James Smith Cree Nation leadership signed a partnership on Wednesday, gaining access to a new emergency alerting system one and a half years after a mass stabbing on the First Nation.
FirstAlerts, part of the anonymous chat app Talking Stick, will allow First Nations leaders to issue emergency alerts to their communities about missing persons, natural disasters and public safety emergencies.
“This is about putting control back into the hands of our people when we’ve felt underserved by the traditional emergency alert system,” James Smith Cree Nation Chief Wally Burns said. “Using FirstAlerts is another way for us to feel safer as a community after we’ve lived through such tragedy.”
In September 2022, 11 people were killed and 17 others were injured during mass killer Myles Sanderson’s stabbing rampage across the First Nation and in a nearby community.
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The alerting system comes from 29 recommendations made at a coroner’s inquest in January, including eight recommendations to James Smith Cree Nation leadership to help make their community safer.
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Burns said the community also went into lockdown twice in 2023 while RCMP tracked down armed individuals.
“We have witnessed layers of bureaucracy that have cost us critical time during emergencies, or times when a missing person doesn’t meet the criteria to have an alert sent out,” FSIN Vice-Chief Dutch Lerat said.
The First Nation is now the first band in Saskatchewan to implement FirstAlerts in its community.
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