Alberta to host next year: Traditional games a hit with the kids

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Charlene Yellow Kidney looked intently down the long row of clothesline posts as she jabbed her steed into a full gallop. As her horse sped past, she plucked small hoops off the posts one-by-one with a long arrow until she reached the end. Then she raced down the other side.

Yellow Kidney, a Salish and Kootenai tribal judge by day, was one of more than 200 participants in the Third Annual International Traditional Games, held July 26 to 29 at the Flathead Indian reservation. Organizers say the event marks an important rebirth of Indigenous culture, some of which hasn't been practiced in North America for more than a century.

"They're from two years old to the Elders," said Dee Anna Leader, an elementary school principal and a key co-ordinator of the games. This year's participants came from British Columbia, Alberta, and six American states. About 35 children of migrant Hispanic workers harvesting the area's cherry crop also took part.

The hoop-and-long-arrow game, like others, was used as a training exercise for lancing an opponent off his horse. Now, instead of the reward of wounding of another warrior, each hoop bears different colors and are worth a variety of points. For any hoops knocked to the ground, eight seconds are knocked off a competitor's time. The fastest rider with the most points wins the event.

Adaptation is the key to many events. In the horse-and-hide competition, lumber is now used to secure a stiff cowhide to the nylon rope being dragged by a horse and rider. Young competitors, who must run a short foot race before plunging belly first onto the crumpled hides, wear helmets, gloves and long pants for safety. But they still must hold on for their lives as they reach breakneck speeds behind the animals' gravel-heaving hooves.

Other horse events included a relay race, a slowest-animal competition, endurance rides and arm wrestling, which involves riders trying to push and pull each other off their mounts.

"It's something children especially look forward to," said Margie Blixt, who serves as the non-profit organizing group's president. "A lot of kids are going to save their money after this to buy a horse."

A variety of other activities also took place, including canoe races, stickgame, double-ball and lacrosse matches. Archery and related games such as long-arrow and atlatl casting and hoop and dart were well-attended, as was the Blackfeet children's game of Run and Scream, where girls take in a huge breath, start screaming as loudly as they can, and run until they're out of air. The girl who runs the farthest while maintaining a scream wins.

Especially popular was shinny, a hockey-like team game that's played with bare wooden clubs three to four feet long. To start, a ball is cast into the middle of the field and each team tries to score by hitting the ball through a small goal. While a player can catch and hold the ball, doing so increases the risk of being pummeled by other competitors because the ball remains "live" unless it flies out of bounds. There are few other rules, but if a player is otherwise knocked with a shinny stick, a scrimmage takes place on the spot and both teams clamor to move the ball down the field.

Even wilder is double ball. The game uses two oblong balls covered with hide and connected with a thin leather strip. Team members use short sticks to snag the leather and whip the balls in the air over a wooden crossbar held up on poles. Opposing competitors try to stop the advance any way they can. The balls may be passed, but a typical carrier forges through his or her opponents in a mad dash to the goal posts. More points are given if the double ball wraps around the crossbar.

The practice of using an atlatl and casting long arrows is a bit more refined. The atlatl, which archeologists contend has been around at least 9,000 years, consists of a piece of wood that holds a long, arrow-like projectile. Used in combination, the leverage of a throw is heightened to the pont that the projectile can be heaved hard enough to puncture a steel drum, users say. The highly accurate weapon is still commonly used by Australian Aborigines and some Arctic peoples, and organizers say renewed interest is growing in Canada and the United States.

A World Atlatl Association, formed in 1987, holds annual competitions around the globe. The long arrow, meanwhile, is simply a lance that is heaved, and competitions usually centre on distance rather than accuracy.

In contrast, some of the activities were more sedate. A number of "learning lodges" were set up around the Elmo powwow grounds. Participants could see how traditional bows and arrows were made and were taught the history of various games and other cultural activities. Young children also constructed their own dolls out of strips of cloth and played the ancient game of plumstone.

"The reason I do this is that I've got grandchildren," Blixt said. "I feel that the games give them some idea what it was like a long time ago. I think it will help them with their future. It teaches them skills and how to get along with each other. They get to meet other children from other tribes."

The concept of reviving traditional games on the Northern Plains burst onto the scene in 1999, when a group of tribal Elders and Indian and non-Indian activists organized a series of events on the Blackfeet Indian reservation in Montana. The games, initially prompted through research conducted by a group of young Blackfeet students, expanded last year at a site on the reservation's Lower Two Medicine Lake. Next year's events will take place in Morley, Alta., as part of the sixth World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education. Organizers report up to 7,000 people are expected to attend the conference.

Leader says funding to keep the games alive has come from a variety of sources, including various tribal governments, the Montana Committee for the Humanities, Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad Co., the Montana Commnity Foundation and donations from many individuals. One couple from the Blackfeet Nation gave $20,000 to the initial effort after they won a lottery drawing. A registered quarter-horse stallion was raffled off this year to help defray expenses. The hosting Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes offered all types of in-kind and direct help, Leader adds.

"The whole committee has worked real hard to make this happen," Blixt notes. "We all work together because this is so important."