“We want our community back” – those were the words repeated more than once by dozens of Saddle Lake band members, who walked 5,000 steps through pouring rain on Friday morning to protest violence, drugs and gang activity in their community.
Four elders faced in each of the four directions and praid, the rain mixing with the tears one wiped away. After the prayer, a procession of walkers set off to the arena, song and drumbeat accompanying them on their journey.
Lanna Cardinal, 31, and Destiny Quinn, 22 are youth mentors with the Eagle Healing Lodge, who, with the help of their supervisors, organized the walk.
Cardinal explained her own family lives in Saddle Lake’s townsite, which more than one person described as a site of continuing violence and gangs’ turf wars.
“It seemed like people were not paying attention to the shootings, like it was becoming normal to have shootings in the town site. We just tried to raise awareness, especially to young people that there’s more to life than gangs, violence, to see better,” she said. “We’re standing up for our community and we want our community back, especially from the gangs and violence.”
Two Saddle Lake people, Christine Cardinal and Robert Stamp, have gone missing from the reserve and their bodies have yet to be found, while a drive-by shooting at a residence on May 27 also rattled community members.
Priscilla Lapatak, mother-in-law to Robert Stamp, says she lives on the town site and describes it as an “awful” place. In her younger years, she and her girlfriends would gather and share stories freely outside, but in more recent years, she said, drugs and gang violence have overrun the community.
“We see a lot of kids getting beaten up, we hear gunshots on a daily, nightly basis. Last night, we seen a high-speed chase going on,” she said, adding when her neighbours are doing drugs, they blast out music that rattles the walls of her home. She and Stamp’s family are facing threats, and she says it’s terrifying to let her grandson outside in the town site.
“And it’s hard, you know . . . our lives changed to something I wouldn’t ever wish upon anyone else.”
Hearing this, Sandra Cardinal, a program coordinator at the Eagle Healing Lodge speaks up.
“That’s part of the reason behind this, to show our people our support that it doesn’t have to be this way, we don’t have to live like this in fear. That’s why we’re here, is to support each other as a community.”
The divisions between people, old family feuds or the rivalry between town gangs and north side gangs, need to stop.
“We all want to be recognized as one people,” she said, adding that all the band members, collectively, need to join together to take a stand against violence. “We’re all responsible for what happens here in our community.”
After wading through the showers, wearing plastic bags and raincoats, people arrived at the arena, where friendly, welcoming faces greeted them and thanked them for being part of the walk, following which a lunch was served and speeches were made.
Chief Eddie Makokis said it was clear drugs and alcohol was an issue affecting young people not just in Saddle Lake, but in several communities. Leadership supported the members’ efforts to tackle the problem, he said.
“I’m really, really proud of the people, of taking a big stand and a challenge of our community to come back together, to heal together.”
