Actions and Commitments

Call to Action # 87: Sports and Reconciliation (87-91)

Alex Decoteau: Saskatchewan’s first Olympian

July 19, 2021

The National Post ran a story on Alex Decoteau: Saskatchewan’s first Olympian, Canada’s first Indigenous police officer.  He was inducted into the Edmonton Sports Hall of Fame in 1967, 50 years after he was killed by a sniper’s bullet at Passchendaele in 1917. Decoteau, from Red Pheasant Cree Nation near North Battleford, was the first person from Saskatchewan to compete at the Olympics, and the first Indigenous person to be hired permanently by a Canadian municipal police force. He placed sixth in the 5,000m at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.