Paddler gets taste of Dene history

- Canoeist encounters traditions of local residents en route to Hudson's Bay

By Randy Johns

for the Star Phoenix

Twelve days after reaching Wollaston Post, Bill Layman has started the second stage of his 1600 km. canoe trip from La Ronge to Arviat on Hudson's Bay. He has been joined by his wife, Lynda Holland, for this leg of the journey.

Tom on the Shores of Swan Lake.

Tom O'Rourke, Layman partner for the first part of the journey has now returned home to Pittsburgh, Penn.

"Tom will be back," Layman wrote. "That's a certainty. It's just the question of when."

Tom has been bitten by the bug that takes outdoor adventurers from the comforts of modern existence to the rigors of the northern wilderness.

The layover at Wollaston was to enable Layman to carry out environmental sampling for the Athabasca Working Group, a partnership of the northern communities and the mining companies. The sampling is part of an ongoing effort to watch for any negative impact on the environment from the mining in the area.

Layman carries out the work with local residents and gets to know a lot of their history while working. This time he was told of the old Dene way of hunting Muskox.

"When Dene hunted muskox they would herd them into a loose circle by moving toward them as they half hid behind small cut spruce trees", Layman wrote. "When they were circled, the muskox that wanted to leave would walk out of the circle and they would let them go. The one that remained would be killed.

The inference in the story was two-fold. The muskox would decide which animal would go and which one would stay, and the Dene would never just 'hunt' a muskox.

"They had to do it in a certain way. Doing it any other way would be to risk the wrath of the animistic gods they held sacred. I read somewhere that when the caribou herds failed the Dene, they depended on the muskox. Since muskox had a rather regular area in which they could be found, the Dene could count on finding them when they were starving. Little wonder they held chloe-telle-juray (muskox) sacred."

And now Layman and Holland are heading out to "the land of little sticks" as the Dene call the barren grounds.

This week they will travel to the Northeastern end of Wollaston Lake and enter the Cochrane River. The Cochrane system will lead them to the Thiewiaza River and eventually to Hudson's Bay. This is a traditional summer territory of the Dene, who are only 40 years removed from their traditional nomadic lifestyle.

Layman and Holland were sent off from Wollaston in traditional Dene fashion. Bill says in a radio interview, "when you take off on a trip, they take a piece of green wood off of a tree and throw it in the lake for good luck."

Layman is convinced there is something to the tradition.

"Something's working for us because yesterday the wind was howling and today it's pretty well calm so she looks like a really good day to start."