Cowessess First Nation speaks about the Carry The Kettle tragedy

Cowessess First Nation is under an hour away from the house in which four people were found dead on Feb. 4 on Carry the Kettle First Nation. Their Chief Erica Beaudin joins The Evan Bray Show to give an update on the situation as an affected, nearby community.

EVAN BRAY: What can you tell me about how people are feeling in your community and in the nearby communities, including Carry the Kettle with this tragedy from yesterday?

Well, first of all, our hearts go out to the home community of Čeǵá K’iŋna otherwise known as Carry the Kettle First Nation. And as soon as we had heard we put out an open letter to the Čeǵá K’iŋna First Nation and letting them know that we stand with them and anything that they need from us, that we will be there to help. As you had mentioned, all of our families are connected, and as soon as the incident happened, I started receiving messages from our members that were personally affected by either bearing on to our First Nation and or having relatives that were affected by the tragedy.

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We’ve had conversations with people who are members of the CTK community who are hearing things about this. Have you heard anything about the cause of this or any of the details that you can share?

I’ve been in this game a long time, as you know, and I would never share any sort of rumours or conjecture at this point and follow the lead of the police. And certainly, there’s rumours unsubstantiated as of now.

For our community, we are very close to the Zagime Anishinabek First Nation and the person who was the person of interest, who was arrested early this morning, they had thought he and another person may be on our First Nation. The RCMP detachment as well as major crimes, as well as the Regina Police Service were active on our First Nation, our home community on Cowessess and our one area was on lockdown for several hours until it was cleared.

I’m just curious to know you and I had lots of talks through the James Smith Cree Nation incident, this tragedy, we’ve seen other tragedies unfold on First Nations in the province. What is your thought about that? What is your message about that? What do we need to do?

The message is that we all need to work together. I know that the Four Nations Zagime Anishinabek,  Cowessess, Kahkewistahaw and Ochapowace, we are currently putting together a partnership, and we hope to together address the issue of drugs, of any sort of trafficking usage that harms our most vulnerable, on our communities and off.

As stated before, we are all connected, Both physically as well as through kid in relationships.

It’s not only for our First Nations but all of us in the south end.

We need to come together and realize, I shouldn’t say, realize we have come together, but there needs to be more done.

I commend James Smith First Nation on some of the work that they’ve done in addressing it, but there’s a lot more that needs to be done. There needs to be a very detailed influx of resources that need to be looked at in terms of what is working and what isn’t working, and then for us to move forward together.