Brenda Butterworth-Carr

Brenda Butterworth-Carr is a member of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. She is the first Canadian aboriginal woman to hold the rank of chief Superintendent, the fourth highest rank in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). She began her career in 1987 as a special constable in her hometown of Dawson. She trained as a regular officer in Regina and in 1999 took on the rank of corporal and was named the aboriginal policing coordinator in Whitehorse. In 2002, she was promoted to sergeant and became the aboriginal policing coordinator for the North District. The next year she was the acting officer in charge of aboriginal policing. The forty-four-year-old mother of three moved to the district headquarters in Prince George where she served first as an inspector and then as the superintendent and commanding officer of the district. She left her post with a year left in a three-year commitment and took two of her three children to Ottawa where she started a job as the head of indigenous policing. She was the first woman and the first indigenous person to hold the post which included First Nation policing, crime prevention and community policing.¹⁾ Butterworth-Carr went on to become commander of the Saskatchewan contingent of the RCMP and deputy commissioner in charge of the British Columbia RCMP. She retired from the RCMP in 2019 to take a government position.²⁾ She became assistant deputy minister and director of police services for the province of British Columbia.³⁾

Brenda Butterworth-Carr became a Member of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces (M.O.M.) in 2015 and an Officer of the Order of Merit (O.O.M.) in 2019.⁴⁾