Kara Burnstick photographed the banner on Highway 779 northwest of Edmonton and posted it on Saturday. It was hung on a barbed wire fence, flanked by Alberta flags, and read: "The Indians have done nothing in over 100 years and now they wanna tell us how to run Alberta."
Burnstick, a member of Alexander First Nation, wants it investigated as hate speech.
Three days later, on Tuesday afternoon, Premier Danielle Smith posted that Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis would write to every provincial and municipal policing provider in Alberta about their priorities. Police should focus on violent crimes, illegal drugs, theft and vandalism, she said, "not people's free speech."
She was writing about something else.
What she saw
Burnstick's community sits close to where the banner hung.
"I feel very unsafe, and I do feel threatened because this is a neighbouring community that's just outside of our reserve," she told APTN News. "And, you know, it makes me worrisome for our families and our children and it's just, it's scary because if they can put the sign up, what else are they capable of?"
Asked whether attitudes toward First Nations people were getting worse, she said a hundred per cent. "You can definitely sense it, and you can definitely feel it. Just when I'm out, doing grocery shopping or getting gas or something. It's very unsettling."
Her position on what should happen next is the argument the province is currently having. "If a statement crosses the line into promoting hatred against a protected group, I believe it should be investigated and, where the law applies, prosecuted. We have laws that are meant to protect people from hate speech, and those laws should be applied fairly."
A man from Paul First Nation says he took it down
Chris Saulteaux thought it was fake when he first saw it.
"When I first saw it, I thought it was probably AI, and then I saw it going around more and more on Facebook," he told APTN. "And so I don't know. I just decided that I was going to go see with my very own eyes that this actually was up and it existed."
It was. He says he tore it down, and that he isn't worried about any fallout.
What the law actually reaches
Whether the banner is criminal is a narrower question than whether it's racist.
Section 319 of the Criminal Code covers inciting hatred against an identifiable group in a public place where it's likely to lead to a breach of the peace, and the wilful promotion of hatred. Section 318 covers advocating genocide. Charges under 319 require the consent of the provincial Attorney General.
Alberta's Human Rights Act is separate and broader, prohibiting the publication of statements likely to expose a person or class of persons to hatred or contempt on protected grounds, including race and ancestry. That route runs through the Alberta Human Rights Commission rather than police, and it produces orders rather than convictions.
Either way, someone has to be identified first.
Nobody knows who put it up
Both the City of Spruce Grove and Sturgeon County told APTN they were unaware of the banner.
Burnstick doesn't know when it was hung. What's established is that her photograph was taken over the same weekend as an Alberta Independence Walk and rally held in Spruce Grove by the group Cruise to Alberta Independence, south of where the banner was reportedly located. The group has run rallies across the province ahead of the October 19 referendum.
A representative told APTN the group didn't know about it. "This is not our approach, so it is definitely not something we would do. But if by chance someone within our community is responsible for it I will find out."
APTN has asked Alberta RCMP for comment.
What Smith and Ellis were responding to
Neither the Premier nor her deputy mentioned the banner.
They were writing about a separate dispute. On July 31 the Edmonton Police Service posted a video promoting its online hate reporting campaign, then deleted it after constitutional lawyers argued most of what it showed wasn't criminal and that police shouldn't be collecting reports on lawful speech. We covered that story here.
"Free Speech is a foundational Alberta value," Smith wrote Tuesday. "We don't believe in policing unpopular or religious-based statements even if they are controversial. That's a slippery slope other countries have fallen into and we can't go down that road."
Ellis had posted the same position before Smith quoted him. The government does not condone hate speech or violence, he wrote, "but we believe law enforcement should be focused on stopping violent crime, not policing opinions or 'hurt feelings.'" The replies underneath his post were about the banner.
When APTN asked Smith's office about it, the answer came from the press secretary to Alberta's Associate Minister of Multiculturalism. "Alberta's government stands firmly against racism and continues working to build a province where everyone is respected, no matter their cultural background or where they come from," Braedyn Funke said in part.
Saulteaux said Ellis's post makes him feel like First Nations don't matter and that racism gets brushed under the rug.
The referendum underneath it
Nina Saini, executive director of StopHateAB, said her organization's community reporting tool has picked up rising anti-Indigenous incidents and hate toward racialized and newcomer communities as the referendum approaches.
"The political climate has become increasingly volatile and Indigenous communities have been targeted among racialized/newcomer groups in an open and public fashion," she said.
First Nations have opposed the separation question since the province amended its Referendum Act on December 11, 2025 to make it easier for citizen-led petitions to reach a ballot. The concern is Treaty rights, including jurisdiction over mineral rights, and that opposition has included a court challenge seeking an injunction.
The tenth question on the October 19 ballot asks whether Alberta should remain a province of Canada, or whether the government should begin the constitutional process toward a binding referendum on separation.
The Spruce Grove gathering was part of a run of summer rallies that also included demonstrations in Taber and bridge rallies over Edmonton's Whitemud Drive.
Sources:
APTN News, "Banner message along Edmonton area highway 'racist' according to First Nations," August 4, 2026: https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/banner-message-along-edmonton-area-highway-racist-according-to-first-nations/
Danielle Smith, public post on X, August 4, 2026
Mike Ellis, public post on X, August 4, 2026
Statement from the press secretary to Alberta's Associate Minister of Multiculturalism, August 4, 2026
Criminal Code of Canada, sections 318 and 319
Alberta Human Rights Act
Government of Alberta, Referendum Act amendments, December 11, 2025
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