University of Alberta student recalls arrest at Edmonton encampment

Protesting as an ally alongside Indigenous dwellers at the last of eight “high risk” homeless encampments earmarked for dismantling turned out to be high-risk activity for a University of Alberta student.

Camryn Hannigan, 21, was arrested by Edmonton Police Service officers in the Wednesday sweep that flattened the encampment at the corner of Rowland Road and 96 street.  

Article content

Hannigan, who majors in psychology and sociology, with a minor in women’s and gender studies, had responded to a livestreamed request from the Bear Claw Beaver Hills House organizers for witnesses. She had been at the Indigenous encampment since Tuesday night, staying in a tipi in case the City of Edmonton returned to dismantle the circle of a dozen tents clustered around a fire.

Between political slogans and demonstrators’ picket signs from Bear Claw and other support groups, group prayers and an actual metal fire pit burning brightly, the corner had a very different ambience than the other sites where tarps thrown over grocery carts and detritus spilled into streets. A walk around the site, just a stone’s throw from expansive River Valley views, on Tuesday and Wednesday revealed none of the strewn drug paraphernalia quite visible at other encampment locations.

As temperatures plunged towards -30 C, it was the last of the identified camps to be cleared.

As the dismantling began Wednesday afternoon in plunging temperatures, Hannigan was within the perimeter marked off by a ring of police tape.

Article content

She recalled surging forward to protect Roy (Big Man) Cardinal, the camp leader, who was being handcuffed.

“Let him go!” she yelled.

She said she was pushed several times before being flattened to the ground, on her belly, for handcuffing.

“This is how I was treated for standing with Indigenous people,” she said, recalling metal bars poking up beneath her as the cuffs were put on. 

 “They pushed me down on a metal gate that happened to be on the ground,” she recalled. 

Police and city crews remove a homeless encampment near 95 Street and 101A Avenue, in Edmonton Wednesday Jan. 10, 2024. Photo by David Bloom /Postmedia

After handcuffing, Hannigan was taken briefly into a warming bus, then to jail where they took her boots and her coat. 

Others arrested in the afternoon’s action included Roy Cardinal and Indigenous journalist and author Brandi Morin of Stony Plain.

Hannigan was frisked by two female officers. One asked if she’d been arrested before.

“I said, ‘No, no comment, I don’t have to answer that’ or something to that effect, and the officer said, ‘I will assume that’s a yes.’ ”

Actually, she had not been arrested before.

But she has felt the spotlight’s glare, as valedictorian of her high school in Fort McMurray.

For five hours, Hannigan was detained in a cold cell, with a cement sleeping platform, a toilet and a sink, and a cup for water.

Share this article in your social network