Fox Lake Cree Nation Chief Billy Beardy, whose sharp eye and bush knowledge alerted RCMP officers to the site where Western Canada manhunt suspects Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky killed themselves on the shore of the Nelson River last year, was honoured by the Keewatin Tribal Council (KTC) during their 41st semi-annual general assembly in Thompson Aug. 11.
Beardy, who spotted a raven in a riverside ravine as he was piloting RCMP officers upstream in a jet boat, was presented with a star blanket and an eagle feather in recognition of his contributions to providing a definitive answer about what happened to the two British Columbia. fugitives, who killed three people in northern B.C. before fleeing east, ultimately ending up the end of Highway 280 near Fox Lake Cree Nation.
“I know it’s been one year but I remember it like yesterday,” Beardy told his fellow chiefs after receiving the star blanket from War Lake First Nation Chief Betsy Kennedy and Tataskweyak Cree Nation Chief Doreen Spence and the eagle feather from KTC chairperson Barren Lands First Nation Chief John Clarke. “The raven jumped up but I seen the pant leg of the one individual where the raven jumped up so if I didn’t see the raven jump up I wouldn’t have seen the pant leg.”
As Beardy said in the Globe & Mail YouTube documentary “Manhunt, Manitoba,” released on the one-year anniversary of the fugitives’ bodies being found, “any kind of a bushman knows that if there’s a raven there he’s eating something.”
Prior to the presentation the star blanket, Beardy was smudged and presented with a new shirt by KTC executive director George Neepin.
“We smudged him down just to cleanse the energy field around him, like his aura, so he can let go of all the heavy burdens that he carried because of what he did for all the surrounding communities last year,” said Rose Hart during the honouring ceremony. “We’re going to dress him now, to put new clothes on him so from this day on he can start fresh again.”
Receiving a star blanket and an eagle feather are the highest signs of respect for a person’s lifetime achievement’s, Hart said.
“Keewatin Tribal Council holds you in high esteem,” she said. “Every patch on the quilt represents a person and it means that you’re surrounded by those who love and support you. You are kept protected and cared for.”
Clarke said presenting Beardy with the eagle feather was a great honour for him.
“A lot of us believe without your heroic efforts and the way you know the land this manhunt would have been still a mystery," Clarke said. "They were about to give up and you did your share there without a bulletproof vest and you made it happen. It was a scary situation back then ... not only for the surrounding communities in your area but all of us in the north because we didn’t know what these guys were capable of and you brought an end to it ."
The search for McLeod and Schmeglesky in the Fox Lake Cree Nation area began and finished with Beardy, who was out picking berries with his wife Tamara when they found the burning vehicle that the suspects had last been known to be driving. He was instrumental in helping RCMP search the riverbanks after volunteering to pilot a Manitoba Conservation Jet boat up and down the treacherous and fast-moving Nelson River.
“I would probably do it again, this time with a bulletproof vest,” Beardy said in the Globe & Mail documentary, in which he noted that he was the only person on the boat without that added layer of protection.
A lifelong resident of the community, Beardy was elected chief of Fox Lake Cree Nation last October.
