Day 6 of Vancouver Exchange - Monday, August 16, 2010

We had an all-day program where we learned the history, traditional fishing site, explanation of various fishing methods and around area of Xats’ull traditional crafts such as brich basket workshop. We also learned about edible and medicinal plants and traditional pit cooking. We were also able to make dream catchers. I made one myself and decided to keep it. We could not make a campfire because there was a forest fire nearby which had limited us to do only certain things. When I look up in the sky, it seems like there is a cloud but actually it was all dust and ashes from the forest fire.

Then it got to the exciting part. Before we slept yesterday, they outlined a set of rules that we were obliged to follow. One of them included that we were not allowed to cross the teepee line because they felt that the fencing that was the only thing that stopped us from falling down into a river was not safe. However after showering last night, many of us needed to hang our towels. We had decided to ask the First Nations person about where to hang our towels. He told us to hang it along the fence and so we listened to him. However apparently because of this, we had violated their rule which was not to cross the teepee line. One of our Vision Youth people decided to admit his wrong about hanging his towel on the fence while many others did not want to claim their towels and receive some sort of punishment. However this person who stood up for his towel was suddenly not allowed to go on the expedition because he did not listen to their rules. This was terribly unfair but there was more. Another one of our Vision Youth friends had to read the rules and requirements from the DEA book to a chair because he did not know about DEA well enough.

And so we decided to hold a long discussion with Mr. K to resolve the problem. However, many of us (not me) had shed tears. Actual tears with watery eyes and wailing because this person was just SO UNREASONABLE. Although we had debated for over a few hours, the result was still the same. He would not change himself and would continue giving out punishments. I felt like we had lost and with all our efforts, we were not able to win. Something shocking was, during this discussion 5 or more people had nose bleeds.

We were all really sad and slept in our teepees again.