YORKTON — The Yorkton Tribal Council Emergency Management says an alert app for Indigenous communities helps locate missing persons alive when minutes count.
“We use it for everything. Most of the time, it’s the missing person alert for search and rescue,” said Yorkton Tribal Council Emergency Management Co-ordinator Bonnie Austman.
She points to recent cases where missing people were found within 24 hours and says getting the word out about a missing person as soon as possible is key to finding them safe.
“We specifically deal with First Nations, and we activate our own team because the RCMP and the province officially need permission to enter onto First Nations land. With search and rescue, most of the time the RCMP are in charge, but we usually get a call from the chief requesting our team”, Austman said. “First Alerts definitely fills that gap as we are often the first on the scene and out searching.”
In some cases, the RCMP and the province cannot issue amber alerts because they must follow more specific criteria.
With Talking Stick’s First Alert, emergency services personnel send an emergency alert from a smartphone or laptop, just like typing and sending texts.
“We put our own information in there about looking into yards (and sheds), things like that,” said Austman, “And it’s really helped.”
FirstAlerts is a First Nation-controlled alerting system within the Talking Stick app. In 2022, the Talking Stick app launched across the province and has established itself as a virtual resource for Indigenous peer-to-peer mental health support.
was added to Talking Stick in February 2024 as a response to the Saskatchewan coroner’s inquest recommendation regarding the James Smith Cree Nation and Weldon mass casualty event that occurred in September 2022.
The alert has a special designation from Apple and Google Play stores to interrupt phones even when set to silent.
Talking Stick has stepped up to fill a gap left after a national inquiry into Canada's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls concluded in July 2019. The alert option for missing persons is available using First Alerts and goes out with a specific sound designed to grab the patron’s attention.
Yorkton Tribal Council Emergency Management also recently used First Alerts to notify community members and give them specific instructions during recent tornado scares.
“People get that alert and they really take heed of what we are telling them,” said Austman. “Last week, there were tornadoes and weather watches in the area. We’ve used it for snowstorms and cold temperatures, too, just to let people know what’s going on around them,” she said.
Alerts sent using FirstAlerts are instant and get sent directly to people's phones via the app. People receive an alert on their phone, which is better than social media because they don’t need to go to Facebook to check for updates, says Austman.
According to TryCycle, the system was created to give people the option to choose which nations they receive alerts from, and for nations, the choice on when to send alerts and what information to share with their members, without any external barriers or delays. Training for alert senders takes about 20 minutes, and alerts can be sent in seconds. More than 50,000 people in the province are using Talking Stick.
Yorkton Tribal Council Emergency Management has trained over 85 search and rescue volunteers from 25 First Nations from southern Saskatchewan. They have 45 people trained in drone search and rescue and also have a boat for searching water bodies. The group has been part of the Saskatchewan Search and Rescue Saskatchewan Association of Volunteers () since 2023. SARSAV is comprised of search and rescue chapter professionals with paid and unpaid volunteers who train, search, and provide public awareness education.
