By Stephan Theodore-Jenson
Elder Liz Pete is smoking fish in the Elder’s Smoke House from the Canim Lake Band’s cultural fishing day.
The Elders, the Eliza Archie Memorial School students and a couple dozen of the band members went to Gustafsen Creek for the spring run of trout. A gift of tobacco for letting us catch the fish was put in the creek.
Some of the students fell in the creek, while netting their fish and got wet and cold with the splash of cold creek water. They didn’t mind getting wet.
The current would push the net while you were dip netting, and you would feel the fish flopping around in your net while it was trying to escape.
You would lift the net up and put the net inside out onto the ground, but not close to the water. There were small fish and big ones; the small ones got put back in to grow some more.
It was a tiring and wet day, but it was a warm trip back home with full tummies from the wiener roast.
No fish were wasted. It is a spiritual kind of thing.
Some of the families might go back on the weekend.
Stephan Theodore-Jenson is a Grade 6 student at Eliza Archie Memorial School.