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The community across the bay

Dettah -- North slave's first community Glen Vienneau


Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 22/00) - When Dene people began visiting what is now Dettah in the early 1800s, it quickly became a popular gathering spot for those who travelled and lived off the land along the Northern part of Great Slave Lake. Today, it is home to 260 people.

"This (Dettah) was an outlying community where people gathered," remembers Narcisse Sangris, now the secretary treasurer for the Kaw Tay Whee school in Dettah.

Depending on the season, Narcisse says his ancestors crossed Yellowknife Bay by dog team or by boat, long before Ndilo and Yellowknife existed.

"There was nobody staying on that side. They'd just go there for hunting and to get some berries and come back to Dettah," says elder Helen Tobie, mother of three.

It was a hunting tradition that continued there until the late 1920s when prospectors began to settle the area which eventually became the site for Giant Mine.

It was a time, when Dene such as Liza Crookedhand knew little about the value of the "rock" she had one day discovered.

She was unaware of what she first showed to a missionary was gold. Something that soon caught the interest of prospectors.

In exchange for giving prospectors the location of the gold, she was given a basin, a stove and a handful of pots and pans.

As prospectors began to pour to the site to set up camp at the site, Dettah's chief at the time was Joseph Sangris, Narcisse' grandfather. Narcisse says Chief Sangris approached them twice and asked them to leave several times, however was finally greeted by Indian Agents who represented the Crown, who insisted they were here to stay.

They did, however promise Dene jobs in return, but only a handful of Dene were hired, says Sangris.

A growing community

By the time Tobie was growing up in Dettah, Yellowknife and Ndilo had already become thriving communities.

But these developments did little to stop her and her ancestors from continuing to travel the northern parts of Great Slave Lake to live off the land.

Tobie remembers that during her youth during the hunting and trapping seasons, they would often head out to Drybone Bay, about 40 miles from Dettah, or to the nearby Wool Bay.

Before the late 60s when the Dettah road was completed, a road on the ice played a major role in their travels.

"Everybody went to town to go shopping by dog team," Tobie says.

Today, many cross the ice road out of curiosity.

Something that her sister Julia saw much of during the winters.

Julia and her husband Jim Lynn have been living on the shore of the Yellowknife Bay in Dettah for the past six years.

"It's the most fantastic view on the entire lake," says Lynn.

"They might just come to the end of the lake to the front of the house here and turn around and go back," he adds.

Although the ice road cuts down about 15 minutes of travelling, he also enjoys the 21-kilometre trip to Yellowknife by vehicle.

Something he does every weekday morning when heading to work at the Workers' Compensation Board in Yellowknife.

"We don't speed along on it, just take it nice, slow, easy and enjoy it," says Lynn.

"There's time for reflection, time for thinking, planning things. So, the same for coming home reflecting upon the day," he adds.

For a community where no stores are to be found, the road serves as a vital link for the community that depends on Yellowknife for its supplies.

"Yellowknife is close enough for anything that you need," says Lynn.

The gym in the community hall, however, does have a concession where children can find their treats.

"You can't live here without Yellowknife to a certain extent," he adds.

But, for the Dene residents, caribou and fish continues to be an integral part of their lives as they head out on the land for weeks on end before returning home.

"There's a family out there now, they probably left a month or so ago and won't come back until just before Christmas," Narcisse says.

Through the use of technology, hunters are able to keep in touch with their families.

"They have a radio at their end and they talk back and forth during the evenings," says Lynn.

It not only gives family members out on the land a chance to chat about their daily activities, but is a vital link for them to get any needed supplies.

A close community

One of the community's many strengths is the sense of family, Lynn says, adding, Dettah is a community that has become an extended family for Lynn since his marriage.

"The only reason I can live here is, of course, because my wife is Dene and is part of the community. So, basically a person in order to establish a home site here you'd have to be part of the community in some way before being allowed to put a home here on a property."

The Lynn home sits on the property where Julia's grandparents Michel and Helen Drybone had been.

A site where Tobie believes her grandparents settled around 1915.

"I guess I can say that I am an intruder, but at the same time certainly don't feel alienated in any shape or form at all," says Lynn.