Hay River Reserve (Oct 11/04) - Clara Lafferty doesn't remember ever celebrating Thanksgiving. In fact, the Hay River Reserve elder says she was in her 20s before she even heard of the holiday.

Hay River elder Clara Lafferty doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, an observance she never even heard about until she was in her 20s. Instead of turkey, her dinner today might be wild meat, perhaps moose nose. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

"When we were growing up, we didn't know anything about it," she said, explaining her family was in the bush almost all the time.

"I never celebrated it or anything," the 69-year-old said. "I never bothered with it."

Lafferty says most aboriginal people didn't celebrate Thanksgiving when she was growing up, though a lot of them do now.

She has no plans to have turkey for Thanksgiving Day dinner. Instead, she may prepare a meal of wild meat, perhaps moose nose.

Even younger people on the Hay River Reserve did not grow up with Thanksgiving as a family tradition.

"I don't remember Thanksgiving," says Diane Tourangeau, a Slavey language instructor at Chief Sunrise Education Centre.

Tourangeau and her sister Delores Fabian, an arts and crafts instructor at Chief Sunrise, say they first heard of Thanksgiving in the 1970s when they were in school.

Tourangeau, who is in her 40s, only remembers celebrating Christmas, New Year's and birthdays. "And now we thrive on every little holiday."

Thanksgiving has become a common celebration, she noted. "Now it is important."

According to Fabian, who is in her 30s, in the traditional Dene lifestyle, people were hunting in the fall and there was no harvest of crops to celebrate.

The Canadian Thanksgiving is based on traditions brought from Europe, where farmers celebrated at harvest time.

Thanksgiving was first celebrated in what is now Canada in 1578.

It became a national holiday in 1879 but many different dates were observed. It was not until 1957 that Parliament proclaimed the second Monday of October as the national day of Thanksgiving.