Annual camp puts kids in touch with their culture

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Carmen Pauls Orthner, Sage Writer, Stanley Mission

A chill wind blows through the clearing, ruffling the pines. A moose hide soaks in a large tub, and down the muddy hill strewn with rocks and undergrowth, a simple deadfall bear trap awaits an unwary beast. Further on, strips of moose and caribou are drying on a rack. By a crackling fire, blackened duck carcasses-still sporting heads and wings-await the scraping knife. Pots of spiced meat and vegetables bubble while walleye sizzles in a pan. The sound of laughter fills the air.

It could be a scene from 100 years ago, but it took place last month.

Every year, for two weeks in May, the northern Cree community of Stanley Mission plays host to a two-week cultural camp, an event aimed at passing on to a younger generation the skills and values learned through centuries of bush living.

Although Miriam Cook has lived her entire 50 years in Stanley Mission, the need for an event like this didn't hit her until 10 years ago when she was hired by the local clinic to work with the elderly. "I noticed they were very lonely people," remembered Cook, "and the youth and the Elders were not connected."

As well, she said, a lot of the young people seemed to be losing not only language and skills, but also the values that have kept Woodland Cree culture strong for generations.

"Nowadays... if you hear about someone killing a moose, you go down and see. If it's a younger person, you see no meat, because it's all in the deep freeze," Cook said. "They don't share like they used to. They're losing their values. And over here (at the camp) everything is being shared."

Over the course of two weeks, hundreds of school kids from Stanley Mission and neighbouring communities such as La Ronge and Grandmother's Bay are bused in for a taste of the traditional northern lifestyle. Children and teens press in to hear as the Elders explain how to skin a beaver, snare a rabbit with a rope or make a paddle. The kids pluck the ducks that will soon go into the soup pot, scrape the flesh and hair off one of the enormous moose hides that Cook has purchased from a local hunter, and listen to decades-old stories.

"They're really eager to learn, and sometimes the teachers have a hard time taking the kids back to school, because they want to stay and continue learning (from the Elders)," said Cook. As for the Elders, "they become alive. You see the gleam in their eyes. It's taking them back ... You hear a lot of laughter. In their teachings, the laughter and the work are a pair. I notice that's the way the Elders work-they laugh, and then they tell you a little story, and then they laugh, and then ... start teaching you again."

For Elder Elizabeth Charles, the camp is a way of fighting to preserve the culture she holds so dear. "If we don't have camps like this, it's going to get lost, eh? Nobody would even know how to hold a duck," she said as she scraped the remains of feathers off the blackened, flopping bird in her hands, "or nobody would even know how to burn the feathers, or how to cut the meat."

"These kids, they don't know anything now. Nothing at all ... We're trying to show them, but they just don't seem to enjoy this stuff. It's really sad."

At the camp, though, the kids seem to perk up, and truly get excited about what they're learning, said Charles. Fellow Elder Rosie McKenzie sees that as well. Even now that she's no longer substitute teaching, she's still involved with kids on a regular basis, as a school committee Elder. She enjoys seeing the children's fascination as she cuts up beaver meat or teaches them words in Cree.

"We don't want those young people to be so lost," she said. "They've lost their language, and they don't know what to do (on the trapline). That's why I like to teach them."

The kids themselves are harder to pin down on what they like about the camp. A group of Grade 5 boys from Stanley Mission's Keethanow elementary meander around the campfre, joking with one another and tossing out thoughts about learning Cree, learning the traditions and "seeing Mother Nature taking its place." Several have experience from being on the trapline with their parents, and are sure they could survive on their own in the bush. They find their own games-playing with a severed duck wing, waving a smoking branch around and dubbing it a flame thrower-before tearing madly off as the sound of fiddles drifts over from the main clearing.

But they're learning. Participants in a recent wilderness survival course told Cook that if it wasn't for the skills they'd learned at the cultural camp, they wouldn't have survived. "And the young kids too, when they see someone trying to make a moose hide, they'll go around and say, 'Can I help?'

"They're willing to help, which before they didn't. And at the store too, if the Elders are carrying their groceries and there's a young kid there, they'll say, 'Can I help?'"