Elder Professor Therese Sangris, teaching Professor Coulthard and Kids U how to dry the fish they netted. Mahsi, life is good!

Just wanted to let you know that I’ve read this article and a few of us did get your message!  

I’m so glad that you had the opportunity to share that message with the royal couple and hopefully they can carry it home with them.  I tried to find more details on their visit to Dechinta, but in the busyness of their schedule and the remoteness of your location a lot of what they did “up there” was lost in the news.  

I hope to visit some day and wish you all the luck in the future!  

By Dechinta Students, Summer 2010 June 7th, 2011

On June 5, 2011, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited Blachford Lake Lodge on the traditional and unceded territory of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. The stopover began with demonstrations by the 1^st Canadian Rangers Patrol Group, composed mainly of Inuit members. From there, the royals began a tour of Dechinta Bush University Centre for Research and Learning. Dechinta is a post-secondary education initiative providing Indigenous and non-Indigenous students with much-needed opportunities to take university-accredited courses developed in the North, led by Northern experts, and focused on the land as the primary teacher. But more than that, Dechinta provides an educational setting committed to decolonization and Indigenous self-determination. At Dechinta, one doesn’t just learn about decolonization, Dechinta is a practice of decolonization.

            The royal tour began with a lesson in several Dene languages.  Dechinta then engaged the couple in Dene practices including preparation of caribou meat, smoking fish, use of medicinal plants, moosehide tanning, and beading. These practices were portrayed by the media as arts and crafts. What the coverage didn’t communicate is that Dechinta participants explained to the royal couple how these activities play a key role in learning about, and engaging in, decolonization. As colonialism has displaced Indigenous peoples from their land, these activities help reconstitute students political, social and economic relations to that land.

The royal visit then moved into a governance circle around a fire, where students and instructors talked about the importance and impacts of Dechinta’s land-based pedagogy as a means of social transformation. Glen Coulthard, a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation and a professor of First Nations Studies and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, welcomed the royal couple to the unceded territory of his community. The royal visit coincided with the course “’Our Land, Our Life’: Dene Self-Determination in Theory and in Practice.” Coulthard explained that the major aims of the course were to explore Dene political history, develop a concrete understanding of the historical and contemporary character of settler-colonial rule in Canada, and confront the violent and destructive effects Indigenous peoples experience as a result of colonial racism and land dispossession. The course investigates the strategies through which the colonial state seeks to secure economic and legal certainty to Indigenous lands to exploit both people and natural resources. As dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their land is integral to the settler-colonial project, developing an understanding of what constitutes decolonization cannot occur without on-the-land learning. Coulthard’s course is part of Dechinta’s core curriculum, complimented by courses in sustainable community development, health and wellness, communications and research methods

Coulthard was followed by program alumnus Mason Mantla, a member of the Tlicho Nation who described his Dechinta experience as providing his life with direction, imbuing him with a positive identity and bridging the gap between university education and land-based learning. To conclude the opening remarks, Swampy Cree student Mandee McDonald spoke to the current set of vastly unequal political, economic, and social relations that govern the world. She described the difficult process of coming to terms with the individual and collective effects of neo-colonial rule. McDonald said Dechinta provides a safe space to develop a critical understanding of the reality facing Indigenous communities and to explore and practice an alternate vision of the future.

The opening remarks were followed by gifts for the royal couple. The Prince was given a cartridge bag and the Duchess a caribou hide clutch with porcupine beaded fringe. These gifts were made by students at Dechinta. Dene political activist and spiritual leader Francois Paulette then gave a star blanket and a documentary film on the environmentally destructive effects of the Alberta Tar Sands, which are upstream from Denendeh watersheds. Finally, the Dechinta program gave a hand-woven ash backpack containing a selection of readings from the program. This was followed by a group discussion where most students had a chance to speak further about issues of settler-colonialism, Indigenous self-determination and the necessity of land-based higher education in the North.

After the governance circle the royal couple joined Paulette aboard a canoe to paddle to a nearby island for a dinner of locally harvested foods. In reading about this experience in the media, Dechinta students were surprised to find Paulette labeled simply as a “guide” and “village elder.” Considering Paulette’s political significance in the North, this characterization was seen by students as a racist affront. Among other achievements, Paulette’s name is attached to the watershed case Paulette et al., v. The Queen (1976), in which the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories ruled that historical evidence suggested the Dene and Metis signatories of Treaties 8 and 11 did not consent to “cede, release and surrender” their Aboriginal title through the signing of treaty. 

            The dynamic of inviting prominent members of the British monarchy to a place committed to decolonization was not lost on anyone at Dechinta. According to program leaders Kyla Kakfwi Scott and Erin Freeland Ballantyne, the royal couple was invited in part to reach an international audience to promote Dechinta as a program that provides students with a critical understanding of Northern needs and aspirations.   They felt hosting the royals on Dene territory was an exercise in self-determination that might provide a critical opportunity to establish dialogue between the direct descendents of both Dene and the British Crown signatories to Treaties 8 and 11.  This meeting was a chance to establish dialogue between these two parties about the importance of respecting the nation- to -nation relationship between the Dene and the Crown in Right of Canada.   To leave the relationship as it stands would be to legitimize Canada’s illegitimate assertion of sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and territories - a view Dechinta challenges through rigorous research and scholarship.

According to Dechinta students, the visit was a chance to get out the message that Canada has yet to seriously address the colonial violence Indigenous communities continue to experience on a daily basis. It is a violence lived by Indigenous communities as a result of not only land dispossession but also through an imposition of Euro-American values and lifeways. Education was an important vehicle of the colonial project. Dechinta believes land-based education can also provide a site for self-determination. 

            The hope was that the message being advocated by Dechinta would shine during the royal visit and it wouldn’t collapse practices of Indigenous governance and self-determination into a display of ‘arts and crafts’.  However, once the event was over and media reports hit the airwaves, it became apparent this wasn’t the case. While this article may not correct the misinterpretation of the event propagated by the media, at least some record will exist of its true intent.

We are netting some big, sweet trout. They are super pink when the ice just comes off. We have had several over 35lbs. We make dry fish with Therese out of the whitefish, and the big trout go onto the bbq….

PRAXIS!

by Uma, age 4.

not ready to go…………

kali

Written May 23, 2011.

I walked completely around the lodge last night after supper along the shore and up over the rocks.  I had not done that since the snow left and I wanted to see what the area was like with no snow.

                I was up early to finish my packing and to make sure that I have breakfast before our 8:15 departure time.  Dave Olson flew in yesterday and tested the ice with Mike to ensure that it is thick enough for him to land today.  Mike took our gear down to the skidoo and the sled which can no longer come up to the lodge as there is no more snow on the land.  He has put a ramp over the open water between the shore and the ice so that he can use the 4 wheeler and the cart which he tows behind it.

                 I walked part way out to where the plane will land in the middle of the lake and then “hitched” a ride in the sled being pulled by the skidoo driven by Modeste.  This will be our last skidoo ride for the season.   When the plane landed, I heard Mike talking with the pilot.  Last night when he measured depth of the test holes in the ice, most of them had over 28” of ice.  This morning when he measured the ice thickness, they had lost about 1 to 1 ½ inches of depth to just under 27”.  It is a good thing that we are leaving today.  I don’t know what this plane needs to land, but anything less than about 24” I think will be dangerous.  We are getting out just in time.

                My friend picked me and my gear up – there is still more to come on a later plane.  I have not heard if the others are going out for dinner and to see the concert. 

                Dechinta is now over.  Some are talking about returning for another semester.   I am home and will be glad to sleep in my own bed tonight.  But I must not lose sight of the fact that I still have several assignments to complete.  Maybe I can return to volunteer for another semester.  I think I would like to do that.  Maybe I could then see spring breakup in the bush!

Cristine

Written May 23, 2011.

                Since I am writing this on May 23^rd, I have only my notes to go by.  I see that I have made a mistake since I am writing the past few days’ entries so long after we have come back home.  What we did today, I have put as happening on May 11^th! 

Actually, on May 11^th our lecture was a recap of what we had learned with Glen and Stephanie and some good discussions about the 3 governance assignments.   Lesley asked a good question about why the Inuit were excluded from the Indian Act.  At the time the Act was passed it was to deal with people who were “in the way” of development.  The Inuit were in the far north and, at that time, were not in the way of any development.  It is only since off shore oil development and Arctic sovereignty have become issues that the Inuit land claims in the Western Arctic came to the forefront.  The Inuit also did not consider themselves a “nation” as they were nomadic bands of about 25 people or less who looked after their own governance and culture.  It was not until people were being brought into settlements in the 30s and 40s that more than those numbers were living in any one place at a time in the far north.

So it was today, May 13^th, that we spent the morning down at the lower fire pit with Glen and others asking questions of Modeste and Terese.    See my May 11^th entry for our discussions about Modeste’s father as the last chief at Dettah to be chosen by consensus, etc.

I spent the afternoon packing and going over my 2 presentations for tonight’s sharing circle – the second ones for the Core and Health courses.  My Core course presentation will be “silent” – I have copies for all to read.  The Health presentation I will read aloud.

We fed the fire for the last time with Modeste and Terese after supper.  They had pointed out this morning that you feed the fire with “dry” food – dry fish, dry meat, cookies, bread, etc. – not wet food like spaghetti and soup!  We had a good laugh over that, because it makes so much sense!  So, our last evening we still learned something new.

We were at the fire pit outside Melaw’s cabin so that she and Doris could put their children to bed and still participate in all we had to do this evening at our last sharing/presentation circle.

  Keenan’s Governance presentation was a song.  It was quite good.  The tune was a bit awkward and some of the lines had too many syllables but, considering he had only a few days to write it, he managed to get all the concepts we have been talking about into it!

Erin had diplomas and “scrolls” of Toblerone for all of the students.  It was about 11:00 pm when we finished talking and taking photos and it was quite cold.  I had not worn my big black coat so I was chilled.

We are flying out tomorrow in a Bush Hawk plane owned by Dave Olson.  It is a bit bigger than a Cessna 185 and can hold more gear.  All of us have been assigned seats and plane departure times every two hours starting at 8:15 am.  The ice is still thick enough for this plane to land – so he will go back and forth 5 times to get us all out of here. 

I have finished my packing and put the cases and boxes outside on the landing for tomorrow’s trip out to the plane.

Cristine

This third last day of the field semester we are mentally moving on with our lives I think.  We are all quite tired and anxious about the assignments and how we are departing on Saturday.

We think that we will be going out by helicopter – we will probably be ferried over to a nearby mine site by helicopter on Saturday.  There is a landing strip where a Twin Otter on wheels can land and then we could all be flown out to YK on one plane.  We have a lot of gear – and there are about 16 of us going out – so a Twin may not even be big enough.  There is talk about bringing in a Dash 6 or a Dash 8.  Of course, this all depends on the ice conditions here at the Lodge and whether or not there are still planes on the ice in Yellowknife.

We are planning to go out for dinner on Saturday night as a group.  Melaw has tickets for Leila Gilday’s concert at the Top Knight that evening also.  So I suggested that we all have supper there and then we will have seats for the concert. 

This morning we spent discussing how to write a short critical essay.  This essay discussion came about because I think Glen and Erin finally realized that most of the students did not really understand that, yes, they were going to have to write a real essay which was set out and could be emailed to the instructor and then printed.

After this session, before and after lunch, I attempted to work on Stephanie’s question for the governance course.  I am not getting anywhere.  I cannot concentrate.  To keep up with our schedule of working with the elders every day, Melaw, Ehxea and Oz went down to visit Modeste and Terese around 3 pm.  Melaw is buying the muskrat skins from Modeste and she needs to know how to scrape them and soften them for tanning so that she can make hats for the boys.  She is really trying hard to recapture the traditional skills needed to work with skins and furs from any and all elders she can find.

Modeste says that to soften the flesh left on the skin for scraping, you can soften a bar of Lifeboy?? Ivory?? soap in water (just leave the bar in a bit of water so it gets soft on the bottom side) and, with your fingers, spread this softened soap very gently and carefully over the flesh.  It will soften and you can scrape the hide very gently with your scraper after the flesh has been softened.  Melaw and Terese were just scraping the dry skin when Modeste told Terese what to do.  She laughed and asked him why he had not told her about the soapy concoction earlier! 

I floundered around with the Bonita Lawrence assignment before and after supper as I was getting nowhere with Stephanie’s question.   After dinner, Kali wanted to read her completed Governance assignment out loud to me.  I read along with her from the computer and fixed some spelling, grammar and sytax errors.  It is quite a good little essay.  She understood the concept and had 5 paragraphs which ran well together.  It is very difficult to write a short critical essay as I am finding!

I have a 20 minute discussion with Glen about changing my topic for the long research paper.  I don’t think he is keen for me to change the topic but agreed that I can discuss the thesis statement with Stephanie when I return to YK and they can both approve it. 

I spend the rest of the evening journaling and posting to TUMBLR.  I am quite behind and find that it is really hard to remember what had happened on a day, even if I am writing the next day.  I really need to write just before supper and finish it off the next morning and post to TUMBLR before breakfast for the previous day. 

I have started to pack.  I am surprised how eager I am to get back home!  I won’t see the ice breakup here in the bush, but the snow has gone, the seagulls are back and the weather is warm.  I saw my first big fat lazy mosquito today.  So spring must be here!

Cristine

While Glen and his children went to check the fish net and pull it out of the water, I stayed behind to complete my final Health course presentation.  Stephen and Amanda, Tulita and Hayden are going out on the plane today.  I will be sorry to see them go.  The children play well with Melaw’s boys and Natalie.  It is good to have different children coming and going throughout our stay here.

                I spent the rest of the morning working on one of my Governance course assignments.  I am not doing well with it.  I think I may have to leave these assignments to finish next week.  I am finding it difficult to get my mind around this kind of “thinking” — I am already wanting to be home and sleeping in my own bed!  I do want to be here for breakup – and breakup to me means having the ice go – but I don’t think that that will be happening before we leave.  They are still hoping to get a Twin Otter in here on Saturday.

                We had another Governance discussion about the assignments at the lower fire pit this afternoon.  Glen asked Modeste and Terese questions.  Glen thinks that Modeste’s father was the last chief at Dettah to be appointed chief by consensus agreement of the people in the settlement.  I was not so sure and I was taking notes.   He was chosen this way about 100 years after the chiefs in the south were chosen this way.  “Colonization” as it was in the 1850s came later to the Canadian North!

                He also asked them about the signing of the Treaty 11.  The people were promised $5.00, 30/30 bullets, a fish net and 12 gauge shotgun shells.  They used to receive all of those things, but today, they only get the $5.00 bill!  What happened to the rest of the promised goods??

                After this discussion, we went up to the garden area.  Some of us turned the compost piles.  Some of us tilled the garden area and some of us cleaned out the greenhouse and tilled that soil to get these areas ready for planting after the threat of frost has gone – probably in about 3 weeks.

                We had another sharing circle tonight.  It was long and the fire was smoky.  I think we are all ready and anxious to be going home.

Cristine

Glen and his family (I cannot remember if Amanda and Tulita went also) went out with Fred to check the fish nets.  I am not sure who went with them but I am sure that one of them was Keenan.  He is always willing to help do these little chores.  I think that they only got 2 fish.  They then watched Terese prepare them for drying.

                We had an indoor lecture before lunch with Stephen and Glen after they returned from pulling the nets.  Glen went over the history of the Dene which Stephanie had discussed briefly when she was here.  It was a more in depth look at it than the short one she gave us. 

All of the Native Associations have been set up along provincial and territorial boundaries in spite of the fact that there are overlaps in their claims which cross those boundaries.  This was a “colonized” decision as money was given to the provincial organizations when they were formed from the feds so the NWT Indian Brotherhood was formed along the territorial boundaries also.  After the creation of Yellowknife as the territorial capital in 1967, there was a really rapid increase in its population with most of the incoming people being white, governmental bureaucrats. 

The Calder and Paulette court decisions in 1973 then forced issue of Aboriginal land rights question.  The last time this had been discussed was in the Treaty 11 discussions in 1921.

                After lunch with we had another lecture with Glen and Stephen.  Glen is trying to get in as much of Stephen’s knowledge about the time of the Indian Brotherhood and the Dene Nation as he can.  Next time this course is given, I think that Glen would like to have another Dene leader come so that he can get another person’s perspective of the history of that time. 

                Stephen talked about the Berger Inquiry and why the Aboriginal peoples of the north began to organize themselves into the Indian Brotherhood of the NWT (name changed later to the Dene Nation) in the early 1970s.  We talked about the Dene Declaration which was put out by the Dene Nation in 1975.  It stated that the Dene People are a nation and wanted to be recognized as such.  They had been looking at the international struggles of the African nations which were breaking away from their colonizers.  The Dene Nation wanted its own plight to be recognized internationally also — their human rights and self-determination. 

Glen and Stephen then talked about the land claims processes and the different claims which have been settled and are currently still being negotiated.

                Erin had scheduled an afternoon with the Elders building a survival shelter.  So off we trekked after our lecture into the wilderness, about 5 minutes away and still in earshot of the generator, to build a survival leanto!  It was a very interesting exercise.  Modeste had to chop down a tree so we then used it, since it was a large tree about 4-5” in diameter and quite tall, as a log (with the branches still on it) to sit on.  Gummy, but up off the snow.  The snow is going quickly.  It is getting harder to walk in the bush.  It is slippery and slushy on the rock faces we have to climb up and down to somewhere.  I have to be very careful.  We are now wearing our rubber boots as we are sinking into the deep snow sometimes as we walk along a path.  I forgot to put inner soles into mine and they are a size too big so my feet are slipping around in them.

We were then scheduled to have our afternoon study group to discuss the assignments at the tipi.  We stayed at the leanto  – the little boys were playing in the shelter while we had our discussions. 

After supper, I went down to the living area of the lodge because I could hear guitar playing and singing.  Jasmine was playing Keenan’s guitar, I think, and Stephen was playing his.  She has a lovely throaty alto voice with lots of range.  Stephen’s voice blended nicely with hers.  He sang songs I don’t remember hearing before.   It made me feel better so “take the night off” away from the school work.

I wrote out my final Health presentation this morning.  It will be presented on Friday.  I will be able to read this one aloud as it is about our time here at Dechinta and the health problems we have all had.  I have related those problems to the larger issue of the introduction of disease after contact and its effects on the Indigenous peoples during colonization. 

I spoke to Erin about the final Core presentation.  She suggested that I present it “silently”.  I have printed a copy for everyone and they can just sit and read it as I cannot possibly read it out loud without crying throughout it all.

Cristine