New leadership has been sworn-in for the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. The ceremony, Monday, featured the swearing-in of re-elected Chief Tammy Cook-Searson as well as the newly elected councillors.
“It’s a tremendous honour to be re-elected as Chief of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. It was a really nice election, I went out to all the different communities, visiting people at their doors and hearing their concerns. It was really nice just to get out there and just listen to people and hear their priorities and what they want their Chief and Council to be working on. There was just a lot of support out there, and it was just really nice to get out and visit people,” said Cook-Searson. “There’s many issues out there. I know we have a lot of housing that’s required, there’s overcrowding, there’s houses that need work done, we still have a lot of people that are living in houses that need a lot of renovations and we also have people that have no homes. So, those are things that we have to continue to prioritize as well as the mental health and addictions. We have a lot of violence in our communities, the gangs that are coming up in our communities, so there’s a lot of work we have to do in terms of community safety so we will continue to work with the communities. I know we did go out and survey the communities on Treaty Days a couple years ago and the priority that was listed in all the six communities was community safety,” explained Cook-Searson.
Cook-Searson said that moving forward the LLRIB will need to focus on the preservation of culture as well as the lifestyles of trappers.
“We need to focus on the culture, the trapping, making sure that we’re supporting the trappers. I grew up on the trapline and I know the life and it’s a beautiful life and we have to continue to support that lifestyle and the way that we understand trapping and the traplines is totally different than the way the governments understand that. So, I think it’s important for us as a Chief and Council to convey what the traplines mean to us and that lifestyle and what it means, it’s part of our traditional territory, it’s part of our history, its where we are, it’s our lands and its part of who we are so we have to assert that and make sure that we are fighting for our inherent and Treaty Rights,” said Cook-Searson.
(Photo by Roman Hayter.)