Grants and Contributions:

Kwanlin Dun First Nation Community Safety Officer Project

3105-22030

$219,597.00

Apr 1, 2023 - Mar 31, 2024

The Kwanlin Dün First Nation (KDFN) Community Safety Officer (CSO) project is a non-enforcement based program. The CSO Program aligns with Kwanlin Dün’s inherent right to self-reliance and governance. The CSOs are the natural and traditional safeguards in the community that were lost due to colonization and play a significant role in reconciliation, specifically helping to bridge and build trusting relationships with western counterparts and systems that have historically invoked harm. The KDFN CSO program is seen as a powerful and culturally relevant justice program for KDFN that speaks to a number of Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, in addition to several Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Calls to Justice. The CSO Program is a preventative and wellness-based approach that draws on KDFN traditions, a robust training curriculum and a tiered recruitment model. While the CSOs work closely and collaboratively with the RCMP to enhance the effectiveness of existing policing services in terms of cultural relevance and responsiveness to the public safety needs of KDFN, the CSOs have no enforcement authority. The CSO’s understand the importance of allowing citizens to feel respected and understood. The CSOs work with children, families, and elders. They are not reactionary, but proactive. They are highly visible, known and trusted in the community. Contemporary and westernized interventions do not always make sense to KDFN citizens especially if they are hurting, vulnerable, angry, or scared. The CSOs are consistently the first call for assistance and help to meet and triage the immediate needs of the community and when necessary, bridge with other resources. Providing front line supports and services allow the CSOs and the KDFN community to foster the ability to work collaboratively identifying risks, act together to reduce threats, and to facilitate healing and wellness. Through the work of the CSOs and the partnerships they uphold, KDFN citizens have become empowered and justified in asserting their right to live and raise their children in a safe community.

Public Safety Canada

The expected outcomes of the CSO project include:

• Improved sense of community safety among KDFN Citizens due to the presence, availability, and approach of the CSOs;
• Increased engagement and improved relationships between KDFN Citizens and the RCMP;
• Increased evidence on the activities, governance, and efficacy of KDFN's CSO Program;
• Increased collaboration between KDFN, the RCMP, the justice system, and external service providers in the delivery of community safety programs, policing, justice, and other services to KDFN; and,
• Improved effectiveness of RCMP through improved information sharing and improved community collaboration in the delivery of services.

Whitehorse, Yukon, CA Y1A 5A5

088-2023-2024-Q4-00317

Contribution

Grants and Contributions

Indigenous recipients

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Kwanlin Dün First Nation

(FNIPP) First Nations and Inuit Policing Program

To enhance the effectiveness of policing services in First Nation and Inuit communities in terms of cultural relevance and responsiveness to the public safety need of communities.

To support policing services to First Nation and Inuit communities that are professional, dedicated and culturally responsive to the communities they serve.