A cool experience I recently had.

Well it's been very long since I've last uploaded this blog. It is long overdue. I have had some great experiences over the Summer that I have periodically linked on Facebook, but I've decided to use this blog to talk about a recent experience I had.

One of the local defence lawyers, Ivan Ladouceur,  has a herd of buffalo and lives outside of High Prairie. Ivan is Metis, mostly Dene and Cree. The Dene nation and the Woodland Cree are two of the larger First Nations that live in our area. He is originally from the Fort Chipewan area, which is north of Fort MacMurray in northeastern Alberta, but he works out of the High Prairie area. He is planning on moving back up north, so he invited us to his home to cull some buffalo and attend a sweat ceremony.

Now I didn't and probably don't know much about going for a sweat, but it is and probably will be one of the most unique and memorable experiences I'll have while living in northern Alberta.

So as to not offend anyone, I'll skip details about the buffalo cull, but we culled two buffalo in the morning and then started preparing for the sweat ceremony in the afternoon.

Ivan built the sweat lodge itself, which you can see here:

I didn't take any photos inside, but what is inside is a smaller dome like structure that is made of willow branches and covered with sacks and skins. Inside the dome is a pit where you place hot stones. The stones we used were volcanic rock from B.C. that he keeps outside.

Before the ceremony, we had to start a fire to heat the stones. We lit a huge fire and let it burn for a couple of hours to heat the stones until they were glowing. Ivan then burnt some sweetgrass and made a prayer for the buffalo and for the sweat and then we smudged ourselves with the sweetgrass. Smudging, as far as I can understand is like breathing in the smoke and wafting it towards you. After we smudged ourselves, we entered the sweatlodge.

Men sat on the right and women sat on the left of the entrance. The men only wore shorts and the women wore what looked like nightgowns. After entering the sweatlodge, we all sat down, the leader, Ivan, said a few prayers and we passed around a tobacco pipe. After we had finished smoking the pipe, we brought in the stones. It was really interesting. The stones would be removed from the fire outside with a pitchfork, dusted off and then transferred into the lodge. Once in the lodge, Ivan would use a pair of deer antlers to grab the stones and place them into the pit inside the sweatlodge. After we gathered a sufficient amount of stones, we would close the entrance to the sweatlodge and it would be pitch black except for the glow coming off the stones. Ivan would sprinkle tobacco and some sort of root over the stones, say some prayers and the share some words. Everyone in the lodge would share some words if they wanted to. After each person shared some words, there would be singing and prayers. Throughout the whole time water would be sprinkled onto the stones. It got hot, really really hot.

We would occasionally have breaks to get some air before going back in and adding more stones. In total we used 14 stones, and it felt like we had sweated for a couple of hours. I was drenched and dehydrated by the end of it, but I also felt like I had really sweat out some toxins. My limited understanding is that the sweats are used to sweat out and discuss what's going on in your life. It is both a time for pain and healing, both physically and psychologically.

After the sweat ended, the men would leave first, followed by the women and stand in a line. Each person that left after the first would hug the other and thank them.

My knowledge of First Nations practices, customs, and culture is so limited. I am really thankful that I got to have this great experience.