SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Inside a small lodge near Dettah, the morning sun lights up a long kitchen table where Dene elder Beatrice Sangris is preparing caribou meat and rolling dough for bannock.

Range Lake North student Abdalla Gassim holds up his prize on Tuesday morning while taking part in a winter fishing camp on Great Slave Lake near Dettah. - Kirsten Fenn/NNSL photo

A group of students from Range Lake North School had just arrived and were warming their feet by a wood stove while slipping their hands into hand-crafted beaver mitts to protect them from the cold outside.

The students were about to take part in a winter fishing camp on Great Slave Lake - one of several cultural activities organized each year by Yellowknife Education District No. 1 (Yk1).

Under the guidance of a group of Dene people who are sharing their traditions, the public school board co-ordinates opportunities for students to get acquainted with indigenous culture around Yellowknife.

"This is the land of the YKDFN (Yellowknives Dene First Nation), and most of the non-indigenous people that are here didn't come from here," said Yk1 aboriginal education co-ordinator Scott Willoughby. "So if you're going to live here, you should have some respect and some knowledge of what's been here for years."

The school board has a number of educational strategies it aims to meet, said Willoughby, one of them being respect for indigenous culture by all students and staff.

Some of the ways Yk1 aims to achieve that are through a unique curriculum and cultural camps.

"We have this curriculum called Dene Kede and it's broken into themes according to the seasons," Willoughby said of the Dene-centred curriculum. "Each grade has one theme and then we run (the camps) all year round according to the seasons."

Students in kindergarten start by learning about dogs and taking part in a general on-the-land camp in the spring, he said, while older grades take a look at traditional medicine, berries, birds, moose and trapping.

On Tuesday, Grade 7 students rode out on the lake near Dettah by snowmobile to learn how to drag in a fishing net full of whitefish, trout, coney and more.

Bobby Drygeese, who runs B. Dene Adventures, was out on the lake with other Dene teachers, showing students the ropes.

He started the business a number of years ago to teach both locals and visitors about the traditional Dene way of life.

Fishing, for example, is something he picked up from his parents and elders when he was young.

"When I was a little kid, we set the net there and back in the 70s and 80s there was thousands of fish," said Drygeese. "In the same spot, we used to catch over a hundred whitefish every two days."

Commercial fishing has since changed things, he said, explaining there isn't the same abundance of fish as there used to be.

Taking care of the land is something he said is particularly important, and a lesson he tries to share with others.

"We always make sure that we teach as much as we can about who we are and what we do," said Drygeese. "The Dene people, we're from here. All our roots are here, so we have to maintain as much as possible."

Drygeese said he's seen a number of students come through his camp over the years.

"It started with a tent, a tipi, then we built a cabin in 2011," he said.

Now it is used for culture camps during the day and aurora tours for tourists at night.

Even if students eventually move from Yellowknife, Willoughby said it is important for them to understand where they come from and to learn about the people who live here.

"That's why we work with all the elders," he said.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.