Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Old Crow, Yukon (July 15/02) - Two ovens were roasting meat in the cook trailer, another was roasting potatoes at the community hall, four were full of bannock at the school, and three outdoor fire pits kept 23 cut-up caribou heads at a rolling boil.

When 700 people arrive for dinner in a community of 300, the cooks have to improvise. For seven days of managed chaos July 7 to 13, six cooks and a handful of volunteers prepared meals for the eighth biennial Gwich'in Gathering.

Upwards of 400 people from the Yukon, NWT and Alaska attended the giant family reunion first conceived of by an Old Crow elder in elder in 1988. It was possibly the largest party Old Crow has ever hosted.

To keep the meals coming, Kim Rumley was out of bed at 4:30 a.m. each morning, along with the five other cooks.

"Most of us are making it to bed around midnight or 1 a.m.," Rumley said during a brief break Tuesday. "We've had four people volunteering steady, which has been a huge help."

Although area hunters have been setting aside meat since winter, most of the other food was ordered from Whitehorse. With the airline juggling extra visitors on scheduled flights, food orders like doughnuts from the Whitehorse Tim Hortons -- didn't always make it.

"All our stuff is getting bumped," said head cook Alice Vittrekwa. "And other stuff is coming in when we least expect it like today we got a case of bananas. "We were trying to keep an inventory, but we gave up. We just don't have the time." So when spare ribs didn't arrive, the main course was caribou from another day's menu.

"It's really hard to keep track, tidy and arrange, because all our time is thinking about cooking," she said. "We have meat in freezers all over town, three in the cook shack, one at the ski lodge and some at the school, youth centre and community hall."

As many a family gathering has taken place in the kitchen, much of the Gwich'in Gathering took place over shared meals. Despite all the hard work, Vittrekwa still managed to take in some of the events sneaking out for a

late night dance Monday night. She said it was pleasure to keep everyone fed -- she came up from Fort McPherson just to take the job.

"When you're cooking for 700 people, you just have to do the best you can. I thank the people who say, 'You girls are doing a real good job.' It's an honour for me to be working here in Old Crow."