My Kaska Friend and the Lessons Learned

While working for Alcohol and Drug Services in the Yukon I travelled to the community of Ross River. This Kaska community is 440 kilometres northeast of Whitehorse. The Kaska people are very friendly and easy to work with. Unfortunately, Ross River is a community that has had many tragedies over the years. These tragedies range from suicides and residential school abuse to deaths related to alcohol consumption. In small northern communities, everyone feels the pain when there is a death. Compounded grieving, previous colonization and ongoing land claims squabbles and mining activity have made life much tougher for many. Some have benefited from nearby mining activity but the number is very small.

In response to the alcohol and drug abuse issue, I began working with the First Nation's staff at the Margaret Thomson Centre (Wellness Centre) to see how we could help the community. After a number of discussions, we decided that the best way to assist the community would be to run a treatment camp for teen girls at a place called Finlayson Lake. While Finlayson Lake was a long way from the community, the staff felt the location would be ideal.

Over a couple of months, we got into some serious planning. The Yukon Government, the Ross River Dena Council and a number of other groups contributed funding toward the camp. In addition to the four youth who would attend the camp from the Ross River Dena Council, we also decided to include four youth from each of the Selkirk First Nation (Pelly Crossing), Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation (Carmacks) and Liard First Nation (Watson Lake). As we planned for the camp, it became clear that the differences between my First Nation friend's ideas of holding the camp were quite different from mine.

Working for the government I wanted to ensure a good return on the money spent on the camp. Being non First Nations I did not think of being on the land alone as therapeutic, although I had always felt very comfortable outdoors. We discussed the need for specialists to come to the camp to discuss various issues that we thought may be of value to teen girls. Things were falling into place and there was a great deal of support for the project.

When we discussed the educational content of the camp, our cultural differences became obvious. I suggested we bring in a nutritionist to the camp to discuss nutrition with the youth. My First Nations colleagues suggested we just eat nutritious meals. I suggested we bring in a recreation director to discuss recreation and leisure activities as alternatives to substance abuse. They suggested we just get out and do some walking, fishing and swimming. I also suggested that we have an elder discuss spirituality and my First Nations friends said that they would just build a sweat lodge. They also felt that there was little need to talk about alcohol and drugs because the teens would find out about the benefits of sobriety by being sober while at the camp. I then started to understand that experiential learning was the way the First Nations people liked to learn. We scrapped the lectures, intellectual exercises, and theoretical approaches and replaced them with hands on meaningful activities. Sewing, building and using a sweat lodge, beadwork and learning about the bush became important activities. Structure was abandoned and this made the camp flow much more smoothly. It began to all make sense and it was apparent through the teen's art that they were quite aware of many of the issues we had thought about teaching them.

There were two pregnant girls in the group and the teens talked a great deal about pregnancy as they sat around and did bead work. I am not sure who learned more about whom but I certainly received an education. I learned that when working with First Nations around healing it is far more important to ``do`` than to talk. Theory is good but doing is better. While we came from very different cultures, we both shared the same goal. What we did not share was the same vision of how to achieve the goal but that did not matter because there was good communication and mutual respect. When working with First Nations it is important to remember that the First Nation's people learned through oral history and not through classroom lectures and the written word.

What could have been a process characterized by conflict became a good mutual learning process that modelled what we hoped the teens would learn. I have great respect for the people and Wellness Workers of Ross River and they remain very fondly in my memories.

The Elderly Inuit Woman and her Hockey Stick

Living in, what is now Baker Lake, Nunavut was a wonderful experience. I remember fondly meeting elders at the local Northern Store. Although we did not speak the same language, we did share smiles, laughter and unique sign language. The elders always seemed positive, happy and were an extremely important resource in the community. Learning from the elders occurs through watching and listening. If someone does not wish to listen elders frequently say, "They will have to learn the hard way".

As a young man living in Baker Lake, I knew very little about the Inuit way of life. I did learn that oral history teaches valuable lessons to less senior members of each Inuit tribe. While the Inuit now live in communities rather than on the land there is still a great deal to learn from elders. This story is about what I learned through observing the actions of one elder during adverse conditions. Ironically, it includes both technology and wisdom.

I can remember horrific storms in Baker Lake and I specifically remember two deaths resulting from storms. In one instance, a woman with a tubal pregnancy was unable to be medivaced out of the community and ended up dying in town. In another instance, a woman with four children decided she would go to the Northern Store for cigarettes during a whiteout and missed the store completely and died, lost down on the lake. I wondered how the community dealt with tragedy and what people did to get over such tragic deaths. I wondered how Inuit carried on when there was a death. Being from the south, I had little experience with death being so close and personal. It hurt.

Death was nothing new for the Inuit with a history of starvation and constant hunting and gathering. I suppose there was little choice but to carry on. I was to learn the lesson of carrying on regardless of what happens in a very strange way.

One day I was at home in the south end of Baker Lake during a particularly nasty storm. It seemed every time the CBC news on the radio talked about comparatively warm winter temperatures there was a blizzard and wind chills that more than made up for the warmer temperatures. During these storms, animals sometimes entered town. Foxes seemed more likely than other types of animals to enter town during these types of conditions. I remember a huge number of foxes entering Cambridge Bay during a storm one time and hiding under buildings until the storm ended. Whether this was because the foxes were disoriented or seeking shelter during the storm was unclear. They did pose a potential threat to the safety of those who had no choice but to venture outside. On this particular day, I had to go to the store to get milk for my infant daughter. The wind was howling and I could see virtually nothing other than the power lines I decided to use as a navigational system. Just prior to leaving the house, my partner told me that a number of foxes had entered town and that they could be dangerous.

I left the house and headed to the store in the centre of town hoping that I would not encounter a fox. Even though the community was only 1200 people, walking from what is affectionately know as China Town to "downtown" was quite a walk. As I was getting closer to downtown, I almost walked into an elderly Inuit woman in a kerchief bent over carrying what looked like a cane. I could not see her until the last moment because of the whiteout. She was going "downtown" too so I thought I would join her. As I got a closer look at her, I noticed she did not have a cane, but rather a hockey stick. This seemed odd because most elders used a cane purchased from the local store. We could not speak because of the wind and went as quickly as we could to the store. When we arrived and brushed the snow off, I signalled with my hand that I would like to talk to the woman. We quickly identified a young Inuk who could interpret for us. I asked the elderly woman through our interpreter why she was carrying a hockey stick. Through the interpreter, she responded that she used it as a weapon to deal with foxes if they attacked her during a storm. I did not give her comments much thought until a death occurred in the community.

When the next death occurred in the community, I once again began wondering how people coped in the face of such tragedy. I then recalled the elderly woman and our conversation about the hockey stick. She had inadvertently given me an answer to this question. One must carry on in the face of adversity and work toward goals regardless of the potential pitfalls along the way. Her lesson was that regardless of the situation, you seek out what you need in order to deal with whatever problem you are facing. In her case, it was a hockey stick to protect her from foxes: in the case of others, it was seeking the support of friends and relatives to cope with the death of a loved one. In no way did the elderly woman's message include immobilizing and dwelling on circumstances that she could not change. Nor did her message involve wallowing in self-pity, but rather to take whatever action was required and carry on in the face of adversity.

I began thinking that each day we have the luxury of choices. There are situations not of our doing that frustrate us. Other situations may cause, pain, grief or fear. The key is to differentiate between that which we can change and that which we cannot. If the elderly woman had not had, the goal of getting to the store she never would have gotten there. It was a situation that she had the choice to act upon or allow herself to become paralyzed by adversity. Through having the courage to act, and the wisdom to apply the appropriate tool in the situation she succeeded. This involved an isolated incident, but the lesson learned applies in a much broader context.

My elderly friend did not know it but through her resourcefulness and wisdom, she taught me a valuable lesson that has helped me during difficult times. It has also helped me plan to achieve goals and successfully deal with hurdles along the way. For that I remain very grateful.

Andy Sibbald lived in the Yukon for 8 years, Nunavut for 10 years and the North West Territories for 2 years, and presently lives in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. He has been involved in designing and implementing several healing camps and programs with First Nations and Inuit.

Email: Andy Sibbald

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