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DEH GAH GOT'IE KOE/FORT PROVIDENCE
Seven students from Fort Providence have learned the ins and outs of trapping beavers.

Students and instructors who participated in Deh Gah School's junior high boys winter cultural camp included from left, back row: Brandon Thom, Nogha Landry, Derek Vandell, language and cultural instructor Jonas Landry, Henry Sabourin, Jeff Canadien, Chad Bonnetrouge and Wade Sanderson; front row: Lawrence Denetre and Christopher Canadien. - photo courtesy of Jim Snider

The students in grades 7 and 8 participated in a five-day winter cultural camp at Felease Lake from Jan. 9 to 13.

Jonas Landry, a language and culture instructor with Deh Gah School, along with Henry Sabourin and Lawrence Denetre, taught the students about beaver trapping.

The first lessons taught at the camp – located 40 kilometers up Highway 3 towards Yellowknife and a further two-hour trip by snowmobile along a cutline – was about safety.

Approach lodge

Students learned how to use beaver traps and also how to approach beaver lodges safely.

You can't just walk towards the lodge, said Landry. It's important to use a chisel to check the ice depth because there are always breathing holes near the lodge.

Some traditional teachings about getting a good sleep the night before and having a good meal before you go out on the ice were also passed on.

The trips can be long and if you are sleepy you get cold, fatigued and cranky and don't enjoy the trip as much as you should, Landry said.

On the lake, students learned how to locate lodges and how to find breathing holes and use a curved stick to determine the direction the beavers will come from. The students also practised tying the beaver traps to sticks and lowering them into place.

During the course of the week the students trapped nine beavers. The students watched closely as the beavers were skinned for their pelts and then helped cut up the meat so it could be smoked.

Three of the students at the camp had participated in a similar camp at the lake last year. For the other four students the camp was a new experience.

"It's good," said Landry.

"They find it very amazing how a beaver can survive in the winter under the ice."

Landry taught the students how beavers cut down trees when the lake is ice-free and stick some of the wood in the mud under the lodge as a food supply for the winter.

In addition to trapping, the students prepared and set rabbit snares, catching three rabbits. The students brought two of the rabbits back to the community and ate the third.

Camp skills

The students also learned camp skills including map reading, axe safety, how to chop wood, how to make a fire in a woodstove and how to cook their own meals.

Students were in charge of their own gear and for making sure they dried it out every night so it would be ready for the next day.

The students also learned some of their lessons in Dene Zhatie. Landry said he tried to introduce approximately 20 words a day related to the basic tools and activities done around the camp.

If you use too many words they won't remember them, he said.

Some of the harvested beaver meat will be used for the school's meals on wheels program where students in food basics class prepare food for elders.

The cultural camp is just one part of Deh Gah School's larger winter hunting and trapping program.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays four students at a time from grades 5 and 6 are going out to hunt and trap.

On Tuesdays students in kindergarten and Grade 4 go to T'elemie Lodge for the day. Students in grades 1, 2 and 3 go on Thursdays.

For the older grades, Lois Philipp, the school's principal, said she hopes to offer a young men's retreat for all of the male students in senior high at the lodge during the first week of February.

During the week of Feb. 20, the school will hold a bison hunt and after that three more one-week beaver hunting camps will be organized.

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