(Submitted photo)

By Nick Nielsen

20 years as chief

Ahtahkakoop Chief Larry Ahenakew elected for sixth term

Jun 20, 2025 | 4:52 PM

For a sixth straight term, Ahtahkakoop First Nation will be led by Chief Larry Ahenakew.

Of the 990 votes issued on Tuesday for the leadership, Ahenakew took well over half at 588. The closest behind him was Kerrie Gladue with just 274 votes, followed by Katherine Masuska with 158.

For Ahenakew, he’s spent the last 20 years as the First Nation’s Chief along with the 12 years prior to that as a member of their council, the community of Ahtahkakoop has changed a lot in his time. Recently, Ahtahkakoop was given the highest level of financial certification available to a First Nation.

“When I first became chief, even when I was a counselor, we had no SIGA funding no CDC’s (First Nations Trust), no cows and plows benefits, no TLE (Treaty Land Entitlement). It was barely any funding then. We let our self government grow and grow over the years, we come a long way since then.”

Since then, Ahenakew has helped Ahtahkakoop become more self sufficient, helping to bring in a number of services to the First Nation that they used to have to travel for. From education programs to health care, Ahenakew is proud of how his home has become more self-reliant over the years.

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“We have our own child and family services, we have our own health clinic now with nurses staffed, about 5-6 nurses, dentists come in, optometrists, all of those services come to our First Nation now.”

On the education side of things, not only have they been able to improve the education services they offer to their youth, but Ahtahkakoop has also been able to add more education about their own First Nations culture.

“A lot of our culture, lot of land-based stuff now, teaching our kids how to prepare a moose, a deer, elk, and stuff like that, how to skin it, the processing, the meat, right to dry meat and how to prepare a hide even. That’s something our kids have been into the last four or five years. ”

Since Ahtahkakoop took over their own Family Services around 1991 according to Ahenakew’s record, they have went from four staff to over 30 helping the families of their First Nation.

While there is a lot of growth from his community Ahenakew has seen in his 20 years as chief, he still has his eyes on the future and dealing with the issues at hand. Ahtahkakoop already has a 10 bed detox centre on the reserve to try and help with the ongoing drug problem many people on the First Nation are facing, but now they are working on building an additional 24 bed treatment facility as well.

“It’s very urgent there to build one, it’s no different from other First Nations. All the drugs and gang activity in our First Nation. So we’re building that on our own, I’m going to be looking for operation funding.That centre won’t be open until 2027 I believe, maybe next fall, but January 2027 I’ll be searching for operational funding for that.”

This weekend Ahtahkakoop is hosting their annual pow wow for the second time after it took a 40 year hiatus. While they do still have their problems to deal with, Ahenakew believes the pow wow is still an amazing way showcase the growth of their community.

“We invite everybody to our pow wow this weekend. It’s looking good and exciting, I think we had 554 dancers last year and hopefully we’ll get a little more this year, but it’ll be exciting for the pow wow this weekend.”