“We had a murder suicide here three years ago. My granddaughter and her boyfriend. Last year we had a double homicide. Now this year we have 10 more that have passed away and all because of drugs and alcohol,” Darryl Burns said.

Ivor Wayne Burns also blamed drugs for his sister’s death and said the suspect brothers should not be hated.

“We have to forgive them boys,” he said. “When you are doing hard drugs, when you are doing coke, and when you are doing heroin and crystal meth and those things, you are incapable of feeling. You stab somebody and you think it’s funny. You stab them again and you laugh.”

Blackmore said police were still determining the motive, but the chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations echoed suggestions the stabbings could be drug-related.

“This is the destruction we face when harmful illegal drugs invade our communities, and we demand all authorities to take direction from the chiefs and councils and their membership to create safer and healthier communities for our people,” said Chief Bobby Cameron.

Blackmore said the criminal record of Myles Sanderson dates back years and includes violence. Last May, Saskatchewan Crime Stoppers issued a wanted list that included him writing that he was “unlawfully at large.”

Before Damien’s body was found, arrest warrants were issued for the suspects and both men faced at least one count each of murder and attempted murder.

The stabbing attack was among the deadliest mass killings in Canada, where such crimes are less common than in the United States. The deadliest gun rampage in Canadian history happened in 2020, when a man disguised as a police officer shot people in their homes and set fires across the province of Nova Scotia, killing 22 people. In 2019, a man used a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto.

Police in Saskatchewan got their first call about a stabbing at 5.40am on Sunday, and within minutes heard about several more. In all, dead or wounded people were found at 13 different locations on the sparsely populated reserve and in the town, Blackmore said. James Smith Cree Nation is about 30 kilometres from Weldon.

Among the 10 killed was Lana Head, who is the former partner of Michael Brett Burns and the mother of their two daughters.

“It’s sick how jail time, drugs and alcohol can destroy many lives,” Burns told the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. “I’m hurt for all this loss.”

Weldon residents have identified one of the dead as Wes Petterson, a retired widower who made his coffee every morning at the senior centre. He loved gardening, picking berries, canning, and making jam and cakes, recalled William Works, 47, and his mother, Sharon Works, 64.

“He would give you the shirt off his back if he could,” William Works said, describing his neighbour as a “gentle old fellow” and “community first”.

Loading

Sharon Works was baffled: “I don’t understand why they would target someone like him anyway, because he was just a poor, helpless little man, 100 pounds soaking wet. And he could hardly breathe because he had asthma and emphysema and everybody cared about him because that’s the way he was. He cared about everybody else. And they cared about him.”

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.