Darrel Bruno dead at 64 [Video]

A trailblazer in the advancement of Indigenous rights within the RCMP died Nov. 19 at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton. Darrel Bruno, a member of Samson Cree Nation, was 64.

Services for Bruno took place Thursday in the central Alberta town of his birth, Ponoka.

As an RCMP member in the early 2000s, Bruno won legal actions in the federal court against his employer over discrimination and misrepresentations of Indigenous identity — the so-called pretendian phenomenon. In a LinkedIn post, his son Grant said Bruno was being passed up for promotions by RCMP members who inauthentically self-identified as Indigenous.

After representing himself and winning, Bruno was awarded four promotions at once. He was also one of the few Indigenous RCMP officers of the day with an on-duty braid. “When the RCMP told him to cut it, he fought against that and won again,” Grant’s LinkedIn post says.

Bruno …