500 faithful re-enact Christ's final hours on rae's muddy streets
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Rae/Edzo (Apr 16/01) - Easter in Dogrib is Sahtlo.
The most important date on the Christian calendar drew 500 faithful to St Michael's Parish Church to re-enact the final hours in Christ's life and offer a traditional Dogrib prayer for the coming year.
With the bells of the parish church tolling and the occasional blare of a car horn, they carried a heavy cross through the muddy streets of Rae Edzo and burned offerings to the creator.
A group of men took turns carrying the heavy, three-meter long cross along the procession.
William Erasmus was the first to take up the cross.
Head down, Erasmus wrapped his right arm around the cross beam, the corner of the cross rested on his shoulder.
"I feel better," he said after carrying the heavy, three-meter long cross for 15 minutes.
"This procession brings good values to the community," he said.
They were surrounded by men and women saying the rosary in Dogrib which mixed with the words of a hymn squeezed through speakers mounted on the hood of a pick-up that followed the procession.
As Gary Dryneck took up the cross, his mind filled with "thoughts of all the people who died last year and walked with us last year."
Michael Zoe held his daughter Tianna's hand while he carried the cross.
"I hope she remembers this," he said.
They gathered briefly in the church before taking up the procession which threaded through every street in the Dogrib community of 2,000.
It wound past French Point, Bay Island then to Anne's Point, the Khon Go Cho Sportsplex, to the edge of town and back to the church.
The 12 stations of the Passion narrative was recited along the way in Dogrib and English. Each time a station was recited the crowd stopped and listened, heads down, eyes closed.
A horn blast from the truck moved the crowd along.
For two hours they trudged, youth with Nike hats and Gap sweaters alongside elderly women in kerchiefs wrapped around their heads to ward of the chill wind.
After the final station of the passion narrative depicting the death of Jesus, they placed the cross back in the church, took communion and gathered around a blaze in a fire-blackened barrel outside the church for the traditional Dogrib ritual of feeding the flames.
Cigarettes, bread, cookies, pieces of cake, dried meat and mints were thrown to the flames as drums thumped and singing Dogrib voices rose with the smoke into the blue sky.
"Open the heavens to accept our gifts," they sang.
After placing to cigarettes into the pile Dogrib grand-chief Joe Rabesca crossed himself at all four points on the compass and with two helpers dumped the offerings from a silver bowl into the fire.
"Our ancestors did this many years before," said Rabesca reflecting on the act.
"We need to pray four our streets, our houses, our people," he said.
The fire feeding has evolved in meaning over the years, said Isidore Zoe.
"We're sacrificing stuff from the land; thinking about people who have died, social problems and the settling of the land claims.
"We're asking the Creator to help us on our journey over the next year," he said.
Three ravens circled the church steeple, looking down on Good Friday in Rae/Edzo.
