Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

by Patty Krawec

Much crime is related to vagrancy, which is vague and useful for controlling excess populations. Vagrancy laws emerged in the Middle Ages to control peasants who were no longer tied to particular lords. These laws made it a crime for a person to wander about without any visible means of support, effectively making it illegal to be homeless and without a job. These laws are expressed in a number of ways, ranging from loitering charges to carding. Carding, or street checks, is a practice used by police officers to check the identity of somebody who is not doing anything obviously wrong but who is occupying a place the police believe they have no reason to be. In practice, that has meant stopping racially marginalized men who are in predominantly white neighborhoods and documenting their names. Over time, they become “known to police,” suggesting something shady and questionable.