REGINA -- A months-old camp on the Saskatchewan legislature lawn where people had been protesting racial injustice and the disproportionate number of Indigenous children apprehended by child-welfare workers has been dismantled.
Protester Prescott Demas said Friday that he wasn't surprised when authorities came to take down the tents around dawn.
"They do want us gone for Canada Day," he said. "They want to kick the Aboriginals off their land again so that they can celebrate 151 years of cultural genocide and celebrate the land and the riches and the resources that are ... provided for this government."
A white teepee still remained with a fire burning inside. Demas said he has been told it needs to be taken down by Sunday at noon, but he has no plans to leave.
The protesters included the mother of Colten Boushie, an Indigenous man who was killed by a farmer in 2016. She said the dismantling of the camp was peaceful.
"They were respectful. They helped me take my tent down and now all my stuff is on a sidewalk," Debbie Baptiste said. "And then that just leaves me with I don't have anywhere to go. What happens for all of us?"
A spokesman for Premier Scott Moe said the government respects everyone's right to peaceful protest.
But Jim Billington said the camp violated a ban on overnight camping, burning wood and putting up signs in the park surrounding the legislature. He said the protesters had been told several times since March that they were breaking the law and were given an eviction notice on June 5.
The Provincial Capital Commission enforced the eviction notice with help from Regina police, Billington said.
Minister of Justice Don Morgan told reporters in Saskatoon that he didn't think there was any chance at reaching a compromise.
"I think there has to be an element of being realistic and saying we can't fix issues that have been there for 150 years," he said.
The teepee had several signs draped around it including a sign with the words "Justice for Colten."
There were also tallies marking the 108 days the camp had been there.
Richelle Dubois, whose son 14-year-old son Haven Dubois was found dead in a creek near Regina in May 2015, had been at the camp since it started at the end of February.
She said there was a lot of disappointment and heartbreak among the campers.
"I guess also a lot of confirmation that the government has an agenda of their own and that they don't even want to consider coming into a First Nations camp and teepee to discuss some of the very serious issues around all of us as people," Dubois said.
The government said earlier this week that it had tried to arrange two meetings with the campers, but the locations were rejected.
Demas said the government didn't make the effort to arrange a meeting. He said that there was an agreement to meet in a tent on the lawn outside the legislature but that the campers were lied to about that.
Morgan said that the offer to meet still stands.
Baptiste said, even though the camp has been taken down, the movement should continue on.
"Move forward," she said. "The battle doesn't stop."
