Muddy Waters

I have sat at my computer a number of times over the last month to write my blog and each time have struggled with what to write.  Not every day can be an adventure I suppose and so I found myself feeling I had little to share this time around. So this entry is likely to simply be a collection of thoughts.

Spring has arrived. The snow on the ground is unstable and crunchy underfoot and once again walking trials has become difficult.  Snow buntings have arrived and grown from a few to several flocks seemingly overnight. Gulls have also returned and their shrieking continually reminds me that I am indeed living on a great lake despite its present state as a large sheet of ice some 31000km². For my Ontario friends  think about it this way: Lake Huron is 25700km² and Lake Huron 59600km². To look over the ice once it’s formed is to view a vast and utterly barren desert of white. At places where the wind has swept the ice clean one can sometimes catch the reflection of the sun as we did when children redirecting the suns gleam using our watches at the blackboards in class. Do they still use blackboards?

It is the month of snow blindness. This is because the sun has returned and at this latitude provides currently 17 hours per day of light. It is bright and reflects off the brilliant white of the snow. I go nowhere without sunglasses now even on overcast days. Each day we are gaining about 7 minutes of daylight and this will peak somewhere around the solstice with 22 hours of sun.  I went for a walk at 0100hrs a few nights back. The night sky was a deep blue but even without the aid of streetlights my steps were sure; or as sure as they could be given the muck and crumbling snow. Visibility I estimate was 200 meters.  The hunters in the community have been out harvesting caribou with the long days provide the best opportunity to scout and stalk the herds. Dave brought back 5 caribou at the beginning of April and suffered patches of frostbite due to the extreme cold.  Now the hunters are far less battered by the cold and the hunting season sounds to have been successful.  As a ‘mola’ I’ve not actually seen any of the caribou meat as it is not typical to share with us but I know that much of the community has been given a share of the harvest and this is of great benefit.

2300hrs 

For the first time in my life I’ve had some trouble sleeping. Seems when I was in Ontario I would hear people complain all the time about not being able to sleep well. In my work in mental health it seemed as though the majority of people that I was seeing for counseling were on some sort of sleep aid like Zopiclone (bad bad bad… read the monograph). Not so with me. As long as I can recall I could put my head down on the pillow and sleep  would readily come and take me to that restful place  I can close the blinds and draw the curtains which envelop my bedroom in darkness but to no avail. The circadian rhythms that you hear spoken of certainly made themselves known and they kept telling me that it was not time to sleep. Only after about two weeks of this, admittedly frustrating situation, have things begun to shift for me. It seems as though once 16 hours of daylight is my personal threshold and after that my body needs a period of time to adjust. The last few nights I have slept well and deeply as usual.

With the increase in daylight hours I have started herb plants for the planting season. While the growing season is short here the light makes it possible to grow some varieties of plants and herbs quite quickly. For me the idea of fresh lettuces and herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers is tantalizing. What produce is available in the stores, while they do their very best, is never going to be fresh. The community garden has a greenhouse and I plan to be actively involved in their growing season as well. Last year the group grew a variety of vegetables.  I hear tell that root vegetables of all things grow exceptionally well here. It seems counter intuitive given that there is well developed permafrost. 

There is an organization that is promoting farming and gardening in the north called the Northern Farm Training Institute (http://nftinwt.com/). Their goal is to promote skills which lead to increasing food security through sustainable agriculture. I’ve read about several farms in the NWT that have experimented with keeping poultry and cows. I was really interested in one farm that was keeping goats which provided both milk and meat and as a bonus assisted with clearing brush by eating through the bramble on the farm. Sometimes I even think that I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at farming. Then I think about the farmers that I know and how hard they work and reality and know for certainty that that is not in my future.  There is certain logic to the idea of promoting growing in the Northern climes however this has not really taken hold to date. The Dene did not develop as an agrarian society rather were nomadic and subsistence hunters and gatherers. In talking with locals there appears to be very few plants that were utilized for food or medicines and the diet, much like the Innu consisted mainly of proteins.

 Nowadays diabetes is a huge problem due to the change to a high carbohydrate based diet.  As an example I can write about macaroni. Go to any community “feast” and you will find a variety of macaroni items. There will be a stew with macaroni in it, macaroni salads, macaroni and cheese and macaroni casserole. Couple that with the remainder of items on the table like potato salad, bannock, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes and probably a tossed salad which is mostly head lettuce and carrot and add turkey and ham and that is the substance of it. It is reflective of the types of foods people eat in their homes. Hungry Man TV dinners are a hot item at the Northern Store.  For those of you reading this and cringing I should say that given the choice most locals would choose country foods like caribou or fish and berries and bannock over any of the items I mentioned. The reality is that not everyone hunts, traps and fishes anymore and their diet becomes reflective of the simplest foods one can make if one cooks at all. There is not much grasp of cooking skills in the community.

Over the past day or two temperatures have climbed over the freezing mark and snow is melting faster than I had imagined. Creeks of melt water have appeared all over town. This morning I placed my foot down into one that was covered in ice and dirt and sunk 6” into the water. Walking is a messy affair and mud is once again the prevailing feature of the town. Traffic cones were directing attention for drivers on the main street to be cautious over two streams that have carved channels in the road where the water is draining off. The lay of the land is such that the rise the village sits on allows all this melt water to return to the lake and a field of melt water now sits atop the ice. Pulling my foot out of the water, as opposed to my mouth where it usually resides, and feeling somewhat like Julie Ann the little girl from Munsch’s seminal work Mud Puddle  I heard a sound I had not heard here previously. I glanced at the pool of water that has formed on top of the ice to see the first 3 Canadian geese to arrive together with a flock of ducks.. The snow geese will be soon to follow and the hunting for them will begin. I read that snow geese are considered over populated and the hunt is encouraged to control what has become a destructive population of the waterfowl. Sorry to my vegetarian friends but I’m hopeful to have roast goose on my table within the next several weeks.

The town is gearing up for the Spring Carnival and I am curious to see this event unfold in a couple of weeks. I understand that there are traditional and non-traditional games and several “cook outs” and skeet shooting. I’ve never tried skeet so that is on my list to try. I think that this event must be akin to the end of hibernation. The community has come back to life after a long and very quiet winter and people are outside more and even seem friendlier.

I’ve joined the community justice committee for Délįne. This group is rebirth of previous groups that have fizzled over time previously. The purpose of the group is to work with the criminal justice system and police to avoid court and sentencing for minor crimes many of which are alcohol related offences. As well as diversion, it provides a venue for a restorative justice approach to crimes in the community. I have been elected by the committee to be the investigator/interviewer which means that I will speak with both the victims and perpetrators and then facilitate meetings between both to seek a resolution that is both suitable to the victim and allows the perpetrator to restore their relationship with the community. I remember reading somewhere (and MaryAnn would probably know this) about an aboriginal sentencing  circle in an community where the entire community would gather to address a crime. The perpetrator would be placed in the center of a circle and after their crimes were made known each person would take a turn saying something positive or that they appreciated about the perpetrator. In this way the crime was seen as a behavior and not a trait of the individual and he/she learned their value to the community and subsequently how the crime was not in keeping with the way the community wished to view the person. The perpetrator would then be given the opportunity to suggest a manner in which he or she might make reparations and restore themselves and their connection to their community.  Justice work is a new area for me and I am very pleased to take this on.

I recall the experiences of friend Alistair Henry with a justice circle in which he participated. I won’t tell you the whole story because I think you should read the book he wrote: (https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00FAY8RKG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) to do it justice. I will relate this much: he attended as a victim of a break in in which those most valuable things, family photos, were destroyed and his home trashed.  When the process ended Alistair reported of the experience that he felt shame for his own feelings of wanting vengeance and shame for the manner in which he comported himself. It was a humbling experience for him but one of great personal growth.  I know these groups can be a very powerful tool and avoid unnecessary and sometimes very damaging measures for both victim and perpetrator. For example there are many, many alcohol related criminal offences involving fights between drinking buddies. The result of physical assaults is a prohibition by the court to possess guns. Without a gun one cannot hunt. Without hunting some people simply cannot afford to eat. You see where this goes. If the two parties can instead agree to a resolve through a justice circle the outcomes have less detrimental effects.

Well folks, I didn’t know what to write about.  But I think that I’ve reached the end of my ramblings for the moment. If you read this far then I am appreciative of your patience. If you didn’t, well, if you didn’t you won’t know this paragraph is here and so I have no need to say more. Bye for now.