The Samson Cree First Nation has offered $50,000 in rewards to help solve a rash of gang-related killings on the reserve south of Edmonton, most recently that of a 20-year-old woman on Saturday.
Delena Lefthand Applegarth died when someone sprayed her home with gunfire. One of the bullets struck her as she sat in the bedroom of her home with her one-year-old daughter and some friends. No one else in the home was injured.
Police say the home had been the target of another attack the previous night, in which a man was wounded. They say the shootings were both gang-related, although they say the victim did not have any gang ties.
"There has to be somehow a breaking of the code of silence that exists in our communities right now," Roy Lewis, an adviser to the four First Nations in the Hobbema area, told
"Right now people are afraid, people are apprehensive to go to the police, and I think what Samson has done in creating the award is quite astonishing and I support it totally."
The reward, $10,000 for information on the latest killing, and $10,000 for each of four previous gang killings, is just the latest initiative taken by the band to deal with the continued violence in the community.
Leaders have also implemented a series of measures, ranging from a gun amnesty to curfews.
Lewis said he is confident the community initiatives will work.
"I really believe in our community. I believe there is a lot of good people as opposed to bad. You don't hear about the good people in the four nations on Hobbema. All you are hearing about is the one per cent that are the gang members."
The family of the dead woman also spoke out against the violence, Monday.
Sitting next to her husband, with her granddaughter on her lap, Verna Dee Applegarth admitted her sons are affiliated with gangs.
"When the doctor told me that I lost my daughter, anger hit me," she said.
It's time for tough action against the gangs, including banning anyone from the community who has gang ties, she added.
"If these kids are so-called gangsters, why can't they just kick them out of Samson."
Applegarth called on other parents to join her, by telling their children to renounce the gang life.
Hobbema, a community of about 12,000, has about 13 gangs, police say.