Young woman has fond memories of Dettah youth
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jan 15/01) - Growing up in Dettah was a simple time for Eileen Drygeese.
Although Yellowknife casts a long shadow around the Northwest Territories and its just a half-hour's drive from the Yellowknives Dene community, she remembers the big city seemed so far away during the 1970s.
 Eileen Drygeese |
That's not to say it hasn't developed. As Drygeese recalled, things were much different in her youth.
"There was always something to do in Dettah at that time, and that was before there was a gym," she said.
"We made up our own games. We were very inventive in those days. That was when we only had CBC. Nobody really watched TV at that time. There was no satellite dishes or cable, no Nintendo. A few people in Dettah had phones, but not many."
Listening to music was another of the things Drygeese and her friends did for enjoyment. Their favourites were groups like Abba, Boney M and the Bee Gees -- "And lots of country -- George Jones all the time and Hank Williams Sr."
Drygeese admitted she got off a little light on the chores compared to her four sisters and three brothers.
"I just did what I wanted," she said with a laugh, adding she was a bit of a rebel as a youngster. "I did some work, but I had older sisters and they did most of it."
Drygeese spent her time playing games with her friends, fishing at Jackfish Point, hanging out at a camp the boys made just outside the village, going on family picnics into the bush and twice-monthly trips into the big city.
Part of the scenery
The visits to Yellowknife did not foster any particular fascination for the place, said Drygeese.
"Sometimes a bunch of us would hang around on top of the hill in the evenings and look across at Yellowknife. We didn't really care to live there. For us it was just part of the scenery."
Her parents, John and Mary Louise, made sure their kids got a taste of the sights and sounds of the big city.
"We had no truck, it was by boat or dogteam," said Drygeese.
When she was old enough, Eileen and her friends would go to town on their own for special events like Caribou Carnival. She recalled making the long walk home on the ice road after a full day at the carnival.
"When you're all walking and talking it doesn't seem that far."
At the time, school in Dettah went only to Grade 3. Beyond that, students made the big move to Yellowknife to attend St. Joe's from Grade 4-6.
Each school day three or four taxis arrived at 8 a.m. to pick up the students and each afternoon the taxis would return to drop them off.
The taxi arrangement was pretty rigid, remembered Drygeese.
"My sister and a couple of her friends had to quit the basketball team because the transportation wasn't available."
At the age of 15, Yellowknife became a home away from home for Drygeese. With two older sisters, she knew what to expect when the time came to move to Akaitcho Hall to attend Sir John Franklin High School.
"For me it was exciting," Drygeese said. "I was anxious to go. My sister (Bertha) was there and she'd come back and tell me what it was like. And some of my friends were already there, so I wanted to go."
Remembering Akaitcho Hall
Drygeese still remembers the day the supervisors from Akaitcho Hall came to Dettah to pick up her and the other students who would board at the school.
She remembers her parents making it clear to the supervisors the trust they were placing in them.
"I was all packed and ready to go. I was going to go into the van. My parents were standing in front of the house, and they told the supervisors, 'She's in your hands now. You're responsible for her now.'"
Though her sister had given her an idea of what to expect, life at Akaitcho Hall was a completely new experience for Drygeese. The residence was run with almost military discipline.
"We had to be up at seven. That was the latest you could be out of bed. The room had to be cleaned by 7:15 and you had to be downstairs for breakfast by 7:30."
Supervisors were very particular about the making of beds -- no wrinkles and blankets and sheets stretched tight enough across the mattresses for a quarter to bounce off them.
There was a 9 o'clock curfew on school nights and it was lights out at 11. Students could leave on the weekends only if their parents 'signed' them out.
"There were so many rules," said Drygeese. "If you didn't have chores in the morning, like laundry or kitchen work, you had them after school.
"But even though it was really strict it was fun. I met a lot of people in the North at Akaitcho Hall. I still talk to some of them."
Students had to stay at Akaitcho their first year at Sir John. In the second they had the option, if they had relatives or friends in Yellowknife, of boarding at a private home.
Drygeese opted for home boarding, staying at her sister Mary-Rose's house on Sisson Court.
"We used to walk from Sissons to Sir John every day, year round, even in 40 below. We couldn't get bus passes because it was too close to the school."
The first few winter walks to school Drygeese got some frostbite on her ears. She made the best of it, though, writing a haiku about it that won a school poetry contest.
In her third year, Drygeese moved into a 'cluster apartment' at Northern United Place. The clusters were made up of four rooms with two girls in each, all sharing a bathroom and kitchen.
Harsh life lesson
Drygeese got a harsh lesson on the price of freedom just before her last year at Sir John. She got pregnant. Two weeks before she gave birth, her daughter's father committed suicide.
It was the lowest point of her life. Though her friends and family came to visit her at Stanton Hospital, she was too depressed to see anyone.
She let her boyfriend's family take care of the child, who was adopted by one of his relatives. Now 13 years old, the girl lives in Fort Resolution.
It was a critical time in Drygeese's life. She had seen many of her friends get pregnant and quit school.
"I was determined to finish no matter what," she said. "I wasn't going to let myself down and wasn't going to let my parents down.
"A lot of my friends (who got pregnant) didn't go back. I saw them go down a lot of different roads I didn't want to go down."
It was a hard return -- hard to get used to the routine of homework and hard to socialize in a class where she was three or four years older than most of her classmates.
But it was a decision Drygeese has never regretted. She graduated in 1989 and almost immediately took a job with Indian and Inuit Affairs.
Since then she has worked as a tutor then manager of the Yellowknives Dene Chekoa (after school) program.
Today she is a teaching assistant at the Dettah school and living in the community.
