All These Things We've Done

This update is long overdue; I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.
There was a movie night, origami, kindergarten and Gr. 12 grad, boating trips to buffalo narrows (complete with eagle spotting), a quick jaunt over to pinehouse (with two sweet dillon kids in tow, who had a blast btw), rebuilding a sweat, many impromptu soccer games (naturally, when affronted with the ‘don’t worry she’s just a girl’ remark, I had to prove a point to those boys that even girls can play some darn good defense. I earned a lot of respect that day, and a couple of bruises), swimming and wiener roasting at pilgrimage (I personally undertook the mission to see that any kid still dry was not for long), and a night quad trip to the sand dunes (I may have squawked once or twice. But will adamantly deny that some of those cliffs scared me), learning to make bannock from the master (apparently my attempts are quite amusing haha), a road trip to s’toon (consisting of the ‘shortcut’, 2 flat tires, blasting some AC/DC and Black Rain tunes, arriving at 3 am and leaving by noon), and a visit from a breakdancing crew.
Treaty days deserves a paragraph on its own. 6 days. No showers. Raining nearly the entire time. Tent swapping to seek drier domains. The 2hr/7man construction of a tent which we hauled fully assembled back to dillon b/c no one wanted to build that thing again. Swallowing many many fish flies. 4 am tent conversations. Mud bog tug-of-war. Smooshing relay (I never want to see banana cream pudding again). Scavenger hunts. Jail-N-Bail. Bear sightings (just what I wanted to see on my morning trip to the trusty ol’ outhouse). Jigging and square dancing every night. Soccer. Subbing for softball (I told them I hadn’t played in ages!). Volleyball. Fireworks. Brief visit from the dean. And the list goes on.
Coming to a close, Monday marks the end of our time in Dillon. For now.
I have made many friends here. Learned many new things about the people here, about the culture, and about myself. It’s difficult to say where things will go from here or where I will find myself but I have a feeling that Dillon will draw me back often.

Ile-a-la-Crosse: A new member of the team!

Oh hello there,

My name is Links, and I'm originally from Buffalo Narrows. I was born (approximately) 8 weeks ago, and have 9 siblings. My owners like to think that I'm a black lab, but I have a couple white patches in my fur to throw them off (and it also makes me look kind of wise!).

Jules picked me and one of my sisters out of the litter, and I was supposed to be given to his daughter. However, Jules' daughter wanted to get a gun instead of a dog, so he sold me to Dia (for the bargain price of 50 bucks!). The group decided to name me "Links" in honor of some program that they're in (I think it's called "Making the Links"--sounds pretty awesome if you ask me).

I like to spend my time cuddling, playing, eating, peeing/pooping, and being all-around cute.

That's all for now! I better get back to my spot on someone's lap!

Links

P.S. I'm supposed to tell you that there are some new pictures uploaded under the "Ile-a-la-Crosse Tab"

Oh right, we have a blog...

Well I see Dan has ended the nearly two week drought of no blog posts from any MTLers. Everyone has been quite busy. However a rainy Sunday, which is rare, provided a perfect opportunity to update.

A lot has happened since our last post from Pinehouse. We have all been working on a variety of projects that the Interagency here identified for us when we arrived. These include diabetes education, mental health and addictions, sexual health, and getting a community garden started.

In regards to diabetes education, we have gotten the ball rolling on starting a Good Food Box, which is an affordable and healthy package of food conveniently assembled for purchase. We plan to include recipes, health tips, storage info, educational diabetes tidbits, etc., in the box. (To facilitate the start-up, we are hoping to receive a grant from the Health Region). Generally, Good Food Boxes have proven to be extremely successful in other parts of the province and I think it could be a great fit for Pinehouse. Finally, we will also be teaching nutrition to the grade 8s and perhaps do a radio show about healthy beverages.

As for sexual health, we have been asked to teach sexual education to a variety of grades. We have already given an STI talk to the 11/12s and Kiel and Devin were involved in the grade 9 talks. Kiel had the great idea of doing a radio show discussing how parents can talk about sex to their kids if they are uncomfortable with the teachers discussing it. Generally, it has been an interesting topic to look into and we are slowly amassing community opinions in regards to it and contraception in general.

The community garden is well on its way as well. Our third day here, we were working in the garden building plots and in our second week, we had the grade fours over to plant. It was a bit chaotic at first but everyone enjoyed it. The kids always ask how the garden is doing.

Speaking of chaos, Jess and I held a sleepover for girls in grades three through five on the 3rd. We had approximately 32 girls take part and it was held in the elementary school along with the help of three local teachers. To tie it to mental health, we included some programming regarding self-esteem and positive self image. One game included taping a blank piece of paper to the back of each girl and letting everyone else write something nice about that person. It worked out great until, as Kiel said, Bev Oda showed up and inserted "NOT" into the phrases. Sigh, we tried. Devin and Kiel were a huge help with cooking and cleaning and thank goodness the teachers were there to keep things calm! Or as calm as can be expected with 32 girls in one gym watching the Justin Bieber movie. I feel like I should insert a SQUEE and a heart around that name after this night...

Finally, as Dan said, everyone was busy this week with the Elders gathering, which deserves a post by itself.

Other things we've been involved with or done:

• Attended the Nuclear Waste Forum in Beauval. A whole topic on to itself.
  
• Prenatal Fair on the 16th, which turned out great.
  
• Meeting with Brad Wall on his visit to Pinehouse.
  
• Diabetic Foot Care Clinic and Retinopathy Clinic.
  
• Shadowing during doctor days, excepting me so far.
  
• Interagency and staff meetings.
  
• Taking part in assemblies.
• Running club. (The rec programming here is fantastic).
  
• Of course, some great down time allowing us to experience the North.
  

Cheers,
Sarah

Hitting the half way point

For our newest photos please look under the Ile-a-la-Crosse tab, they are gooders.

As for what has been going on up here in Ile-X the last week, well, we have been gone from Ile-X. We started off the week over in Pinehouse, where we were able to catch up with all 10 linkers at the Elders gathering. I must say Pinehouse came out in full force for this event. The community was ever so inviting to all visitors and the organization of the event was first class. It is safe to say we all enjoyed the food, new/old friends and gained experiences we will cherish forever. Our new skills include scaling fish, cleaning moose hide, eating bone marrow and making beautiful signs.

After finding our way home from Pinehouse (with a quick jaunt down to Green Lake after missing the Ile turn off) Dia settled in over her computer to prepare for this weeks radio show. I must say she did a great job considering 3 hrs before the show it looked like only 1 of the 3 planned guests would make it. But as she went to the air, she had 5 guests and the show went of without a hitch. The main topic of discussion was the doctor situation in the north.

As Dia was hard at work on air, Dan and Des were in Pine River helping out the grade 8 classes with their yearly culture camp. We went hiking, canoeing and did the ever popular “fear factor” game with the kids. The game consisted of eating squid, gooses blood, testicles and snorting pepper, to name a few. The kids were relieved to find out they ate nothing more then coconut, ketchup, canned mushrooms and Metamucil. Dia was able to join up with the team and we all enjoyed the last night of the camp together.

All in all, this has been by far our busiest week to date and it was nice to be back in our own beds by weeks end.

Signing off for the Ile crew,

Dan