In 2005, Shaina Lynden attended a Saskatoon Police Service presentation for Huskie student-athletes that would forever alter the trajectory of her life.

A Huskie Women's Basketball player and USask Kinesiology student at the time, Lynden immediately identified the parallels between policing and sport and the opportunity to bring the diverse perspective she offered as an Anishinabe First Nations woman, something she had not yet seen represented.

"It's that mentality of working with a team, knowing your role and responding to the unknown. You think about going into competition - you can prepare all you want, but you don't know what you're walking into and that's just the nature of sport. You have to show up, react, keep your head up and rely on training and that's sort of what policing is like in many capacities," Lynden said. "As a female and as a First Nations female too, I think there was this aspect of like, I can be somebody that others can go to. There certainly wasn't anyone I knew that was a First Nations female and a police officer. So, part of that for me was the challenge and breaking ground."

Lynden said this made the transition from sport to policing feel natural and though she didn't know it at the time, her role in the police force would move beyond representation, into reconnection with culture and identity, deep systemic change, education and a reconciliation framework never before seen in Canada.
 
Before all that, Lynden, who grew up in Saskatoon, said she had a fairly typical childhood.

The daughter of a Sixties Scoop Survivor and granddaughter of a Residential School Survivor, she and her siblings were the first generation on her maternal side to be raised at home by their parents.

Lynden is a member of Yellow Quill First Nation, but due to the impacts of colonial policies that separated families and fractured communities, did not grow up connected to her culture, teachings or ceremony.

Her mother taught Indigenous studies at USask for twenty years, but Lynden said being Indigenous wasn't really something she talked about openly.

"My mom never reclaimed her culture. She didn't celebrate it. And honestly, I think it was because of racism and what she faced. She didn't want to put us in those positions. It was easier to just say that we were Ukrainian. We were white presenting and that was kind of easier for a lot of people, I think, in that generation," Lynden said. "There was a lot of really open racism, and those are the things that I would hear as well. So, it wasn't something you were taught to be proud of. I think that's a big part of the shift in society and community, in how we're now teaching the next generation, and reclaiming for our current generation, to be so proud and to share that pride and to help teach others and join them in that reclaiming process."

When Lynden began learning about her culture and ceremony later in life, and connecting with people in her community, she and her siblings brought some of those teachings to her mom, sharing and learning alongside her before she passed from cancer in 2022.

"I think sometimes people have that notion that these types of things happened a long time ago and they shouldn't be impacting people the way that they do continuously. But it's very current for our family."

Lynden said her childhood in Saskatoon was filled with sports including basketball, volleyball, softball track and more.

Basketball became the focus throughout high school, leading to four summers with Saskatchewan's provincial basketball team, a journey to the Canada Games and a recruitment in 2000 from legendary Huskie women's basketball coach and now four-time national champion Lisa Thomaidas.

"Lisa recruited me out of high school, and I was just so thrilled to move on and play with the Huskies."

After a four-year run with the team, Lynden made the difficult decision in 2005 to retire from her Huskies career earlier than planned due to multiple injuries, including a torn ACL and MCL.

"I had multiple knee surgeries and did a bunch of rehab. I just remember having a conversation with Lisa because I always wanted to come back. I love basketball so deeply. But through the rehab I was like, you know what? I don't know if I'm willing to risk my knee or my body to play basketball and then maybe not be able to pursue the career that I want. I made a really hard decision in 2005 to move on and apply to policing."

Lynden's first year of police college was also the first year Huskie women's basketball made nationals, something she said was hard to watch from afar.  

"I was at police college bawling. So proud of them and at the same time, my heart just wanted to be there so bad."

It was a tough moment, but the beginning of a new chapter that would see Lynden combine her policing experience and higher education into an expertise that is bringing systemic change to policing.  

After graduating from Saskatchewan Police College at just 24 years old, Lynden was hired with the Saskatoon Police Service, where she spent the first five years of her career as an inner-city patrol officer, something she said was eye-opening.

"It was just wild to be exposed to that level of trauma and challenges. Just having to be the person that everyone's looking to, to resolve situations and to step in and communicate with presence and confidence."

She said she'll never forget her first time at an apprehension call with Saskatchewan Child and Family Services.

"The police are there to stand by as these kids are being apprehended and just putting myself in a situation of like, wow, this is my mom's entire childhood. Consistently being moved from house to house and apprehended. And then I'm the police officer standing by watching this. I just remember a mom being so distraught as her kids were being removed from her home. I was thinking, oh my gosh, what do I even have to offer in this situation? This is my family history, but this is not my experience. What can I possibly say?" Lynden recalled.

"I remember just saying to her, I can't imagine how you're feeling, but I just want to share with you that this was my mom's experience, and this was her life. And she just made a decision to really change those cycles. So, I never had to experience these things. And I hope that you find that power too. And we just shared a conversation, and she gave me a hug. It is so hard because you want to show up with that compassionate and empathetic approach, but at the same time, you're there to do a job and have to maintain that composure. It's really, really challenging. There's many of those things that I'll never forget."

The constant exposure to trauma that police officers face can result in disassociation as a coping mechanism, Lynden said.

"As police, often we're called to people's worst days. That's the reality. People don't phone the police when they're having a good day, you know? Knowing what police officers see and experience and having had those experiences myself, I very much can understand why so many people's survival technique is to disassociate and create some barriers and walls."

But as narratives around mental health change and more open conversations are had, she said space grows for a more community-based approach, where empathy and compassion can be deployed.

"How do we approach people from a human perspective? How do we remember to humanize each person and each interaction so that we're not just protecting ourselves, but so that we're supporting that individual. Shifting that mentality from what did you do, to what happened to you, if that makes sense. Because there's a story there. There's a history."

While Lynden emphasized and acknowledged the importance of tactical training in dangerous situations, she said a large portion of police work is communicating with people during traumatic moments.

"I think sometimes we forget that human approach. That communication and the de-escalation that comes naturally when you're showing up with compassion and empathy. How your voice naturally lowers because you care. How you position your body differently. All those things that come naturally when you're intentionally working on it and willing to be vulnerable without giving up your tactics, because those are very necessary, too."

Lynden's frontline community work solidified where she wanted to land in policing, but it was also very challenging.

This lead to a moment in time, where after more than decade with the service, she wondered if it was for her.

"I went through a period of time where I wasn't sure I would stay in policing because of how challenging I felt some of it was. I took a leave of absence when my mom was sick, and truthfully, I wasn't sure how it would be for me to come back."

During this time Lynden began a Master's of Organizational Leadership.

Her mother passed away 36 days in, but she pushed through, completing the program and receiving her master's degree in one full-time condensed year.

"It gave me time to grieve, but also to refocus myself. I quickly realized I did every assignment based on policing. Every single one was about policing, whether it was women in leadership, whether it was changing culture, leading through, leading diverse teams, leading through conflict… every assignment, every bit of that program, I was focused on policing and I just knew that there was some unfinished work to be done."

Informed by her frontline work and experiences in community policing, Lynden's master's degree applied project focused on knowledge gaps within the Saskatoon Police Service in terms of Indigenous communities and populations.

"I wanted to determine what we knew, or more importantly, what we didn't know, what we weren't being taught at police college, what we weren't being taught through the education being offered. I essentially proved that we had really varying levels of knowledge that were quite low level for the number of interactions we're having with Indigenous people and communities through policing. And we know that because of the significant overrepresentation of Indigenous people within our justice system. In Saskatchewan in particular, it is the highest across the country."

The results of this research and insight led to the Saskatoon Police Service giving Lynden the opportunity and autonomy to create a comprehensive Indigenous Cultural Competency Education Course for police recruits.

"Every incarceration starts with an interaction with police. So, what could we be doing better to utilize restorative justice practices, to look at the correlations between poverty and criminality and what this looks like and how can we maybe approach things from a more holistic way so that we can start to see that reduction in the overrepresentation of Indigenous people. For me, it was how can I teach officers about our history so that they have that understanding, they see the whole picture, and they can then make educated decisions on the situations that are in front of them."

As a police officer and First Nations woman, Lynden said she has a unique lens through which she understands the importance of learning, but also how to make that learning receivable.

Shame and blame based educational training fosters defensiveness and doesn't leave space for learning, Lynden said.

"I think that's part of what's so successful about me doing what I'm doing is because I speak from being a police officer, and I speak from being a First Nations person. I know how to deliver it in a way that's receivable."

The one-week comprehensive course for recruits is facilitated by Lynden and includes historical education, ceremony and teachings from community organizations and Elders.

"It's also exposing them to the beauty of Indigenous people and culture and walking with people on those reclaiming journeys. It's a very vulnerable course for me too, because I share a lot about my history. I talk about my own maternal line. I talk about my aunts and uncles being part of the AIM (Adopt Indian  Métis) program and being advertised in the newspaper. I talk about the ways my family has been impacted and it really humanizes it for them too, as a fellow officer currently working here that can bring that lived experience. I think we're starting something really special and I hope that we can continue to impress upon the rest of Canada the importance of this kind of training."

The ultimate goal is to shift the culture, Lynden said, and it's the changes she sees from the program that inspire her to keep doing what she's doing.

"Once we can really humanize the experience and have those conversations and see that shift… that's what gives me hope."

At the root of that culture shift is gaining a deeper understanding of how adults learn, how police officers learn and how often is most optimal to administer refreshers and additional education.

Currently working on her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, this is what Lynden's current research focuses on and how she hopes to position herself as a credible source on how to implement this work in policing, as well as establishing the credibility of this kind of education as a tool to foster deep systemic change.

"Certainly, academics do a lot of this work but positioning myself as an experienced police officer and an academic doing this research, I just have a really unique perspective that I'm hoping to bring, share and leverage so that other organizations and provincial and federal government are willing to listen."

While B.C. has implemented provincially mandated online training, as far as Lynden knows, no other police service is offering the comprehensive in-person training and learning she facilitates.

"You don't have the same level of learning experience in an online capacity, when we're talking about building empathy, compassion, and that holistic approach. That happens through human-to-human interaction, discussion and vulnerability. You don't get that from a screen. That's what I would love to see happen across Canada. I would love to see it mandated provincially or federally. I would love to see a standard that we're all committing to, and I would love to see Truth and Reconciliation Commission Call to Action 57 checked off."

Lynden recently gave a powerful TedX talk at University of Saskatchewan advocating for this, where she outlined a vision of police education embedded with decolonization, restorative justice and trauma informed practices, not as optional, but as national standards, where public servants understand the land, history and people they serve.

She says this is not only an act of educational reform, but an act of reconciliation.

"As an academic, a police officer and a First Nations woman, I believe that when education becomes systemic, reconciliation becomes sustainable."

All these years later she still attributes much of her success to her experience as an athlete and her time with the Huskies.

"I attribute so much of who I am to being an athlete. To learning from people like Lisa Thomaidas. To having to step up and create the change that you want to be or see. You can assume a bench role, you can sit back, or… you can step up and work for what you want. And that's 100% the mentality I've carried with me. It's you or nobody. You step up and work for what you want and what you think you deserve and what you hope for. That's exactly what I'm doing and I fully attribute that to that athlete mentality."