From MTL to Sask: Long Live Cory Cardinal!

Statement and report remembering prison organizer Cory Cardinal from the Sturgeon Lake First Nation.

We were shocked and saddened to learn of Cory Cardinal’s death from a suspected overdose this week, so we headed out late on the night of June 12th to paint the walls of our neighbourhood in his memory.

Cory was a poet, writer, artist, and prison organizer from Sturgeon Lake First Nation. We came to know of him and his work during the Saskatchewan prison hunger strikes in the earlier days of the pandemic, when he acted as an organizer and did media work from inside while participating.

Cory understood and articulated the connections between the systems of prison and colonialism and he fought, inside and out, to bring them both down.

In Cory’s words:

It is true we have been targeted as Aboriginal men by a racist system. Despite this epidemic of incarceration, our resilient community of modern Aboriginal warriors has survived by will and creative ambition to prevail over many an enemy of poverty, addiction, and racism to find community and belonging and acceptance in this mainstream model of humanity. It is not by our own standards, for we are an oppressed people.

Our thoughts, solidarity, and love are with his family, friends, and comrades.

We’ll continue to direct our rage towards prisons, colonialism, and this world that criminalizes and kills people who use drugs.

Carry Naloxone!

#FreeThemAll
#SafeSupply

Long Live Cory!

– a couple white anarchists in Montréal