11 August

Today we were meeting one of the longest standing northern doctors and his wife. He has raised two sons here – both have come back to work here as doctors with their doctor wives.

He had invited us to attend an annual cultural camp run by the Stanley River mission Cree (woodland Cree are a First Nations people) community.

This cultural camp was focused on traditional healing and there were tipis setup with different traditional healers in them. Sweat lodges were being run by about three lodge keepers.

I’d heard of sweat lodges and didn’t know much about them. To be honest I pretty much thought they were just saunas with some Indigenous herbs. But it is very ceremonial and involves offering and prayers to ancestors and several rounds of sauna or ‘sweating’ and sharing of feelings and prayers. We were offered to sweat and the Dr was going to be we politely declined for several reasons. I did sit with the dr’s wife outside though to watch and learn about what goes on. It was interesting.

The camp also involves lots of food. They had caught lots of local fish including a beautiful fish called Walleye, some was fried for lunch and some was filleted and hung over birch branches in a tipi smokehouse to smoke. I was only able to take photos of some things as some people were ok with photos and others weren’t and I always ask.

They also were cutting up several moose. Some was being smoked in a tipi smokehouse, some was made into soup and stew. Some of the dried moose jerky was then put into ‘bags’ made of cut off jeans and pounded with a hammer until it turned into a floss called pamekin. It takes quite a bit of pounding.

We chatted for quite a while with the guys doing it. The older guy Adam had the greatest sense of humour. He is a woodland Cree elder. Ron ended up talking with them about all kinds of things including the issues facing young people now. Adam was telling us that he actually likes being called Indian ( a lot of First Nations people don’t like that term now). He said Indigenous is the term academics use but he thinks the name came because Indians are genius! Hilarious! He was so funny- great to talk with him.

When I was at the sweat Ron ended up pounding pamekin with the fellas. When I came back Adam said Ron had earned his certificate in pamekin pounding which was in fact ‘anger management’. With this he demonstrated a few good blows with the back of the tomahawk. But then he added I don’t think Ron needs anger management – I don’t think he ever gets angry- very perceptive.

One thing that was sad and maybe I just perceived this more as a doctor who works with similarly traumatised people… was what a high proportion of people looked like they had a sad tale to tell, young people with limps, major scars, burns etc. I was told of how some of the injuries were from attempts at suicide. Very sad.

We did get a very positive story from this great guy here and he gave me permission to share it so I’ll put it up as a separate blog post so keep an eye out for it.

The other thing we got to try was raw marrow from inside the bones of the moose that is a delicacy mixed with a pinch of the pamekin.

Back in the day, Cree used to make what I called the first energy barn from pamekin made from moose or bison , mixed with fat and dried berries and made into a bar or slice for travel. The early fur traders used to buy it from the Cree too.

It was a very interesting experience and we felt very fortunate to have been able to go and share in this gathering and meet some of the woodland Cree people. They were very lovely and friendly and welcoming and we enjoyed talking to them.

One thing made me sad though was that there seemed to be an unusually high proportion of people damaged in some way. So many sad stories , people with major injuries and some of them self inflicted through suicide attempts. I couldn’t help thinking they were searching for something they weren’t finding. Turned out this camp was focused just on traditional healing and old Indian spiritual practices. Someone said the majority of the community who are at least nominally Christian didn’t agree with this camp and they hold another cultural camp which sounds good with lots of feasting, dancing and cultural activities.

Stanley mission community was first inhabited by Woodland Cree First Nations people. Then when fur traders came it became one of the first fur trading posts and was actually settled way before anywhere in the south. This church was built there in the 1800’s and is now the oldest building in Saskatchewan.

We had a bite to eat in the community with the dr and his wife. Great to see the locals running a great little business.

Everyone has been telling us the best place to see bears is in northern dumps. In bigger centres they’ve cottoned on to transfer stations to solve the issue of problem bears. So we finally got to test the theory when the Dr took us to the Stanley mission dump. Sue enough there were two big black bears. The biggest one took off into the forest but this one actually moved towards us and then stood there looking at us before continuing to eat rubbish.

Back at the dr’s house his wife offered us wild Blueberries for desert which were delicious and sweet and tiny.

12 aug

Nut point trail is a lovely hiking trail near La Ronge that goes for 30km one way along a rocky ridge on the pre-cambrian shield through beautiful forest. We only did a short section of it but it was beautiful with different types of forest, rocky outcrops and lots of patches of wild blueberries.

One side trail – the trail spur, led to a high point where you could look out over the forest and the remnants of a tipi that someone had made. Ron hadn’t eaten breakfast so he picked blueberries for brekky answer picked enough to take with us.

The Dr and his wife kindly offered to take us down the river on his pontoon boat and invited several other drs so I could interview them on a nice relaxed boat trip!

13 August

This morning I had some Video hookups with other drs in other areas before heading to La Ronge clinic to interview some more of the La Ronge doctors. Some more wonderful information (and more to write up! Argh!)

I was given a tour of the Homeless shelter as we took the rest of the lunch from the meeting over there. The lady running it is amazing and so dedicated. The people attending there are pretty damaged and mostly seem to be in the grip of alcohol and drugs with IV drug use a bit problem. Which means many of them also have HIV and Hep C. The health service does clinics over there too.

We’d been told that Robertson’s trading post was a must see. Interesting place- is a general store that has a bit of everything. Butchered and smoked meats, groceries, Indian beaded souvenirs, fishing and hunting gear and lots of furs and hides. Yes that’s right. It is a fur trading post- like back in the day with Hudson’s bay company that helped settle this country and traded with Indians. The father of the current owner worked for the Hudson’s bay Company until he went independent and set up this fur trading post 50 years ago. Locals still bring him furs to sell and you can buy furs of all kinds of animals that you would think would be protected? Canada is funny like that….

They also have an amazing collection of Indian arts, crafts and artefacts. Some are for sale and many are not.

Whilst we were there we saw local First Nations bringing in wild blueberries that he was buying off them. He picked up on my accent and once he knew my background he really let go with his views on what was happening in this area. Because of his fathers trade he had grown up with First Nations in very remote areas and had gone to residential school with them. He seemed very saddened by how things were going these days – in fact he referred to it as a disaster. He said if it was up to him he’d raise ‘all hell’ by cutting welfare and doubling tax on alcohol. His view was that education was the way out for most.

Very interesting to hear his take on it.

He offered me a piece of rat root that he sells which is a traditional Indian medicine used for just about everything. A cree lady came in to sell him something and he got her to tell me all the things she uses it for.

If you’re not used to it you can make a tea out of it but locals often put a piece of it inside their lip and suck on it but he warned me it’s strong. Being a hardhead I went straight for for the latter but sooner regretted it! Ugghhh!

The visitor centre was also a nice little stop on the way out and the map they have of the amazing wilderness canoe paddles you can do here made we wish we were coming here for a canoe adventure!

Next doctors meeting is in Ile a la Crosse. Turns out that the ‘highway’ on Google maps is a gravel road. We’ve been assured that it’s a good road but nonetheless with a hire car we want to take it easy so we’ve decided to poke along and camp in the forest halfway.

Driving through here is a great experience- true northern wilderness with just the very occasional First Nations community and you’d also spot some First Nations people picking mushrooms or berries in the forest. Either for personal use or to sell with their being a big market for some of the more exotic mushrooms.

As the sun was setting we saw a wolf cross the road ahead of us. It was too fleeting to take a photo but exciting to see and another wildlife spotting to add to our list. We pulled into a small track off into the forest to sleep and found ourselves surrounded by blueberries so I filled up the jar again and picked them until the crazy mozzies drove us into the car.

14 August

Was able to have blueberries galore for breakfast. Love this wild foraging thing. What I don’t love is the stinking black flies- haven’t seen them since Kuujjaaq and they’re supposed to be gone now but a couple snuck in between the giant mozzies and gave us a couple of nasty bites again.

Ile-a-lacrosse is a Metis’ First Nation community named by the French fur traders for the ‘Indians’ they saw playing la Crosse on an island.

As we drove in we saw another big black bear on the side of the road eating flowers – he went into the forest to lie down and then took off into the bush.

Had another great interview with some longstanding doctors there that was super helpful and got some more contacts for my survey.