lady of the laptop: Back again to the North

I just spent a really wonderful week back north, in one of my favourite Cree communities, Waskaganish. Waskaganish is perched on James Bay, where the Rupert River comes to meet the bay and is really lovely. It's a smaller community, with around 1200 residents, and they are some of the nicest people you will ever meet.

I was up there to run a program I had come up with last year, of bringing some of the things we've (the scientists who I

work with) have learne

d about the medicinal plants of the Cree, to students there. Very few kids in these communities spend much time in the bush anymore and often haven't learned much of their elder's knowledge regarding plants' use and I wanted to try and bridge this gap. I've been working on th

is project on the side basically since last fall, with a fabulous collaborator from the Cree Board of Health (who contributes to a pr

etty cool blog herself all about Montreal, who also talks about going up north, check it out here). My collaborator had first run it in another community but I was still feeling a great deal trepidation to try out the idea that I've been mulling over for so long.

Luckily, I wasn't on my own, I was accompanied by my very dear labmate x-ine, who had lived in Waskaganish for 6 weeks this summer doing interviews for her Masters. She was

returning to do some follow up work and help me out with the program.

From the first day we arrived we had a blast. Fall is an incredibly busy time for the Cree, there is fish to catch, and both geese and moose to hunt. Our first afternoon in town we went

to an area known as the Gravel Pit where a number of elders live year round, and where they had set

up an area to catch and prepare some of their traditional fish. The river from which they fished however, the Rupert, has been recently dammed by Hydro Quebec and the doors are due to be closed the first week of November. This is the last season to catch fish as they always have and understandably, the community is nervous a

bout whats going to happen. However, they are also resolved to preserve as much of their traditional life as they can, and teach their skills to the next generation. At the camp I visited, there were both elders and younger people there to learn how to clean and c

ook the fish in traditional ways.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of whitef

ish cooking and prepared (it's delicious by the way) and will tell you more about my visit to Waskaganish tomorrow.