The Underworld Podcast - Indian Posse: The Native Teen Gang Ruling Canada's Prisons

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Danny and Richard Wolfe were barely even teenagers when they formed the Indian Posse in their mother's basement with a handful of friends, but they had already been living the street life since they were in grade school, robbing, stealing and fighting. Never did they expect that within a few short years, the gang would balloon to hundreds and then thousands of members, taking shape in Winnipeg's poor and violent North End where there was no shortage of poor indigenous teens from broken families looking for brotherhood. Drug-dealing, pimping, armed robberies and murders went along with it. The Indian Posse exploded into Canada's western prairies in the 1990's and soon came to dominate the prisons, enforcing their reign with brutal violence. This the story of how the Wolfe brothers founded the gang, and then succumbed to its violent nature. MERCH: https://underworldpodcast.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount? New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task,

unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into? Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. May 2006, Stony Mountain Medium Security Prison near Winnipeg of Canada.

Though he's only 5'6 and 160 pounds, Sheldon McKay is not someone to be messed with. even in a prison full of gang members and killers. When he was 16, he stabbed his girlfriend's mother in the neck. And shortly after he got done serving a prison sentence for that, he killed a rival gang member and went back to prison for life. That still doesn't make him anything special at Stony Mountain. But since he's been there, he's managed to rise up the rankings of the Indian posse,

the gang that controls the prison and is starting to control quite a few other prisons in Canada. The Indian Posse quickly became one of the country's most fearsome and dangerous gangs after forming in the late 80s when teenagers Richard and Danny Wolf, along with five of their friends, wanted to strike out on their own, robbing, dealing, pimping, and killing. It now boasted thousands of members and was especially heavy in the prisons, where they frequently got into brawls with their rivals, the Manitoba warriors. Both gangs are made up entirely of indigenous Canadians, sometimes called First Nation or Natives. In Manitoba, the province, that's their home base, the indigenous population hovers around 20%.

But they make up over 70% of the prison inmates. And they're ruthless. So is McKay. In April of 2004, he helps lead a coup against a leader of the gang, his own gang. The gang itself is pretty anarchic, but it's governed by a leadership council of about 7 to 10, people. One of those guys was seen as too much of a wild card, someone who punished younger members for even the tiniest wrongdoing and was making a lot of enemies. So senior members of his own gang jumped him and beat him into critical condition. McKay helped plot the whole thing and then

took over the leadership council himself, forming it with eight other senior members. Now, McKay had been consolidating his power, turning senior members against each other, dealing in all sorts of plots and intrigue that made everyone nervous. McKay was soon out of control himself, ordering hits on senior members, beating younger members for no reason, trying to be the one person in charge of a gang that never wanted just one person in charge. One day in April of 2006, he goes too far. The prison had been dry for a bit, but the Indian posse manages to smuggle in a big package

of drugs. McKay wants to assert his power even more, so he demands full control of it, forbidding members to use even though they were all fiending. Danny Wolf, one of the founders of the gang, who sat on the new leadership council, doesn't listen. He takes a couple pills and does them anyway.

McKay gets pissed, and they have it out. But Danny's no slouch either, and someone has to go. It isn't going to be him. He soon starts plotting with, other leaders of the gang that are fed up with McKay. It doesn't take long before they catch him in his cell, unsuspected. They beat him down, and then Danny takes a white towel

and uses it to strangle him until he stops breathing. Five other members take turns holding the towel, so that they're all guilty. It takes the guards of full 24 hours to realize McKay isn't breathing. Change is coming to the Indian posse. This is the only one. Underworld podcast.

Welcome back to another weekly episode of the Underworld podcast, exploring the wacky wide world of street gangs, mafias, and cartels. Brought to by me, myself, Danny Gold, and my co-host, Sean Williams, two journalists who have traveled that world reporting on all those fun groups, and every week we trade off hosting an episode while the other one makes poorly timed and ill-conceived jokes. As always, bonus episodes up on patreon.com slash underworld podcast for the low, low fee of $5 a month. or you can sign up with our buds on Spotify directly or on iTunes. Sean, you've been publishing like a good amount the last few weeks.

What's cracking? Ah, yeah, just rattling slowly towards oblivion. Only joking, yeah, I've got a few things on the way. I think as we're recording this tomorrow, I've got a piece out of Harper's on this trip to P&G. People might remember where I went on last year. I was in the Outback at a camel race that's coming out. And there's something from India, I think, coming out in like a month.

So, yeah, actual work coming up. out and that is fun. And I'm in the States in like five days. Doesn't get better than that, does it? And while we're here, you know, like parenthood is so nice. And, you know, we went to the beach on Saturday and he was- Anyway, all right, all right, all right, all right, wrap it up, wrap it up. But yeah, I mean, you're one of the few long-form journalists left surviving. So congrats on that. I'm heading to Japan in about a month. So give me a holler. Listeners, if you're there, if you know something, especially if you're one of those guys in Team Tomodachi, whatever that is, whatever that team does, I want in. I want to hang out with those guys.

Yeah, are you going there for a reporting trip? Hell no, bud. This is vacation. I've been done a reporting trip in a long time. I don't even remember. Oh, yeah. There was that thing in 2023 with those, those guys doing that stuff in that place. Yeah, yeah. What actually happened with that in the end? Did you get your money back? I don't want to talk about it. We probably shouldn't talk about it, but maybe one day we will talk about it. Yeah, yeah. Just go to your lawyer. Maybe we can come back to it. Yeah, this is a long intro. But yeah, for merch, I post the link in our podcast description of this episode

and email us at the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com. We've been getting some real cool emails and great tips. Now, this week's episode, The Indian Posse, another installment in our Criminals of Canada series over the last few years. We've done the Rizzuto's that really powerful mafia family. We've done the Biker Wars with the Hells Angels, the Vancouver Indo-Canadian gangs like with Bindy Joe Hall. I've still got a thing that I'm doing research on on the UN, that gang,

Bacon Brothers episode happening somewhere. I guess it makes sense. We've done a ton on Mexico in the U.S., and I am North American base. So, you know, the frozen north, man, things get crazy up there. And this one takes us to the prairies of Canada, the Western Plains, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I think maybe Alberta a little bit too. And the reason we are focused on those provinces is because they have the high. highest indigenous population of Canadians.

I think sometimes called natives or first nations. Even though Indian Posse chose their name, Indian, as sort of an FU, reclaiming the word type of move, somewhat inspired by 80s and 90s gangster rap and the use of the N-word. And Sean, I see your note here, and I don't think it's a good idea to fill in that word repeatedly and yell it over and over in this episode. I'm going to pass on that for now. No, it says bigger, make this bigger. Like it's part of a lot of gangs, right?

the mongrel mob and the black power do it over here, which made for pretty uncomfortable stuff when I met a bunch of old white gangsters calling each other the N-word in a hotel recently in Wellington. But yeah, less of that. Let's move on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, we'll talk about their sort of political undertones and what they stood for as we go on. But the population of Saskatchewan is about 16% indigenous and in Manitoba, it's closer to 20%. Now, in both provinces, the prison population, that is indigenous, is about 75%. And a lot of that has to do with the violence perpetrated by gangs like the Indian Posse and their rivals, the Manitoba Warriors, as well as smaller native gangs like Red Alert and the native syndicate killers.

And obviously, there's a lot of socioeconomic things and historical stuff and other things like that at play here. And we're going to get into that too. I'm not going to get too far into it, But a lot of the same devastation and marginalization that happened to Native populations in the U.S., Native Americans, also happened to Native Canadians. And a big thing in Canada for natives, and this happened to the grandfather and great-grandfather. And I believe the mother of the Wolf Brothers, Richard and Danny, was the residential school system, where indigenous kids for like a hundred years are taken from their families forcibly and abused in all manner of ways. ostensibly it's forced assimilation. And it devastates a lot of families for generations, including the wolves. So, you know, we're talking generation after generation of trauma and you mix in poverty, racism, a lot of alcoholism and all that stuff. Yeah, I remember there was a bunch of huge stories came out about this a few years ago.

And like, I think a lot of them come through these Catholic schools and just kind of like got divorced from their culture. The same thing happened here. I'll leave New Zealand alone after this. But like there's a big Royal Commission going on right now. about how abuse in state care led so many young Māori men to join the biker gangs and things like, I might do a special on it actually because it's like a massive driver of organized crime in this country. But I mean, it seems like an obvious thing, right? When you divorce someone from their culture and you try and assimilate all these people and you abuse them in state care, like they're not going to probably grow up liking the country they're in.

But yeah, not the best way to do things. Yeah, yeah. Now, we're going to focus primarily on Danny and Richard Wolfe. they are two brothers that were part of the original founders of the Indian Posse. I think there were seven in total. And they're usually given the credit. And we'll talk about why that is. And Richard Wolfe is born in 1975.

And his younger brother, Danny, is born in 1976 in Regina, Saskatchewan. And yes, Sean, you child, it's actually pronounced that way. Danny's born months premature because their mother had been drinking during the pregnancy. And she's really messed up. drugs, alcohol, partying, you know, spending her welfare checks, food stamps on alcohol. She has a real turbulent relationship with the boy's father who ends up mostly out of the picture. Yeah, I mean, people call it Regina, but that's actually just the outskirts. People get that wrong all the time.

Not bad. I mean, you're a little slow on that, but I'll let it go. A lot of this info comes from the main source of this episode, which is a book called The Ballad of Danny Wolfe, Life of a Modern Outlaw by Joe Frieson. Oh man, I feel like my entire career is going to end up with a book called The Ballad of Someone or something that no one who reads. What do you don't? Yeah, I mean, every title for every episode, I want to call it the Battle of the Ballad of So-and-So. But I think life of a modern outlaw, we should save that for your autobiography.

Lovely. The boys and their mother, they moved to Winnipeg at a young age. Winnipeg is the capital of Manitoba. It's like kind of smack in the middle of Canada. And at that time, it's a city grappling with a lot of issues. I guess you can kind of say that for like most cities, but either way. Winnipeg had seen a boom in the early 20th century. It was a major transportation hub, Canada's gateway to the west, but things slowed down shortly

after. It steadies a bit, but by the 60s and 70s, there's a lot of poverty and a lot of tension. The economy is in rough shape. There's a lot of unemployment, and you've got a lot of indigenous there that are moving in from reservations and rural areas. They're looking for a better life, looking for more work, and they're not finding it. I think there was something like a few thousand there in the 50s, and then by the 90s, it was up to like 45,000. So it's a familiar story for gang genesis.

You know, I'm always reminded of Brazil and the favelas and all the people moving in from rural areas and how those gangs started like the PCC. But it's a lot of gang creation stories, I feel like start with something like this. You've also got a lot of broken families. We've got that loss of cultural identity and a deep sense of alienation among natives. And that is the wolves to a tea. Their mom basically leaves them to fend for themselves when they're like six, seven, eight years old. They're on the streets.

They're stealing just to eat like vegetables from gardens, bread from supermarkets, and raiding fast food dumpsters. It's a pretty rough childhood. They're also in and out of foster homes. They're beaten by boyfriends and I think their father as well. And they end up in Winnipeg's North End, which is a kind of rough ghetto area that's filled with a lot of the indigenous that are coming in from the reservations. Winnipeg is basically a breeding ground for gang.

in the 80s and 90s. There's not a lot of jobs that you've got that poverty and there's a lot of drug use. Lots of young kids that are kind of raising themselves, pissed off at everything, including the state,

and searching for an identity and a sense of brotherhood. And like we said, it's a transportation hub, so of course, it's also going to be a hub for drugs. Why was the book not called

Raised by Wolves? That would have been way better, in my opinion. That is pretty cool, but I think, you know, ballot or whatever it is of a modern outlaw is still pretty, lots of good titles.

I'm just saying. So we're in, 1988, Danny and Richard are about 11, 12 years old. And they've already been like in the streets. You know, they're drinking, they're fighting, they're stealing. They get really good at stealing car radios and then cars. And they call their little

crew they have the Scammers Incorporated or Scammers Inc. They've also already kind of clashed with police and there's a big uproar with police and their treatment of natives after the cops shoot and kill a leader by the name of John Joseph Harper after stopping him. Things are getting really hot on the streets.

And these indigenous street gangs are starting to emerge. The Wolf Brothers at this point have linked up with another little crew to form a bigger gang, but they're basically serving as errand boys who don't get a solid cut of the cash. So they break off with a few others and decide to form their own gang. I think it was actually formed in their mom's basement. They call it the Indian Posse and they use a red bandana as one of their signifiers. There's about seven of them. And remember, these are like middle school kids, right? In no time, though, other kids start joining. There's 12 of them, then there's 15th, and they're growing rapidly.

These are wild, tough kids. They're fighting grown men. They're stealing cars. And the group just starts expanding. Says one member to the author Joe Friesen, quote, within a year, the numbers climbed into the hundreds. I have no idea why that happened. I thought we were just a bunch of kids hanging out together.

But all of a sudden, they were members everywhere. They're recruiting heavy, and there's no shortage of kids who want to join. And they all fit this sort of similar theme, right? indigenous, poor, broken families, tough, alienated, angry, and with no future. The gang develops a leadership council called The Circle. It's usually made up of five to ten senior people who make the decisions. There's no top-down leader, which is going to prove to be an issue in a bit. Eventually, the rules change, and you have to serve time in a federal penitentiary to be considered

for it, and prison is going to be a huge recruiting ground. But for now, remember, these kids are still like 14 and 15. gang initiation involves having to get beat down for one to two minutes. And to get in, you also have to do tasks like commit a robbery, collect the debt, move drugs. You do a few of those. Then you need to get a gang tattoo, which is usually a G to symbolize being a soldier. I think it's a G with a dollar sign sort of interspersed. Five or six soldiers usually report to a higher rank.

And they're going to basically end up all functioning almost like autonomous cells. The second level is called a striker. And then when they're full patch, they can get different tattoos. including one that says Indian posse. Yeah, fun fact, this is like similar to how Danny got me to do the pod, right? First I had to publish a mealy-mouth substack, and then I had to stalk a bunch of people on Facebook, and then linked to some Vox articles on Twitter,

then I was media enough for you, wasn't I? I would have not done this with you if you had done any of those things. Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Back to these Bar Mitzvah Age wolves. They're stealing the car stereos. They're stealing cars. They're robbing houses. Danny gets arrested for a break-in, I think,

in like 1989, they're like 13, 14, carrying guns, you know, committing armed robberies every night. By 14 and 15, they're dealing drugs and they're pimping. They're selling weed, hash, LSD, and Coke out of rundown apartments and housing projects that soon pick up the nickname Little Chicago. Members at this point have to kick back 30% of their income to the council, but this eventually changes to 10%. Richard is pretty much a prodigy. He's 16 and he's collaborating with other gang leaders to set price.

on drugs. He's just a leader born and bred, commanding respect with much older gang leaders, which by the early 1990s, Winnipeg now has dozens of, when it pretty much had like one gang a decade earlier. Danny, even though he's a founder, he isn't a leader. He's seen as too impulsive and too hot-headed. I mean, Winnipeg sounds so like placid and nice as a place. I only remember it because I played NHL on like the Mega Drive in the 90s and I always picked them because it seemed like the coolest name. But yeah, it's, I don't know. know what the hell is going on in that bit of central Canada. Do you see that email we got recently about all the exotic animals and the bad guys up there

as well? There must be some stuff to that as well. I did see something about that. I think you responded, but we should look into that. But yeah, Winnipeg, I mean, look, all I knew, again, was like, you're right, NHL 95 or something with like, who is a Kik, Chakach or something like that. But that's, unfortunately, besides like Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, now, like, because of Letter County, I know a little bit about rural or Ontario, but like, that's my knowledge

of Winnipeg too. I was talking to a friend recently who was talking about Calgary, and I thought it was like a place that suck, and he was like, no, dude, Calgary is amazing. It's a great time. But, yeah, I mean, I guess Winnipeg, if you look in the last two or three decades in Canada, they typically tend to have the highest murder rate. You know, definitely not the most murders. I think you're going to look at Montreal and Toronto for that, even though Vancouver, we know is wild too. But Manitoba is apparently, Winnipeg is like a dangerous, dangerous place or has been. Damn. The Indian posse is first mentioned in media in June of 1993 when a newspaper reports on a brawl involving 300 people with knives and bats. The first kind of war they get into

is with another gang called War Party trying to move in on their turf, which coincidentally, that's the name of a TV show I've been pitching. The Indian Posse guys tell the leader of war party they want to make a deal, but instead they drive him out to the countryside and make him dig his own grave. But instead of killing him, they say, you're with us now, and their gang basically folds into Indian Posse. At this point, they're operating out of like a rundown motel in the North End, called the Merchant Hotel. It's controlled by another gang at first, the North End Brotherhood, but they fall in line really quickly. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals?

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They're going back and forth. It's kind of really hard to suss out how deadly both these groups are or how brutal, to be honest. I had a hard time trying to parse that through a lot of the episode, but they do kind of seem like amateurs for a lot of this. Yeah, I feel like that's the story with a lot of these young gangs, right? It's hard to tell whether they're just like crazy kids or something way more sinister, but I don't know.

We got any listeners in Manitoba? They should get in touch. I'm sure we do. And there's actually a really great quote that I'm saving for the end of the episode that talks about this a bit. They do bring a new tactic to Winnipeg, the drive-by shooting, which they picked up from gangster rap and movies. This is when LA gang culture,

you know, Crips, Bloods, NWA, two poppy and death row. We're talking early 90s, mid-90s. All this stuff was just like gigantic and tremendously influential. And these guys are seeing it on TV, hearing it on the radio and they want to be like that. This is actually a typical story I've heard about numerous other gangs forming at that time.

They were really influenced by this sort of stuff and adapted it. Everything from the bandanas to the colors, even Oakland Raiders gear. And the Indian Posse guys were no different. I remember watching an MTV doc way back in the day. I'm talking like a true life mid-90s doc, which were all incredible. And it was about the rise of gangs in the 90s and there was some gang in like Iowa talking about how the movie colors, which is about gang. banging in L.A. and the cops that go after them.

Sean Pan, right, Robert DuBall? That made them want to start their own gang. And this is like a real phenomenon that existed at the time. And the author of this book told a radio program in 2016, quote, well, there were a lot of things going on at that time around street gangs and the popular culture. In music, the hip-hop groups at the time were largely influenced by the West Coast culture in L.A. that was influenced by the Bloods and the Crips. There were movies like Boys in the Hood or New Jack City,

and that kind of glamorized a street gang life. And I think Richard and Danny, the two Wolf brothers, really picked up on that. They saw the identity of being a street gang member as a way of expressing their resistance to a mainstream society that they saw as racist, as somehow having the odds stacked against them. This was a way that they could come together and build something that would give them a sense of family, a sense of purpose, and an identity. So that's what the author says. But again, wait till the end, we have another way of viewing this that I think is important to consider as well. Anyway, the Indian posse and the overlords, they're shooting at each other, doing these drive-bys, mostly unsuccessful. Danny actually says that he prefers a walk-by because he wants the ops to know he wasn't scared.

He allegedly does 14 or so of these in the early 90s. Other gang members, they sometimes take the rap for him, especially the younger ones. That was big with the posse. They used kids to do their dirty work because Canada's laws were maybe, maybe still are, real easy with kids under 18. You know, you won't be doing any time and all that. Though I guess Danny and Richard are still pretty much kids at this point too. Danny ends up getting sent to a bunch of youth facilities and he escapes a few times. Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's tough, right?

That's just kind of on the authority. You can't just lock up tons of kids. You've got to actually investigators pulling the strings and bring them to heal. Yeah, yeah. In the summer of 1994, Danny and Richard are both locked up at an adult facility. And that's when the Indian Posse really starts warring with who would end up being their main rivals, the Manitoba Warriors. More on them in just a second.

Danny's actually a small guy. He's only like 120 pounds, but still fighting anyone and everyone. And the Indian Posse, they start running drugs in prison and recruiting really hard. And this is when they really start to function as a prison gang. So the Manitoba Warriors, they're a lot like the Indian Posse. They're an indigenous gang. It's founded by Irvin Chartrand in 1993. He had a similar upbringing to the wolves.

You know, was violent. He had an alcoholic single mom. And he was surrounded by crime in the north end of Winnipeg. He had an older brother that got him involved in gang life, and he was a petty criminal, dealing drugs and working as a bouncer at a bar with some other indigenous. They were dealing together, but getting like a crappy price, and an older bouncer, who was already moving bigger weight, took the other bouncers under his wing, and he organized them into a gang and the Manitoba warriors formed. They were older than the Indian Posse. They seemed more serious. They were at war with a lot of other gangs, and they only recruited over 18.

They eventually patched over the overlord gang we mentioned, and also unlike the Indian. and posse, they functioned similar to how motorcycle gangs did with a strict hierarchy, you know, a president, a vice president, all that. They actually end up working quite a bit with the Hells Angels. In the fall of that year, the police start actually going after the Indian Possee hard, a consequence of them doing a ton of armed robberies. Then, while locked up, Richard actually does a jailhouse interview with a reporter, the first posse member to speak publicly.

Side note, like back in my young street reporting days, I was actually sent to do a bunch jailhouse interviews at Rikers, usually with like lunatics. Like once I remember, this was the first one I had to do, it was a guy who had just been arrested for murdering his parents. And I sat in the visiting area for like four hours and he never came to see me. But it was kind of like it was an adventure, right? You have to tell people, the people at Rikers, like the guards, you were an associate or something because they would always not let you go if they knew you were a reporter.

It was like a cat and mouse game. There was actually a reporter at the same paper as me who was the expert, like in New York City media. And they just straight up banned him. Like he wasn't allowed to go. He was a legend, like the type of guy who kept the bottle of liquor in his desk and made you take a shot if you were late. Yes. I love those kinds of guys.

They're the ones that got me into the game as well, like so many of them in London, the Middle East. Get a story done. You leave your jacket on the back of the chair and then you just go to the bar at like, I don't know, 11 a.m. Also, like, on people killing their parents, right, have you watched the series Monsters? It's like, it's so weird, man. It's like performatively bad. It's, I can't get it. These trashy Netflix shows like that about like 90 scandals do so well.

And I have no interest in watching them. But I will say I've seen clips of the Aaron Hernandez one, you know, the Patriots player that killed a bunch of people. And the impression, like the guy who plays gronk, young gronk and like parcels, it's kind of amazing. But I have no interest in watching, in watching those. But yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's like, it's confusing me because it's so. bad, it has to have been done deliberately bad.

But watch, it's top 10. It's top 10. Anyway, so the night before I'm my first time going to Rikers, they tell me to call that guy for advice, and I'll never forget. His advice was like, do not get involved with the women on the jail bus with the big asses, meaning like the other women going to visit, you know, because you got to take a bus into Rikers. And he was like, even if they have a gigantic ass, do not get involved with them.

Which I want to know the story that made him say this. And then he said, if you're talking to the guy, you're interviewing him and he's not giving you anything. Just start telling him he's gay. Like, just tell him, like, just tell him he's gay and see how he reacts. Like, dude, the old school New York City reporters, dude, they're not, they were a different breed. They're not like the people you see in the media now, you know, like, whiny social media scolds. Not that New York reporters are. There's still a lot of good ones.

They were just like, these guys were rough and tumble. I was going to say, like, this is why I've been telling you to be careful about that 2023 thing, and Japan, to be fair. We'll have some fun. We'll have some fun in Japan. But yeah, where was I? Anyway, Richard Wolfe, he makes a really big mistake talking to this guy because the gang policy was keep your mouth shut. He gives up way too much info. He's talking about bank accounts for defense attorneys. He also talks about how the gang was about reclaiming pride and even gave the reporter a poem he had written, quote, call us what you will, but it is your racist blood we will spill. Brothers Forever Indian Posse. Yeah, I mean, this, like, talking that he does, like, giving away bank accounts, that's a bit more than common on garden snitching, right? What was he thinking? I think he just mentioned that there were them. He wasn't, like, listing the numbers. You just like, kind of like a we take care of our own thing.

But maybe they just got mad because his poetry was so bad, which is like, you know, there was definitely this political undertone to what the Indian Posse claimed they were about, even though they were selling drugs to and pimping their own people. And sometimes women under 16 that they, I guess, Girls, yeah, girls that they were pimping under 16. So, you know, it's, you got to look at both sides of this, right? This stuff hit a nerve, though, in 90s, Canada, because there was a real reckoning to be had about what was done to the indigenous people and how they were still marginalized and how the police treated them. You had a lot of issues bubbling up to the surface. Right around then, you had a standoff between the Mohawk Warriors and police in Quebec over a golf course on a sacred burial ground. That was in 1990.

And then in 1995, there was another kind of standoff over a park in Ontario where police. killed a protester named Dully George who was just holding a stick. So there were obviously real issues, but like, how much credit do you want to give to people claiming that they're doing this about Native rights when they're basically, you know, getting their people hooked on drugs

and pimping them out? So anyway, Richard does that interview. Even though he's the founder of the gang in a leader, he's disciplined for speaking out of turn. He's beaten by three other members for the violation, like beaten badly. And then him and Danny get out later that year, and Richard is tasked with running the prostitution racket.

it. The gang is getting involved super big in the sex trade. That sounds like a always sunny episode, right? The gang gets involved with a sex trade. Anyway, sorry, I shouldn't joke about that. It's bringing in a lot of money by some counts 15K a week are going through Richard. They were doing well and making cash. But it's a little hard for me to understand, right? You know, you have this guy who's a founder and leader not being really able to make his own calls and getting punished by lower leaders. I don't know. I just have questions. The gang, though, is still kind of small time. but they're starting to connect with U.S. Native American gangs in South Dakota, looking for better drug supplies. They're still mostly street level, though. Crack is hitting Winnipeg at that time, and the gang's asked to sell it by a biker gang associate and actually say no.

They don't have the major plug context like the bikers do or like Asian gangs, but they still don't like taking orders. The wolves especially didn't like bikers, who they saw as racist. They still sometimes teamed up with them, though, to do armed robberies or to do ATM rip-offs together. These days there are loads of indigenous biker gangs in Canada, right? I mean, you're the Canada guy.

Do you know this stuff? Like, did that come quite recently or am I totally wrong about that? I think it's all in the last 20 or 30 years, but he was referring specifically to the Hells Angels, who I think patch over the Manitoba Warriors and like have indigenous, you know, gangs that are puppet clubs or things like that. But, you know, they were seen as being racist and, like, against that. But I'm sure right now there's tons of intermixing. And even the native, the Indian posse, in 2006, they start letting in non-native members because they wanted to just get bigger.

So all that sort of stuff changes. Danny gets arrested again in 1995. After he's in a house with Richard was bagging up weed, Danny takes the blame for his brother. And then in May, Richard makes another big mistake. He's owed somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 for a drug debt he had inherited when the guy who was owed the money dies. And Richard takes over his debt. And the guy who owes that money isn't paying. And it's becoming a threat to his credibility.

people are asking about it. Like his name is being besmirched in the streets. And the guy who owes the money apparently owns a pizza place. And Richard gets someone to call the pizza shop and ask for a delivery. And he gives his name as the name of the guy who he inherited the debt for him, the guy who was killed. I guess he thinks this is going to like tip them off, but I don't know why. He was also probably drunk. But the delivery guy arrives and he's just this clueless Polish immigrant delivery guy who just has pizza.

and Richard gets the pizza there's no money in the thing or whatever and he just shoots the guy with a shotgun which the whole thing is very stupid like I don't know why he thought they would buy there's got to be more worth than that he had called the pizza shop from the house of two friends

and was now worried they would talk as the police were investigating so Danny goes and he threatens the two friends not to testify they had given statements to the police they had already arrested Richard and Danny figures he's going to threaten the witnesses

but after the threats they just call the cops and get into witness protection and Danny gets arrested Richard is seen as having made a really dumb decision and he loses even more stature in the gang. And despite all these claims of big money he was getting, he has a public attorney. So again, like another fishy thing, right? They're supposed to be making big money, but he's got to use a public attorney. He gets found

guilty of attempted murder and a sentence to 19 years. And Danny gets found guilty of threatening the witnesses and he gets sent to Stony Mountain Prison. So they didn't actually kill the Polish guy? Was he okay in the end? Yeah, I believe he lived. Okay, good. And witness protection in Canada, I mean, that seems pretty easy. to get on to. Maybe that's where we should do more crimes. What do you mean? Easy. Well, I mean, they just said they're getting harassed and they go straight into

witness protection. I thought it was like really notoriously difficult to get onto those things. Well, no, they got threatened by like a gang leader's brother and they want to put their test, yeah, they're testifying against the gang leader. I don't think it's that easy, dude. But it would be a great episode if you tried.

So this prison, Stony Mountain, that's where the Indian Posse with a circle, that leadership council is based in, as they really morphing into a prison gang. Though Danny isn't actually in the leadership council, he's not in the circle still. He's like a tier below.

He's still too much of a hothead. But that doesn't stop him from really taking over the drugs, like running drugs in. He's seen as a real security threat, even again, 120 pounds. He's dispensing beatings to opponents to members of the Indian posse who mess up. There's also a crazy prison ride in 1996

in a different jail, I think, where the Indian Posse and Manitoba Warriors really go at it. They get, keys from a prison guard. They go after the protective custody wing. They beat up a lot of people. They amputate fingers. There's torture. They scalp someone. They try to castrate a sex offender. It's wild. And the press has a field day. And it's like the first big sign that the prisons are losing control and the indigenous gangs are becoming a real menace. In the wake of it, the prison

systems decides to start splitting up the Indian posse members. They all can't be in the same prison, which, you know, pretty easy foreshadowing right there. Yeah. I mean, talk about about foreshadowing. See what it did. I'm guessing a botched prison castration is not saying you want to be cleaning up or a scalping, I guess, which is pretty iconic for an indigenous gang. Yeah. I mean, if anybody's a prison guard and listen to his show, like, can you get in touch?

It sounds like the toughest job. I can't think of a quicker way to lose your faith in humanity other than, like, I don't know, writing for the gray zone or something. Yeah. I mean, I saw a, uh, that's probably worse. I saw a Reddit thread of like a prison guard talking about his salary and he was making like, you know, easy six figures after five years. So I think they're, I mean, I don't know. I'm sure that this is California, but I'm sure it seems like some of them are

well compensated. But still, yeah, not a job. You've got to scoop like a child rapist dick off the floor, but at least you get a decent wage. Not a job I would want to have. Anyway, 1997, Richard was sent to a maximum security prison in Eminton. He's been having doubts about the gang life and he's on the outs with them. The older guys in the prison, right, in the posse who were recruited there, they don't like that he talked to the journalist, and they also mistakenly think he was arrested for sexual assault. Interestingly, another founder of the gang is there, but he had been in prison a lot longer and knew the older guys. So he's in good, and he's trying to protect Richard. But like, this is weird, right? Newish recruits who can go after the founder

like that, then, I don't know. It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Either way, Richard soon proposes to the three top leaders of the Indian posse in the prison that he wants out of the gang. And at first, they say he just needs a beating to be disciplined that he can get out. But he later finds out from a guy he personally recruited that there was a hit out on him taken by the gang. Eventually, he gets set up and shanked five times but survives. And that other founder who he's still cool with comes and visits him in the prison

hospital just to make sure that he won't talk. And eventually he's offered, you know, the option to stay in the gang if he does a hit, but he declines and then gets transferred to another prison. And that's the thing with the Indian posse. Like, it's a gang, but it just seems so anarchist. I still am kind of clueless a little bit about that structure. It seems organized but also not. And I guess that's similar to a lot of street gangs that we've covered.

But it just, I don't know, the whole thing was weird to me. Now, as Richard is trying to get out, Danny is getting deeper and deeper in as he's in and out of prison. He gets out in 1998 and he's trying to avoid the streets of Winnipeg where the gang now has a thousand members. So he heads to Saskatchewan where he's looking to expand the gang in the city of Regina, which has 200,000 people. I mean, I like the North American defensive of a city. Like it makes it makes Wellington seem really big. Also, I'm like being super done. Is the Sasquatch?

Is that a Saskatchewan thing? Or is that completely different? I think the sat squash is different, but I never, yeah, maybe the name comes from. Is it like a Canadian thing? I don't know. I mean, there's definitely satsquatch stuff in America, dude. Isn't there a thing where, like, all the sightings of satsquatches line up with, like, where black bears are? And if you've ever seen like a black bear, like, run or, like, walk on two legs, they look like really.

weird. I feel like I've read something like that before. Like all the sightings line up with Black Bearer territory. I thought you're going to say instances where guys have been out wasted after college ball games or something. No. No, no, no. Anyway, Danny meets with the militant American Indian movement

around that time, who were similar kind of to the Black Panthers in a way. He's inspired. He sees the gang as this rejection of Canada or Canadian society. There's that ethnic pride component, the heritage of being indigenous. This is, you know, this whole like, we are the downtrodden and we will fight the state.

And the gang is spreading like crazy in the reserves that dot the western prairies of Canada. A former chief who saw it rise in his community in 2000 told the author, quote, there's pride in the outlaw, pride in fighting what they see as the government, the enemy. Danny tries to make his mark in Regina. He's

recruiting, he's fighting in the bars, he's hyping up the gang, but he's drinking a lot and doing dumb, dumb stuff. Like assaulting a security guard, trying to stop them from shoplifting from a tire store. I think he gets caught when he's doing that He's an tire iron in his hand, so it gets charged with armed robbery. After that, he moves back to Winnipeg to rejoin his sort of main territory and get back to arm robberies and drugs.

And at that point, the posse is also talking to the Hells Angels about big drug buys. And the Hells are looking to align with either the Manitoba Warriors or the Possee as a puppet club. Danny hates them. He actually decides to rob the Hells Angels when they're supposed to buy a few thousand dollars worth below from them. He does that. He robs them in this hotel. And he probably would have been killed for it if it would. was out east, right?

Where the hells angels are super strong, but they weren't super strong in Winnipeg at this time. So it starts a sort of back and forth, tit for tat, drive-by shooting thing. The best summer memories are made outside, and LL Bean has the clothing and gear you need to make these memories.

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He eventually gets popped collecting the drug debt while hammered and he's sentenced to seven years. And he's still only 22 years old. Oh, damn. I was going to say he should have grown up by now, but that is like, that's crazy young. I thought he was like 35 in my head. No, 22. Ouch. Meanwhile, Canada's passed their infamous anti-gang legislation in 1998.

That was done to fight the biker gangs in Quebec. We actually talk about this a lot in the two episodes that we did on them. It's used in Manitoba, though, to go after the Manitoba warriors who face massive raids. They'd also gotten involved in a political dispute at a reservation. They were backing a group of dissidents who were clashing with the chief, and the police start to worry that this is really legitimizing them. First Nation officials are starting to meet. with the gangs too, trying to stop the violence, but also showing them respect.

And Winnipeg officials, they don't know what to do as the crime is growing like crazy and the gangs are gaining more and more power. It's out of control and young kids are being recruited left and right. Here's how it was written up in Winnipeg Free Press in the late 90s. Quote, Winnipeg is home to a growing class of native adolescents of little education and unstable family background for whom the city offers very little in the way of constructive activity. No employer will hire them.

No government will take responsibility for them. Few agencies take an interest in them. The Indian Posse and the Manitoba warriors offer them personal acceptance, excitement, status, and better economic security than is available to them elsewhere. Is it any wonder they take the easiest path and turn to crime? Interestingly, a cop who's assigned to a really bad area

in Indian Posse territory at the time since it wasn't well organized at all. It was like these autonomous cells that sometimes helped each other with no real leadership. There could be 500 members and there'd be 250 different factions. He also says the saddest thing he saw

was all the girls the Indian posse put out on the street, many of whom were addicts, some of whom were under 18 by a few years, which, you know, kind of... Damn, out. Danny's still in prison, and he's rising to the top of the Indian Council at that time, running the drug trade,

and the Indian posse is basically taken over the prison he's in, and others. He's at the point where he's having people killed and doesn't have to get his hands dirty. He's in Stony Mountain again, but he soon moved to another prison in Eminton. Meanwhile, the gang is kind of fracturing. It's kind of beset by internal fighting.

There's lots of intrigue, lots of plots. His best friend of the gang is killed. No one knows who did it. He's transferred again to another prison, and he's like starting to get political, getting angrier at Canada. He becomes the chairman of a native brotherhood organization in prison. But he's also getting deeper in the gang

and using his newfound knowledge to manage it better. Meanwhile, these younger gangs are starting up like the native syndicate killers and Red Alert. Danny's moved around a bunch. Richard's still kind of basically out of the gang. I think he's out east at this point. And the new corrections strategy, when we've seen using countless episodes about gangs, is to now ship the high-ranking members all over to spread them out. And it always leads to the same thing, which has massive growth for the gangs.

Yeah, that's insane. If you want people to eat less McDonald's, do not put McDonald's all over the country. I mean, I'm starting to think maybe there are situations where it has worked. We just don't know about it. And it's like, you know, they're sort of like, I don't know. But it always seems... Maybe they should tell them the gay. From the episodes we've done, it always seems like it doesn't work out as intended.

Some of these guys, these leaders end up in SHU, the shoe, the special handling unit, which is basically Canada's most maximum security prison and it's in Quebec. This is actually seen as sort of a good thing for the Indian Posse. Because it's like an announcement that there are full. to be reckoned with. And now they're starting to get respect on a national level. Maybe not as major players in the drug game, but as a violent force in the prison system.

Remember, we've been talking about these guys having a ton of power in the Canadian planes. But they're sort of like, you know, that's like Canada's kind of, you know, it's a low-key area. The gangs and organized crime groups in Montreal, in Toronto and Vancouver, these are big players,

mafias like the risutoes, international, biker gangs like the Hells Angels, even the Vancouver sort of dealer crews He was moving massive weight, like the United Nations, the Bacon Brothers, the ones that not only were killers, but operated all over the world. The Indian posse is not on their level yet. Although, I will say this, Maum Boucher, Maurice Boucher, is attacked in 2002 in prison. If you don't know who he is, we did a bunch of episodes talking about him. He's the boss of the Quebec Hells Angels, probably the most powerful man in Canada at that point, or up there, maybe Rizuto was.

Anyway, it's a big deal to try to take him out. And the rumor, the story goes, that it was the Indian posse that did it. Was there a reason for that? Like, was he just a rival or was there more going on? They were clashing with like a sort of, I think, you know, like neo-Nazi faction called the white boy posse. That was like a puppet club for the angel. So apparently it was related to that or like other prison beefs that the bikers and the Indian posse guys had been involved with. So that's what they said.

It was about. At this time, Danny and a few other top-level Indian posse guys are transferred. to a prison in New Brunswick where they have no backup. Danny gets beat down bad by the Manitoba Warriors. He has like a cracked skull. He spends months recovering in segregation, but it's eventually sent to another prison in Quebec. Apparently there he befriends a guy who was part of a Maddoch, I forget his first name, who was part of like the Irish mob that operated in Montreal and Quebec. And he kind of helps school Danny a bit on stuff. Danny helps him write letters because the guy's apparently illiterate. Gerald Maddoch, I think is his name. But that was almost like a protese situation there.

The whole time, though, the Indian posse is continuing to fracture. Some factions are actually breaking away. Then in 2004, there's a coup among the leadership. They nearly beat to death one of their own leaders, a guy who had been a bit of a wild card and was causing a lot of trouble. And one of those coup plotters happens to be Sheldon McKay, who was the guy from the cold open, a vicious psychopath. He's on the leadership council. And that's when Danny gets out, doesn't last long, gets picked up for a parole violation. And then him and a bunch of those leaders, they kill McKay in his cell.

Danny's back out on the streets again in 2007. Remember, though, through all of this, Richard is still serving his long sentence and is out of the gang. But Danny is rumored to have 400 soldiers under him in different clicks. He is powerful and one of the oldest members of the gang at that point. He's out on a recruiting trip in Saskatchewan one night when he runs into some native syndicate killers members in a bar. They confront him after noticing he has some Indian posse tattoos, is not realizing who he is. Danny doesn't back down. They start fighting.

At one point, Danny actually puts a pool ball in a sock to use them. a weapon. Things get the fuse before it gets too bad, but Danny cannot tolerate the disrespect. Yeah, shout out of this point to my mate's dad, who actually did this to a gangster in a part of the UK. And I think went to prison for a long time for it. Old school weapon much better than the strap. I like it. Yeah, it's a class act, that pool ball and a sock. You've got to take your sock off, so it takes a while. But yeah, once it's there, it's good. Danny actually, he gets two other members that he had been working with. One of them is a young kid, and they go looking for the native syndicate guys. They see their

car at a house and Danny and the kid bust into the house, which has like a dozen people in it. It's a civilian house. The kid freezes, but Danny lights it up. He fires dozens of shots. He even reloads. They're wearing masks, but when they're leaving, Danny can't help but say to one of them,

don't mess with the Indian posse. There's two dead, including an elderly civilian and three wounded, and it's a big story all over Canada. And the police are onto Danny almost right away. They know it's him. Their surveillance footage from the earlier fighting the bar. They bagged Danny on a parole violation,

and a few months later, despite the posse threatening witnesses, including the kid, they charge him with two murders and three attempted murders. Interestingly, the cops are worried about not having enough evidence, so they send an undercover cop

masquerading as a biker, just arrested for gun charges into the prison, and in one night of sharing herself with Danny, the biker manages to get Danny to incriminate himself. This is around 2008. Danny's awaiting trial, but he knows he's done for. He's facing life.

so he starts plotting while in prison waiting for the trial. Oh, by the way, his younger brother is also locked up with him for a different murder charge. Them, one other Indian posse soldier, and two other prisoners managed to spend months shaw shanking their way out of the prison and managed to escape. There's five of them. Here's how the author of the book The Ballad of Danny Wolfe describes it in an interview. Quote, it's an amazing story. It began about four or five months before the escape finally happened, and he had a set of nail clippers. With those nail clippers, he was able to unscrew a radiator grill off the base of a wall inside this prison and Regina.

The particular radiator was situated just underneath a security camera, so out of sight from the guards were down the other end of the hallway. Every night, he would unscrew this radiator grill and fashioned with some bits of metal and other tools that he found inside the prison, and would fashion instruments to dig through the wall. He did this night after night for months, never getting discovered by the guards. So when they get out, Danny has this like wild plan to stay in the woods for his. year and survive hunting and fishing and living off the land to sort of prove to himself that he could do what his ancestors did. But it does not come to fruition. Oh, that's a shame. Because actually sounds like that's the easy part, you know, like sort of getting yourself out of prison with a

toothpicks, pretty impressive. Yeah, that's definitely very, you know, there's that kid, I follow this kid on Instagram who was doing that and he's like a real country boy, fascinating stuff. This is a kid breaking out prison on Instagram. No, no, no, no. He's like living in the woods and like literally just hunting and fishing to live off the land. Definitely not filming his... But I mean, there are... Kids these days are pretty dumb. Like, I've seen a lot of film stuff

in prison. I would not be surprised if someone was like, I'm gonna fill my escape. Like, they are... People are that stupid. So this is a gigantic story. You've got suspected murderers,

gang members, breaking out of prison. It's all over in the news and there's a massive manhunt. Danny and his brother and the other posse members actually end up back on the streets of Winnipeg. They're dodging the police for weeks.

and becoming street legends. Danny even as a friend updated his Facebook status, which is a thing that we used to do 15 years ago. It's basically the 2000s era Instagramming your crimes. He did have friends

call in fake tips, which is a good strategy, but yeah, they're actually kind of living it up. Quote, Danny was like a rock star. Women were charmed by his aura, hanging on his every word

and attaching themselves to him. Of course, they were also dummies, so this didn't last long. They're actually caught, I think, maybe one by one, maybe three or four weeks

after they escaped. Danny's trial does not go well. One of his accomplice testifies, actually maybe both did. So does the undercover cop who posed as a biker. On November 18, 2009, Danny's found guilty and receives five life sentences. In Canada, that means he could still apply for parole after 25 years, which basically means like five years for each of his murders and attempted murders, which is just like, I wonder, man, the lawless north, right?

His little brother actually ends up going free on his murder charge, which is dropped shortly after. Danny, though, he's going to be locked up for a while. He's in prison 2009 to 2010. Things are fracturing even more with the Indian posse. There's a beef brewing with the native syndicate killers, stabbing, beatings. In January of 2010, Danny's in a room with a bunch of inmates, including two Indian posse members he was friends with.

Those two friends get jumped by the native syndicate killers. Danny isn't a target, but he tries to save his two friends. He stabbed twice, and it doesn't look bad at first, but his right coronary artery is sliced, and he dies at the age of 33, just like Jesus. Yikes. I mean, I'm not going to shed a tear for the guy, but yeah, that is a rough way to go. I mean, see also my previous point about prison guards. That's madness.

It's probably like every day. Not fun. The Indian Posse takes some more hits shortly after. There's a murder trial actually for Sheldon McKay, that guy who was killed by the leaders who was a leader. Richard Wolf gets out a few years later. He was apparently doing okay, but his stepson dies and he has a breakdown and spiral. into substance abuse, and he gets bagged for a pretty brutal rape in 2014, and then dies in prison in 2016.

The Indian posse is still kicking. They're still, like, pretty heavy in the Canadian prison system, and in Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, but they've never really reached the heights of real organized crime. There's still what you consider a streaking. But something else to consider. I was going to do this earlier in the episode, but I think it makes sense to do it now at the end. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light.

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He writes something for the Winnipeg Free Press in 2016. And it's not flattering. He's a little unhappy with some portrayals of the Indian posse. Here's what he had to say. Quote, But the wolf legend only continues to grow as authors, journalists, filmmakers, and academics continue to try to attach some broader sociological, even anthropological significance to the wolves and the Indian posse.

In that world, these young gentlemen weren't in a gang, but rather in a surrogate family. Their drug trafficking was simply the manifestation of generations of resentment towards a country that had marginalized their people. And the pimping? Residential schools, I guess, is the worst kind of historical revisionism. It is an insult to Aboriginal people everywhere. But it is also exactly the kind of stuff that sounds good over a chilled glass of Chardonnay and a cafe with your fellow intellectuals. Listen, I was there at the time. Richard Wolfe was no Malcolm X and the Indian Posse weren't the Black Panthers.

Wolf was cut from the same cloth as all the other hoodlums and clowns I grew up with in the North End. Yes, he was a little brighter than most, but that's an extremely low bar. And he goes on to say, the idea of the wolves as either a fulsome expression of the alienation of indigenous people and or criminal masterminds is an intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. The wolves were just dogs and not particularly sophisticated ones at that. I mean, dude, that is, I hate the phrase, I hate the phrase mic drop, it's corny, but like, that's, that's how you write for an alt weekly, you know? But it's a good, it's a good reminder to take all stories like this about organized crime and gangs and all that, including the ones that we do. Like, take our episodes, take, we try to balance everything out, but take it with a grain of salt. Wow. What a, what a note to end this, another one of the Danny Gold Canadian episode Pantheon ones on.

Yeah, I mean, at this point, the CBC should be contracting out to me or I don't even know. Let's go to, dude, we should go to Montreal. Anyway, as always, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast for bonus episodes. Also sign up on Spotify. Honestly, Spotify helps us out so much. We love those dudes. Shout out to Travis. So support them if you can.

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