Chief Tammy Cook-Searson is the 2015 Newsmaker of the Year
- EFN Staff | December 14, 2015
The writers and readers of Eagle Feather News have chosen Lac la Ronge Indian Band Chief Tammy Cook-Searson as the newsmaker of the year for 2015. If you go back to the summer in Saskatchewan, all you can think of are the massive fires that engulfed our north, the evacuations and the unbelievable leadership and presence of Chief Cook-Searson.
She was shocked to find out she was named our newsmaker.
“I am honoured to be chosen,” said Chief Cook-Searson on hearing the news. “Thanks to Eagle Feather News for choosing me. It was a difficult summer for everyone involved but it had to be covered. This is exciting to be newsmaker of the year.”
As the north burned, Chief Cook-Searson was repeatedly called on by the media for updates and commentary from the north and she tried to accommodate all of the requests.
“Sometimes I was up to 1am to update Facebook. At one time, each of our six communities were under the threat of fire or smoke and we would work with essential services...and then up at 4am for a national interview with eastern media then Skype or Facetime other interviews,” said Chief Cook-Searson, who appeared repeatedly on every major media outlet in Saskatchewan and many nationally.
According to Chief Tammy, technology and social media played a key role in communication during the fire.
“Social media was so important. When we were doing evacuations, the older people would be there and we asked how they heard and they said they saw it on Facebook. People had hand held devices and then passed the message around. It played a huge role,” said Chief Tammy. She saw her Facebook followers grow to over 7000 during the fires and one of her posts wound up reaching over 500,000 people.
The lessons learned this year will come in handy for Chief Tammy and other northern residents.
“There is so much strength and resilience in the community and so many people wanted to help. Now we have a lot more people trained as a result of this summer’s fires. But we still have a lot of work to do to get our people ready and geared up for the upcoming season,” said Chief Tammy Cook-Searson. “We don’t know how it is going to be and we don’t have any snow yet. It may be another dry summer.”
Related: Communities readjust after record wildfire season ravages province’s North