Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Old Crow, Yukon (July 15/02) - For some it was a first time visit, for others it was a homecoming.

From July 7 to 13, hundreds of Gwich'in from across the NWT, Yukon and Alaska met in Old Crow for the eighth biennial Gwich'in Gathering.

First conceived of by Old Crow elder Myra "Choo" Kyikavichik, the gathering is part conference, festival, youth summit and social extravaganza all rolled into one.

But mostly, it's a reunion where relatives and friends can re-acquaint themselves with each other and their common culture.

"This trip to Old Crow really filled me with joy," said Agnes Mills, 66, who lives in Whitehorse. "Sometimes when you're out there, you feel

really alone. Here, we have a lot of people coming home and we're nurturing one another. It's family ties and the idea of belonging somewhere."

More than 400 people arrived from places with names like Chalkyitsik, Tsiigehtchic, Venettie and from as far away as Hawaii, Florida and Louisiana. For Old Crow, a fly-in community of 300, hosting and feeding so many guests was a feat of logistical acrobatics.

Visitors bunked up in spare rooms and spare beds all over town. When those were full, vacant buildings and even two college classrooms were enlisted. Near perfect weather encouraged tents to sprout up between houses and in empty lots. To get people from one end of town to other, the community's new minibus ran an all-day circuit. The airport's one truck pulled double duty delivering freight, the water truck was hauling extra water on demand, and the cleanup committee was doing sweeps of town three times a day.

Randall Kendi, the supervisor of the cleanup committee, said one of his

crew of nine even fainted from exhaustion. "Long hours," Kendi said during one of his brief breaks.

At the B & D Cafe and Arcade, Bella Tizya was staying open until 2 a.m. each night, five hours later than usual. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were catered by six cooks hired for the gathering, but the healthy menus sent many hungry teens to Tizya's place for fries and pop. "It's crazy in here," she said Wednesday night. "People are hungry. They like fries and hotdogs and nachos, you know how it is. I can't even go home I want to go home and do laundry."

Rekindling old ties

Meanwhile, the Gwich'in gathered. At the newly covered arena, meetings took place each day on topics like caribou conservation, social and cultural issues and education. Outside, teenagers held their own youth conference.

Added to the mix were a handful of environmental activists, reporters, photographers, Anglican clergy, a Hawaiian environmental lobby group and even a German film crew doing a documentary on the RCMP.

On Thursday, Matthew Coon Come, grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations dropped in to say a few words in advance of this week's Council of Yukon First Nations general assembly taking place in Old Crow.

At the dance that evening, two dozen women encircled the grinning grand chief for a circle jig.

Between events and meetings, relatives snatched time to catch up on a tangled web of family relations, births, deaths, illnesses and marriages. Conversations among strangers began with a recitation of the names of mothers, fathers, grandparents and siblings to establish who was related to who and how.

After breakfast Wednesday at the community hall, cousins Carolyn Blake, from Tsiigehtchic, and Ethel Blake, from Whitehorse spent much of the morning poured over papers printed with their family tree.

"This is where your jijuu Elizabeth came from," Ethel said as she pointed down the generations, adding names and sorting out lineages.

For Bertha Allen, Agnes Mills' older sister from Inuvik, coming to the gathering was a chance to reminisce about the childhood she had in Old Crow before she was taken to residential school.

"Our grandparents came from Alaska and a lot of other people's ancestors came from there.

"It's only at these gatherings that you meet up with your relatives and rekindle old ties."