Coronavirus racism: Go back to China, attacker said, as he punched indigenous Vancouver woman who sneezed
- Dakota Holmes says a man who attacked her in a Vancouver park told her to ‘go home, you don’t belong here’ as he berated her about Covid-19
- Indigenous Canadians are often mistaken as Asian, and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs has sympathised with Asian groups targeted amid the pandemic
Dakota Holmes says she was walking her dog, Kato, through Gray’s Park on Vancouver’s Eastside at about 8.30pm on Friday evening when she sneezed.
She said she had just passed a man, who wheeled around and began berating her about Covid-19, yelling at her to “go back to China”. As the abuse escalated – “very negative comments [about] the coronavirus … go home, you don’t belong here” – the man punched her in the head twice, knocking her to the ground.
Holmes, 27, is an indigenous Canadian.
“I’ve been in situations like this before, being indigenous,” said Holmes. “I try not to get involved. I try not to say anything back … I think the only thing I said was ‘I’m not Asian, I’m indigenous, I’m from here, I’ve been here my whole life’.”
Holmes’ experience is not unique.
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Anti-Asian attacks increase in Canada since start of coronavirus pandemic
In Montreal, Inuit woman Sue Simigak said she was abused on the city’s subway on April 4 by a man who similarly mistook her for being Chinese and told her to “get out of my own country”.