Rage Against the Machine tells Ottawa crowd that 'Settler-colonialism is murder'

Instead of experiencing their first music festival post-Covid-19 as a time to relax and soak up live tunes, Ottawa concert-goers enjoying their first Bluesfest festival in two years were barraged with statistics of injustices done to Canada’s Indigenous community.

Rage Against the Machine used the return of the annual music festival to display statistics on the violence experienced by Indigenous peoples at their Friday performance in Ottawa.

"An Indigenous person in Canada is over 10 times more likely to be shot and killed by a police officer than a white person is," read a screen behind the band during their Friday show, reports an analysis conducted by CTV News.

The US rap-rock band also highlighted statistics involving missing and murdered Indigenous women, according to CTV.

"In Canada, Indigenous women and girls are 16 times more likely to be murdered or to disappear than white women are," concert-goers read during the show.

The band also displayed phrases like "Settler-colonialism is murder," and "Land Back."

Their performance in Ottawa was one of the band’s first live shows after more than a decade.

This isn't the first time the outspoken band has used a live performance to virtue-signal its political stances.

It recently used shows in the US to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which turned abortion regulation back to state legislatures.

"Forced birth in a country where Black birth-givers experience maternal mortality two to three times higher than that of white birth-givers," the screen read for several seconds during a concert in Wisconsin on July 9.