Habay and leaving and after

 Hi!


Thank you for visiting this really postdated entry. The last month of my internship was full of new connections, navigated surprises, half-formed theses, renegotiated plans, sweet adventures, and deep impressions. It felt like I couldn't write about it at the time, but now the distance makes it just as difficult. I am back in Edmonton, bustling through classes.

I don't think I have anything new to say. The north is still beautiful and home to wonderful people. We all have treaty obligations and should think about the land we are on and the people with us.  Whether or not I ever return to the north, I know that my experiences will influence how I work and live. My summer taught me about respect, adaptability and independence, and also gave me an introduction to the conditions of life in northern communities.

Anyway, my summer.


At the beginning of August, Chateh had what are known as 'Habay Days'. Habay is one of the original settlements of the Dene Tha', and it was the first outpost of the fur traders and missionaries. The settlement was gradually abandoned in the sixties due to the yearly risk of flooding, and most of the remaining structures have been completely destroyed by fire or demolition. You can still find the foundations of some buildings at the site, and many people still remember the exact location of their family's home. It's a place that brings peace to people internally, and a fun chance to participate in traditional and non-traditional activities for a whole week. People set up camp, usually in family groups between the road and the Meander River. 

In the daytime, there are children's games, picnicky-style contests and races, and fire feeding, which is a way off offering prayer. In the evening, there is drumming and tea dancing. As well as organized activities, a lot of people pick mint and berries. Mint is a big Dene cold cure, and I saw people staggering though the fields under child-sized bundles in preparation for winter.

At night, I loved watching the stars. I heard wind and laughter from the marathon card games around the fire. I loved being in a place where all my neighbours were out together, where I could feel like a country girl among the trucks parked around the tea dance ring.
 

drums waiting

Guess who took part in the canoe race?

The drummers stretching their drums over the fire. Heat helps make them more supple and loud.

kite flying with some great kids

After Habay family camp ended, my summer in Chateh wound down. My internship partner, Jessica, went back to Edmonton and I started saying some goodbyes. At that time also, a pair of linguists from the University's Indigenous languages institute stayed with me while they completed fieldwork. I had a lot of questions about their work and the role of language and culture in self-determination. They were very cool, and one of them had family in Chateh, which allowed me to meet some great people.

For my last day at work, I asked to have a going-away party for a longtime staff member of the health centre who was moving away. I hoped this would give me a chance to thank her and the other people I worked with while also sneakily throwing myself a party. We had a big feast and I was surprised by a cake that was presented to me! And a gift! What the heck! Many other people from the community came and I was grateful for the closure. I get so cathartic about goodbyes. 

the health centre: community hub and my workplace

feat. dino ring decor

For my last night, I went out for a walk with one of the nurses that I had gotten close with over the summer. The sun went down over the school field. I stood barefoot for a bit. In the morning, there were horses all around the house. It was the kind of cold it gets when the seasons are turning, the first bit of fall. As we drove out, I stopped at the top of this hill and yelled a flailing thank you. 

the road home

My return to the city was happy and busy. At first, my senses were overwhelmed. It felt like everything had been compressed. I stared at the tight houses and cars and people and signs as though I had been away for decades. I am glad to be back to my familiar environment and old friends, but I am also grateful that I will carry this summer with me for the rest of my life. Only time will tell me what the carrying means, but I know that my experience was important. I hope I could share something good with you, too.

Mahsi cho, take care, farewell.

v v summer

sheer energy

 This past week, I've felt a bit like a baby flinging markers, except that they are love and curiosity instead of art supplies. Wow, is it ever summer!

Here's a view of the school under a big sky and across a field of fireweed and wormwood.

 Last week, I had the interesting opportunity to accompany a pair of archaeologists, as well as members of the Dene Tha' to an archaeological dig. The intent of the project is to assist the Dene Tha' in reclaiming their physical heritage and offering proof to numerous developers that this area had significance to people long before their decision to cultivate it. The photo above is of a stone tool fragment that I found about half a metre below the surface of the soil in a sandy patch of forest. While from what I understand it's difficult to date stone, this is a cool old artefact that's part of a long long tradition.

The project also makes me think about the notions of exhibition, possession, and curation. Western Canada is full of arrowhead collections housed in barns, found by farmers in their fields, and most of us who went to elementary school here can recall seeing indigenous artefacts on trips to museums.  It's interesting that the original purpose of most museums was to document a way of life that was "disappearing", and that most First Nations don't have museums of their own.

What do we do with past?

outdoors at 1 am

This weekend was the Dene Tha' Assembly in Bushe River, one of the other three reserves of the Dene Tha' located close to High Level. It was beautiful. I danced, I ate, I painted a million children's faces. I know have this down to a process where I can turn any eight-year-old into a tiger within 45 seconds. I was hugged by young strangers, welcomed at family camp tables, and nodded at by elders.  I felt like all of Chateh was in one campground hearing the same beautiful drum.

fancy

 The gardens here are great. These are preliminary spoils from thinning the rows.

harvest!

The latest nice thing was saskatoon picking. I went out three times in the last twenty-four hours with the wonderful mother of a visiting nurse. This lady had grown up picking berries, but last night was her first time going for saskatoons in fifteen years. She told me about the teapot her father kept on his trapline, how she missed the quiet of living in the country, how they used to tie berry pails around their waists with a tea towel. Neither of us wanted to stop. We came home with a good ten pounds of berries.

Happy harvests of yr own!

we resist by loving each other

It's Canada Day on Hay Lakes Indian Reserve 209, on Treaty 8 Land, in what is known as Alberta, in what is known as Canada. It is my first time spending July 1st on a reserve.


I am not in High Level, an hour away, where there is a barbecue, parade, and bouncy castle. I didn't have a ride, but I also think there is a reason why Canada Day is mostly a celebration for children.


On the one hand: literal rain on the parade. In the cloudy dark of my living room, I think about Indigenous children in care across Canada, the numbers of incarcerated Indigenous folks, about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Thoughts like a black chain. Water drips from the roof.



There’s not much for me to say about this. Indigenous people across Canada, both as activists and community members, have long fought and spoken for justice. We are a part of this work.



On the other hand: a strong warm feeling. Today is a day I think about millwrights and truckers, and the people who make breakfast cereal. I think about people on sidewalks in their business clothes and the folks who look so tired on the bus. I think of Kalyna County babas and Sikh farmers in Abbotsford. What’s up in Pond Inlet? I want to be your Walt Whitman.



I don’t know what nationalism can do for us, but I admire these people hard. I want to smile at every stranger.



As an immigrant, child of immigrants, I am grateful for this home. I was taken into this country and made safe from violence, corruption, and economic disenfranchisement. Canada worked for me.



These feelings fight, and I hope I can find space for both of them. Reconciliation requires work from all of us, and I don’t think we have the right to celebrate a single thing about Canada until it is true for everybody.



Here and in the city, I am trying to be courageous and to listen. Remember that Canada is not 151 years old, but 13,000. In the words of Chief Lady Bird, artist and badass, “we resist by loving each other”.

june updates

Hello!


Welcome back to this corner of the poplar-treed north! I've returned to Chateh after a week of travelling, and I'm happy to be back. I received a warm welcome from both my coworkers and the plague of boreal mosquitoes. My skin is covered in what most closely resemble possum nipples. This is horrifying, but I feel initiated.

The longer I have been here, the more I have been exposed to rich Dene tradition. The week before I left, I was welcomed into the traditional drum dance group that meets weekly at the health centre. I was the only person over thirteen, but this didn't stop me from having a great time. I now feel more ready for the upcoming Dene Tha' assembly, where everyone will be out dancing.

Before I left Chateh, I was also lucky to witness hand games for the first time. Hand games are the game of the north, with tournaments attracting teams from all over the northerly provinces and territories. The game is a beautifully rhythmic gambling sport. Players in two teams kneel on opposite sides of a tarp. The teams take turns hiding an object, such a coin, in one of their hands while plunging their arms under the tarp. The captain of the other team tries to guess which hand of each player the object is in. For every incorrect guess, the hiding team gets a point. Hand games can go on for hours, and they are played to the music of drums. The motions of the hands are strong and dramatic. Traditionally, hand games are played only by men, but in recent years women have begun to participate in some matches.

Last Monday, I said goodbye to the hand games arbor, the dogs, and the horses, and boarded a plane to Edmonton. High Level airport is small. Nobody even wanted to see my liquids. From there I went east to attend a conference in Ottawa, basking in the Parliamentary atmosphere and drinking artisanal coffee. Coming from an environment where signs of indigeneity are everywhere, embedded in architecture, speech, and activity, I think I was more conscious of those reminders in Ottawa. I noticed some cool public art and a statue of Thayendanageya/Joseph Brant, and I know that the National Gallery has a great collection of art from diverse Indigenous artists. At the same time, I know that our nation's capital is on unceded Algonquin territory, and that Samuel de Champlain, for all his wonderful sculptured pants, pushed for the colony.

damn, sam!

When I returned, exhausted, to Chateh on Sunday night, I found little had changed. The sky was bright well past midnight. I am back to chasing puppies and watering the garden. Alas, the second puppy to come into our possession has been claimed by a neighbour. I watched her scoop him under the forelegs today and carry him into her home, but I don't think I can protest. I have decided that dogs, like happiness, are not attained by seeking.

Last night, I was invited to a neighbour's to learn how to dry moose meat. This woman's partner and his cousin had just shot a moose the night before. My relationship with gore is shaped by my being both a vegetarian and a nurse. I thought it was more exciting, however, than gross, and I got wrist deep into this meat.  To dry meat, it is first sliced into long continuous strips, then hung over wood racks above a fire. The whole drying process takes about three days. 

My neighbour and her partner tried to teach me a few words and phrases in Dene. Her partner's favourite joke is to charge me money every time I see him, but I am now safe from bankruptcy because I can say "Eh duli sunya!" I have no money! 

xedah -moose

I'm making an exception with vegetarianism, because the kind folks sent me home with a few pieces of meat. My lovely roommate Jess has promised to try her hand at moose adobo, in the great filipino tradition.

Jessica! (left)

Jess and I are busy! We have many trips and activities planned for the youth, and are latching onto initiatives that the community has already started. As much as I feel like we only just got here, we are leaving sooner than I thought, especially because we're planning to travel with the youth for much of August. In particular, we're going to be accompanying the youth to tour post-secondary institutions in Edmonton and Calgary. If you have any cool University connections, could you please let me know?

It's the end of June, but the garden plants are just starting to grow. Even though I'm already surrounded by green things, here also is some lemon balm that I started in a little container. The plants here get a long long day of sun. Total solstice daylight was a good nineteen hours!

Are you curious about anything in the North? Is there anything I should learn about before my next blog post? Hit me up!

xx

Liza

glitter, power, meme

scroll down for dog introduction

Hi again,

Today marks three weeks of my internship. It's been a gratifying time of getting to know a new community, a new culture, and beautiful land. I've also been spending time feeling out a routine and making a home life. The house where I am living has a massive yard and no internet, so I am feeling particularly wholesome. 

It is mud season here. It rained for three days straight. The roads look like fudge ice cream cake squished into a runny mess by a petulant eight-year-old. I feel like a monster truck in my rubber boots.

I've been meeting a lot of people, including some youth, and I now have a hardy young crew of co-gardeners who braved cold and rain to plant vegetable seeds in the community garden. I will probably spend the rest of the summer discussing bugs, potato blight, and horse tramplings in excruciating detail. I also hope to celebrate a rich harvest, which seems promising given the abundance of garden worms.

In my last post, I promised dog updates. Things moved fast, and I sort of have a dog of my very own. Masha is a willowy pup who followed me home one day. She was still there the next morning, and has been periodically around ever since. In certain moods, she will even wait by the door of the health centre for me to come back out. I miss her when I don't see her, but I'm glad that dogs here roam freely. 

sleepy doogler enjoys a scratch

We get two radio stations here: CBC Radio One and the CFWE. CBC is self-explanatory. But CFWE? A pipeline of First Nations communities! It has community announcements, informative talk, C&W and traditional music, and the iconic bingo. In many places, it is a sin to disturb a household on Tuesday and Thursday nights for fear of interrupting radio bingo. 

me whenever CFWE is on, trying to act local

A mainstay of local life here is bannock. The very core truth is that frybread is not traditional food,  but sometimes the truth is not what counts. I went to my first pow wow this weekend, and ate bannock enough to feel like the kingdom of carbohydrate peace had descended. This in spite of my categorical opposition to pastry lard.

I have dark secrets

The pow wow was beautiful. If you have been to one before, you will know what it's like, and if you haven't, I recommend you go one day. You will learn a lot and feel very lucky. There are pow wows happening all over Alberta. 

At the Peace River Pow Wow, there were people of all ages dancing, from wee babes to Elders. I have never seen such futuristic beading on regalia, or felt the drums so loud in my body. I saw a young woman with her head held high turn to face me, and realized she was in fact past sixty.  A competition judge led children in a Cree group dance about moose. From the interpretive moves, I think it was about scanning for moose in the muskeg, but there was definitely also some traditional dabbing. 

At every pow wow, there is a grand entry, where all of the dancers enter the arena in a procession. At the head of the group there were flags and heralds of different nations, including the Treaty Eight flag and the maple leaf. The flags were given great respect, and an Elder addressed the group on the importance of traditional languages. Two hundred people danced the floor in a coiling circle; Mounties and chiefs, jiggers and chicken dancers swirling like the party of creation. Everything glittered.

Jay Soule's ultimate take on the format reads "Hey Canada shouldn't 'reconciliation'
mean the return of stolen land and honouring the treaties?: Change my mind"

I'm continuing to learn more and more about First Nations life. Many people have shared thoughts and stories with me here, and I'm lucky to be living in the age of, among many others, Chelsea Vowel and Chief Lady Bird. That being said, culture and history are complex things to study (as can be eloquently discussed by Barthes or Derrida or Foucault), and I cannot endorse the idea that I'll ever be an expert on some monolithic 'Dene life'. 

Truth and reconciliation are important. The treaties are important. First Nations, Metis, and Inuit youth are important. Poplar forests are important. Dogs are important. Saskatoon berries are important. And this is a summer for the important. I hope you feel as inspired as I am to learn about them.

xo Liza

wherein this text in fact begins to come from the north

Hello from the boreal forest!

Your softy gal is on her fifth day as a Chateh resident. So far, I am pleased and grateful.

My favourite thing about the landscape in Chateh is the drive in. There's this long curve of gravel road that descends and descends. When cars go down the road here, they billow massive clouds of dust. I am too excited by this road to take a good photo.

take me sledding

I live in a robin's egg blue house behind the RCMP station. The yard is a favourite haunt of horses, whom I often see in the morning behind the house.

The community is also full of dogs, of different shapes and sizes but a consistent friendliness. I hope to report more on my new frens as I go for more walks in the community.

In addition to wild residents, I am meeting many great people. This week I started work at the health centre, which does a lot in the community and which I'd like to tell more about soon. On Friday, two representatives of the Alberta Restorative Justice Association came to present to the community at the health centre. This meeting allowed me to make my first shy connection with a KID. The kids here love watermelon and also apparently interns. I am told that by the end of the summer they will overrun my house.

I've never really moved to a new place this way before. If you'd let me, I'd just be a dork forever about the tender, beautiful way people will be kind to you when you are new.

A great experience I had today was a trip up to Twin Falls, across the border in the Northwest Territories.  The falls, Alexandra, known as Hatto deh Naili in Dene, and Louise, are the twins. They are the falls leading up to Great Slave Lake, or Tu Nedhe/Tucho.

Liza and Louise

Along the trail to the falls, I got to read a bit about the importance of the trail to Dene people of this land, as well as about the common traditional medicines of this area. Both indigenous people and fur traders had to portage 6 km to get over these falls!

In talking about place names, I'm trying to learn about the names they are called by Dene. This article gives a good voice to the issue of place and decolonization in the NWT.

a lepidopteron lapping at birch water

I'm keeping my eyes open! X.

where I'm from and what I'll miss

-spring on campus-

On Tuesday morning, I'm supposed to pack an inutterable number of suitcases into a compact and drive here. And I will be living here for the next four months as a community intern through a partnership between the University of Alberta and northern communities. My training has prepared me for meeting wonderful people, bears, medical emergencies and firearms. I will also be keeping a blog. My only experience with blogs is scrolling past strangers' anecdotes to get to a recipe.

I'm thirteen years an Edmontonian. I am going into my fourth year of nursing at the University of Alberta. These are things that have shaped how I view the world and also things I will miss:

- the huge Rutherford library
- my bike
- buying sunflowers from Zocalo
- my friend A. and his powder-blue car
- my mother's cooking
- my father's cooking
- the Edmonton Folk Music festival on Gallagher Hill
- my non-pant summer clothes

My whole life, I have been fascinated by the north. I'm going to try and watch and watch and watch and listen and listen and listen.


I'm excited!


See you soon.