Honouring traditions

Traditional teachings continue to attract people from far and wide to Pays Plat First Nation, which held its fifth cultural teachings week from July 23-26.
“We were here last year and we really enjoyed the hospitality,” said Elsie Bissallion, an Elder from Serpent River who has been following the powwow trail in the region. “It was just great so we came back.”
Bissallion found this year’s women’s hand drumming workshop to be “very beneficial.”
“A lot of people came out that night,” Bissallion said. “I am sure the creator was pleased to see us all there hand drumming and I know the spirits were there with us because you could feel that vibe when the drums were going.”
Susan Pranteau and her family decided to stop in for some of the cultural teachings on July 25 as they were passing through on their way to Toronto.
“It was very informative and I found it helped to understand things a lot better,” Pranteau said. “We have all our kids with us and we are trying to help them understand our ways. There is a little guy here who came and hugged everybody and the kids were kind of shocked because they don’t really know him, but we told them that is the way we are.”
The first day of the cultural week featured a community feast, a sweat lodge and a regalia-making workshop.
“We had the community members buy their own material and bring their own sewing machines (to learn) how to make dancing outfits,” said Pays Plat Councillor Raymond Goodchild.
The second day featured a beading workshop, cultural teachings on residential school, a community feast and a sweat lodge.
“We learned from the Elder how to do beading and it was really fun,” said Claire Auger, who had previously worked throughout the cultural week during past years and didn’t have an opportunity to participate until this year.
The third day featured medicine teachings, a feast and a sweat lodge.
“I came down because I heard they were having cultural teachings on medicine,” said Ginny Michano, a community member who lives in Thunder Bay. “I thought it would be interesting because I don’t really know anything about our traditional medicines. I figured this would be a good time to come and ask questions and to learn.”
Susan Kwisses, the Elder from Lake Helen who shared a wide variety of medicines during her medicine teachings workshop, was pleased with the results.
“It went awesome,” Kwisses said. “Everybody was very interested in everything that was said and they are looking forward to continuing that tradition of traditional medicines in their community.”
The fourth day featured tobacco tie teachings, vision quest teachings and sweat lodge teachings.
“We’ve been doing this for quite some time because we believe our culture is very important for us to keep us in touch with our spirituality and (be) willing to learn and identify ourselves and help us change in this world,” Goodchild said. “We want to know who we really are, what we really are in this world and we also want to be proud to be Anishinabe. So we learn how to do the ceremonies, we learn how to dance, we learn how to pray in our language and we learn how to obtain spirituality.”
Friday, Saturday and Sunday featured the community’s annual powwow.