PBCN Chief Karen Bird stands alongside a local athlete who was honoured at the Woodland Cree Gathering for representing Saskatchewan at the North American Indigenous Games earlier this summer in Halifax. (PBCN Selects/Facebook)

By Logan Lehmann

Honouring and Remembering

Peter Ballantyne Chief speaks on successful Woodland Cree Gathering in P.A.

Aug 18, 2023 | 5:00 PM

Hundreds of people made their way over to Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation (PBCN) over the past week for the Woodland Cree Gathering.

It’s an event hosted on the reserve where people of all ages and cultures can come learn the Woodland Cree traditional and cultural ways of life.

PBCN Chief Karen Bird spoke to paNOW about the event, saying how happy it makes her to see all the people who came out.

“It’s amazing how some food and putting up some activities will draw in a crowd,” she said. “So many came through, we had lineups that were so long most of the days. People [were] enjoying the cultural foods and the activities we were doing here and visiting, the elders said they haven’t visited each other for so long and they were so happy to meet friends that they haven’t seen in years.”

A wide range of cultural activities were available for people to interact with while at the Gathering, including how to bead, make snowshoes, and tan a moose hide. Various competitions were also held during the week, from a golf tournament and Ironman competitions to canoe races and a horseshoe tournament.

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However, on Tuesday, a ceremony was held on the grounds to honour residential school survivors.

“We’ve been talking about it a lot because we have eight reserves and two of those reserves had residential schools, one in Sturgeon Landing and here in Prince Albert,” she explained. “We want to hear the stories of the survivors and we haven’t heard enough. We’re doing [a] project and to start off we wanted to bring some of them, we couldn’t bring all of them, to start doing something like a documentary.”

The Woodland Cree Gathering got underway on Monday morning and wrapped up early Friday afternoon.

Attendees at the event listen to some live music at the Woodland Cree Gathering at PBCN. (Logan Lehmann/paNOW staff)

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loganc.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @lloganlehmann