Faye and Maciek's Adventures in the frosty Canadian North
I thought you guys might appreciate this picture of me getting corn rows put in my hair for a wedding in Australia.
Maciek’s review of corn rows:
A lot of local Dene traditions were lost over the last few hundred years as populations gradually shifted from living on the land to hanging out at home watching Netflix (sometimes not voluntarily). One tradition that seems to have hung around, however, is fire feeding.
I’ve seen this happen a few times now. Everyone stands in a circle around or near a fire to be fed. A few people, usually older men, sing and beat drums. Sometimes a Christian prayer is said, but usually in the local Dene language. The drums are, I believe, locally made from stretched hide of caribou.
Afterwards, everyone (even weird foreign whiteys like me) takes a little (about a pinch of) tobacco, flour, sugar or other granular foodstuff and throws it into the fire. As best as I understand, this means the fire is fed and bad things won’t happen as much and good things will.
Our now-SAO (Senior Administrative Officer, aka guy who runs the municipality) is a young guy who proved his chops by (among other things, I’m sure) setting up a pretty awesome fitness room in the hockey arena building.
I gotta admit, I was really not expecting to have access to so much fitness equipment in such a remote and tiny town. I guess I really have no excuse for not being in great shape these days…
(Probably incomplete) List of Equipment: