By meadowlakeNOW

Flying Dust School celebrates community with traditional feast

Sep 21, 2017 | 4:28 PM

Kopahawakenum School students from Kindergarten to Grade 4, along with parents, teachers, visitors and community elders from Flying Dust First Nation held a traditional feast to celebrate home, food, family and friends.  

The event followed tradition from a pipe ceremony and smudging, to dedicating the meal to a community elder who has died, to food being cooked by women and served by men.  

Flying Dust Director of Education Pat Gervais co-organized the event. She said the meal was about creating a sense of belonging among everyone in the community, students especially.

“It was about including all our kids and teaching them a little about who they are,” she said. “Also, celebrating who we are as a community and the fact that we are able to be together and have a meal, and invite other people. Anyone is welcome at the circle when we have a feast. It’s about creating that welcoming feeling.”

This inaugural feast honoured Gervais’ mother Bella’s memory. A bit of food from each dish is gathered in one bowl, then blessed by an elder leading the event. 

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“When you prepare the food, you never taste it as the first ‘taste’ goes to who you’re dedicating it to, and in this case it was my mother. The kids are taught to wait to eat until after this blessing is done. We’re slowly introducing these bits of tradition, we’re trying to give them a basic foundation of who they are as Cree people from Flying Dust.”

Students also decorated a teepee with the handprints of the attendees, in the school’s colours of turquoise, black and white. Gervais said no matter where the teepee is, whether it is at the school or at another event, its presence is significant.

“It’s a reminder that we’re one family, and wherever this teepee is these kids will always have a place to belong; they will always have a home,” she said. “When they grow up and say that’s my handprint or my kookums handprint and look back at that.”

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca  

On Twitter @ReporterKath