I had a good time on my first trip to Wekweti, but the second was even better. It was nice going back to familiar faces and a place that I like. However, what made this second trip amazing was the variety of events that happened while I was in this small, northern community. I was there for treaty meeting, aboriginal day, a cookie party to celebrate the last day of the women's pre-natal nutrition class, the last couple of women's craft classes, and an ice cream party to celebrate the end of the programming year for the Aurora College centre there. As I've said, it's a very welcoming community and I was invited to participate in everything - which I did quite happily!
On the down side, I stayed in the old Atco trailer that used to be the hotel before the new one was built; it was either that or leave Jasmine behind in Yellowknife. The hotel was booked solid for part of my stay and I was warned that I would probably have to share a hotel room (which isn't unusual in a northern hotel if space runs short). However, most of the people I've seen in northern hotels are men and I didn't want to leave my dog behind, so I convinced them to let me stay in the trailer instead. I think they think I'm nuts because they kept telling me there's no water in the trailer, but really the hotel is right next door and I could go there any time I wanted. It was worth it to me! And it made for another interesting experience.
Here's my darling dog on our bed in the trailer (the trailer is divided into 4 rooms).
Mostly we did fine in the trailer, although we did run out of fuel so it got a bit chilly (like frost on the outside of the doorknob) before I asked anyone about it. At least it wasn't buggy when it was cold - the second week was horrible!!
The first week that I was there, meetings were being held concerning the land claims agreement that the Tli'cho (Dogribs) were negotiating with the government. I didn't go to the first evening meeting, but I heard translation services would be available on the second night so I went. I didn't catch everything because the equipment wasn't always working smoothly and there was background noise, but I still learned a lot and found it very interesting. I also asked some questions before and after, which filled in some of the gaps for me but there's still much for me to learn.
After that second meeting, a bunch of the men stayed in the meeting hall to play hand games. Others from the community stayed to watch, as I did for a little while. One of the people on the negotiation team explained the rules a bit to me, but I couldn't catch everything he said because the drums are quite loud. In general (as far as I understand it), there are two teams that sit facing each other on mats. One team hides objects in their hands (one object per person) and one person on the other team guesses which hand. Anyone who had the object in the selected hand is out, so they pick up a drum and join the drummers while their teammates carry on. When all the team members are out, the team roles switch. There's also sticks that are used to keep score based on right and wrong guesses, but I didn't get that part figured out. Still, you can see the sticks on the floor, the drummers, and the one remaining team member who is hiding the object (the young man with his hands folder in the air).
I celebrated my 30th birthday while I was there. I didn't actually mind that, but I did want *something* to mark the event so I "encouraged" my co-workers to send me something for my birthday. Okay, they said I whined about it, but yeah, whatever! :-)
Anyway, there were a few neat things about celebrating my birthday there. One was how my gift box arrived from my co-workers. They didn't have a specific address to send it to, so they took it to Air Tindi (the airline that does scheduled flights to Wekweti) and labelled it as follows:
Detailed, isn't it? However, Wekweti is such a small place that everyone knows who everyone else is, including the strangers in town. This box was brought right to me where I was doing the training. It probably helps that I was doing the training in the same building as the post office, but that doesn't change the fact that they knew exactly who it was for!
Inside I found an assortment of goodies - oranges, chocolate bars, granola, and strawberries (which I specifically asked for) and party cups, plates, a card, cheese (to go with all that whining, said the sticky note), a fish hook (in case I ran out of food again), some candles, and a cake. Pretty good, huh? I guess they must like me... or else they really wanted to shut me up. Hee hee hee. Maybe it was the poem I sent them by email, it *was* pretty bad...
Although I got the package during the week (I think it came on Wednesday's plane), my birthday was actually on Saturday. I was expecting this to be a fairly uneventful day, but it turned out that the community had decided to reschedule their aboriginal day celebrations. National Aboriginal Day is June 21, but many people were going to Yellowknife that weekend for a super bingo, so they moved it up to the 14th instead. How perfect! On my birthday, I had all sorts of things to do.
I started the day by taking Jasmine for a walk in the morning. We were accompanied by five or six of the community dogs (two small puppies, a medium-sized puppy, and a couple of adults) and a host of hungry mosquitoes. Still, it was a nice walk and got us out in the fresh air.
Shortly after lunch, the day's activities were scheduled to start so I wandered over to the school to see what was going on. Dave, the Rec Director, was there with his wife and kids and a bunch of other kids from the community. There were no other adults there yet, so I volunteered to help with the games and I also took pictures. Here's the kids in a three-legged race:
While some of the kids were participating in the relay races, these two young ladies posed for me. Laylu is about two and a half and is a sweetheart with lovely manners. She was quite happy to pose for the camera, but once she discovered the joy of digital cameras (the fact you can see the results right away), it was hard to get her to stand still long enough for me to actually take the picture. She'd pose for a second and smile, then come running over to see how it looked - before I had a chance to push the button. Ah, youthful enthusiasm!
After the outdoor relay races for the kids, there was bingo indoors - different types of bingo for the different ages of kids. I got to be a bingo caller for the first time, which was fun up until we discovered some balls were missing. Boy, even the kids take their bingo pretty seriously! Not that it was a big problem, really, because there were enough prizes for everyone to get something.
Later in the afternoon, more young adults from community showed up and wanted to do some relay races. We did a few different games, including an egg toss (which didn't go well, I got egg yolk all over me and had to take off my gross sweater and wash my hands and arms) and a log race. Here me (third back) and my team in the log race. We kicked butt! The other team was about equal in the straightaway, but we had a much better strategy for our turn and that clinched it. Again, it was all in fun and everyone got prizes, but I'm proud of our team's performance so I'm bragging about it anyway.
After the games, there was a community supper. Since it was aboriginal day, I was expecting some traditional fare, but I guess that's shows my white preconceptions or expectations. In fact, one of the preferred foods in many northern communities is KFC, which is considered a wonderful treat and many people bring back tubs of chicken when they go to Yellowknife on trips. This baffles me, but I guess it's easy to dismiss something that's always been readily available to me. Anyway, they had great quantities of KFC flown in from Yellowknife and that's what we ate at the supper.
The next day was First Communion for a number of the community's young people. The priest was in town for a few days to do the communion and also some baptisms, I believe. After the church service, there was a community feast. I felt a bit strange about going to the feast when I didn't go to church, but I had no choice even if I wanted to skip it - there was no food being served at the hotel because the staff were busy helping to prepare the feast. I was glad this was the case because it gave me a chance to go to the feast and take pictures and everything without feeling like I shouldn't be there.
Later in the evening, there was a drum dance to continue the celebration. This is the daughter of one of my students - isn't she cute? A bit unsteady on her feet yet, as you can see by the fingertips outstretched to catch her.
The drum dance itself was interesting. For the first while, it was just the drummers who would sometimes drum alone and sometimes sing with the drumming. Once the place filled up a bit, some people gradually started to dance. There were different forms of the dance as well - a moving circle where everyone faced the person in front of them, a different circle where everyone faced the center, a couples dance, and so on. I don't know much about the different steps and meanings and everything, but I enjoyed watching it for a while. Unfortunately, my batteries died because I was letting the older kids try my camera and we were all taking pictures of each other while we were waiting for the dance to begin. I got lots of pre-dance pictures, but didn't have enough battery power left when the actual dancing began.
Here I am with a group of community girls, most of whom celebrated their first communion that day.
This is one of the first dances I saw people do. I like the fact that everyone was included and participated, from young babies in their mothers' arms to toddlers held by the hand to community elders bent from a hard life on the land.
During the week, planes were coming and going with medical people who were doing a periodic visit to the community plus people leaving for further treaty discussions in other Tli'cho communities. I was envious that so many of them got to travel on float planes like this one - an experience I have yet to add to my northern collection.
The Aurora College person in town seems to be one of the key reasons why this small community has so much going on. I think they're lucky to have her! On my first trip, I got to participate in one craft session, but we had a couple more this trip because Diane's mother was in town and she taught us some new crafts as well. I learned to make pine needle baskets and boxes from wallpaper, bread and paint. This picture shows the baskets and the bread-and-paint flowers that I later put on my boxes. It was neat!
At least but not least, there was the year-end ice cream party. The tiny local store doesn't sell ice cream - in fact, I'm not even sure they had a freezer. The ice cream was flown in specially for this party and I think the hotel's freezers were put to use to keep it cold. The kids (and adults too) all thought it was great and had fun. This is a couple of the youngest people in attendance at the ice cream party.
So that's most of what I did on my second trip to Wekweti. Pretty impressive for a community of just over 100 people, isn't it? I like being based in Yellowknife, but if I had to go to a smaller community, I think I would like this one. Thanks for the great time, Wekweti!
Jan