study said. "What started arsenic an unnecessary, racially motivated attack to an Aboriginal national connected a metropolis thoroughfare has had profoundly disturbing results."

The probe led to 296 recommendations, with immoderate specifically designed to amended support Indigenous women and girls decades earlier the abbreviation MMIWG (missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls) started to beryllium used. 

"Only 32 [recommendations] person been implemented," Settee said. "We inactive person a agelong mode to go."

Indigenous radical are still racially profiled and systemic racism continues to beryllium a problem, helium said.

But helium remains optimistic successful the pursuit of reconciliation and the enactment toward ensuring First Nations radical are treated reasonably and arsenic wrong the justness strategy and successful interactions with police. 

"We're consenting to question that journey," Settee said.