Old Crow workshop day 1
WOW, blue skies again and it is actually quite warm! Spring is here…ducks by the river and piles of snow at the side of road…easy to bring the gear along the snowless road……and how wonderful to be back in the John Tizya Center!
We are so excited to meet old friends and make new ones. We were ready to start the workshop at 10am…Mary Jane will mentor AND make a film . Kayleen and Sophie will also return to the workshop and as well a newcomer Lisa!
We watch the film made from the CBC North Wind interview from Fort McPherson and then share some other films, we watch Kayleen’s film Vadzaih and Joel Peters film Traditional Trappings, then How Bear Got a Short Tail and over lunch we watch Mary Jane’s film Adhòh Tr’ahshii – Hide Tanning….lunch was FANTASTIC- thanks Darryl! Warm bannock, chicken and vegetable noodle soup and fruit. Delicious and nutritious! After lunch everyone has ideas. Lisa (Van Fleet) is writing her script about her life and connection to Old Crow and Sophie is planning her film about her and her son and the Gwich’in language. Kayleen will use some of fabulous photography to tell the story of her relationship to this place.
Brandon visited the workshop - he works in an office down the hall with Marion (who came on the plane with us) working on Gwich’in language study and translation…he had a breakthrough with prefix strings!
Everyone was so focused and we were done around 4pm.
Then it was over to the community hall for salmon dinner and some visitors talked about ratifying the mining rules…where I learned that Vuntut Gwitchin people made very good deal with the government ensuing more land and less money and making sure their land claim was the A kind not B…A means they caretake the top and everything below…B means they only caretake the soil and anyone can mine below…terrible rules made by colonists. For instance the rest of the Yukon has only 40% of the land below the soil is protected and ANYONE can lay a claim for mining. Weird rules that definitely need changing…
