Navajos return up North

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When the Navaho visitors piled out of the van, the temperatures were warm and sunny. As quickly as they converged at the river's edge, the calm weather changed.

Blue skies became cloudy and the stillness was transformed with a sudden wind. This apparent environmental volatility was not just coincidence, the group's leader pointed out, but a sign from Mother Earth.

Clayton Long, from Utah, dipped his hands in the White River and washed his hands and wrists with grey silt and sand. This planned visit to the river represented a return to Long's ancestral roots.

"This water is a holy being and will acknowledge you and will talk to you," Long said about the fast-moving current. "We use the ash from the fire for healing ceremonies and here we can use the ash of the volcano."

Oral histories testify that his people travelled from the North centuries ago because of a massive volcano eruption. Numerous similarities between the Navajo and Dene languages show it belongs to the Athapaskan family of dialects originating in northern Canada.

Nine Navajos and four Apaches took a 10-day journey through parts of the Yukon and southeast Alaska. The agenda included frequent dance performances during gatherings with other tribes, but the highlight was the stop near the dormant volcano, where they met on Aug. 2 with members of the White River First Nation at Beaver Creek, about a half-hour drive from White River.

The Americans stayed in Beaver Creek for two nights.

"This is possibly our place of origin. A feeling we get is this is another sacred place for us," Long said.

Long's group was satisfied spiritually by going to White River, but there is some scientific verification of the legend of the volcano.

Anthropologist Norm Easton described the layers of dirt that are just centimetres below the forested surface.

Several excavations have exposed distinctive white ash that has been dated from 1,400 to 1,900 years ago. Oral tradition places the eruption from around AD 700.

"For many years we heard of a big distribution of ash, and five to six years ago they discovered the actual peak, Mount Bona," Easton said, pointing to a mountain range 80 kilometres from White River.

During an evening's cultural exchange with the White River First Nation, Chief Angela Demit acknowledged this was a rare opportunity for her band to host another tribe. Dewit also acknowledged to her southern guests that her people have struggled to maintain their culture, in part because many of the band's Elders are residential school survivors.

"It's really good to see other people share with us and maybe one day we can go down there and share with them," the chief said about the Navajos' invitation.

During an emotional closing ceremony, Long mentioned how Elders from these separated tribes always knew of each other as cousins but were never able to meet. But when they finally gathered together at White River, the powers of the Earth responded.

"As if somebody was talking to us, the grass was waving, the branches were waving; we felt like the elements of down South and from up here greeted one another," Long said.