Traveling the North - Our Experience With the Cree People at Split Lake

Josy Flett showing off his catch while the land-based school group lays nets under the ice.

Traveling the North - Our Experiences With the Cree People at Split Lake

Finn Rachul - May 5, 2025

In the month of March, 2025, David Scott and I traveled north to Tataskweyak Cree Nation to teach traditional land-based Ojibwe knowledge and how we read the environment.

There are few experiences that match that of traveling the north of Manitoba. For an environmental type like me, it is an incredibly refreshing experience to see the abundance that still exists in our province. At the same time, having the chance to travel with Dave and compare his earlier experiences with the area provides a unique context to my experience there. Having visited every reserve in Canada twice, Dave has seen the environments and peoples who live there in a far earlier time. The kindness of the Cree up north, as well as their struggles to maintain their traditional culture in a rapidly changing environment, paint a bigger picture to the fights of traditional peoples across Canada.

The Long Haul North

Starting from Swan Lake First Nation, the route north to TCN (Tataskweyak Cree Nation) is around ten hours of driving. Throughout the trip, I got the chance to discuss with Dave about the treaties and history of the Ojibwe and Cree peoples in the various areas we traveled through. While many of the stories and names of the different locations have passed on, many still exist for knowledge keepers like Dave. Places like Lunch Break Creek are rough translations of locations where the Ojibwe and Cree peoples would trade and converse in accordance with the Fish Treaty. Long ago, these areas were full of trails and camps that the Indigenous peoples of Manitoba used frequently - all of these disappearing with the enforcement of the Indian Act and associated legislation across the province. It's difficult for a young person like me to image the North so alive with people and places beyond the small highways and towns of the area.

For much of our route north, Dave and I discussed the Old Ojibwe words for forests and plants we found along the way. As with many other words in Ojibwe, each word is a package of information describing how traditional peoples look at the world around them. Words such as "sahgiikohgbah", describe how forests are living entities as a whole, with variations describing their thickness, health, habits, and uses. Others describe ecological processes that happen as these areas break down, much of which seemed to happening in the forests we saw around the highway as we traveled.

Much of what Dave and I notice these days as the climate changes is a decline in moisture and a rise in forest fires in the north. Not so long ago, forest fires weren't a seasonal occurrence, but on our trip it was hard not to see areas impacted by the continuous burns. To us, it seems like the recovery of burnt areas has slowed, with stunted growth due to frequent burns over the same areas. Much of our drive was like this, with the relatively healthy old growth spruce forests not appearing until further along the trip.

Our observations are reflected by those of many different areas, ranging all along the Rockies and the Canadian Shield. However, many of the peoples that still practice their traditions are making a strong positive impact. Across North America and the world in general, traditional peoples are taking back their right to conduct controlled burns, which, in comparison with uncontrolled wildfires, have a swath of ecological, social, and even economic benefits. For example, the Karuk Tribe in California has recently regained their right for "cultural burns", enabling them to carefully restore areas overgrown by deadfall into areas with traditionally used plants, habitat for animals, and protection again deadly wildfires.

Tataskweyak Cree Nation

Much is being done on the grassroots level to maintain and bring these traditional outlooks to the forefront. Dave and I learned much from the kindness and knowledge of the people of TCN.

Our first day out, we were immediately invited to join the land-based teachers group at their cabin behind the school. There, the teachers prepared for their classes to arrive, where they would later process fish, cook rabbit stew, and prepare for laying nets under the ice at a nearby lake. As the classes filed in and out, Dave and I were shocked by the kids' polite and respectful attitudes to us as newcomers from down south. We were served fresh trout, and participated in a very familiar teasing and joking as we have down south. The next day, we traveled out with a class and the land-based group to lay nets, check traps, and experience a day in the life of the remaining traditional people of the North.

The land-based teaching cabin - full of people young and old cooking, laughing, and getting ready to skidoo.

A recent haul by the land-based cabin crew. The rabbits and fish were incredibly delicious.

David Scott waiting for our skidoo ride to lay nets under the ice and ready to take a business call at any moment.

Catching Fish and Learning From Life Up North

After a delicious meal and suiting up for our trip to a nearby lake, Dave and I hopped into a truck that would take us to the lake trailhead. As we drove through the community of Split Lake, we could see the scars of a past when gangs ran throughout the area. Having stopped at a drugs and alcohol checkpoint, we noticed much has been done to fix up the community. Despite the cold, lots of people were out and about, and even the dogs running around checking trap lines we particularly friendly.

We loaded the skidoos, the classes arrived, and we were off to the netting area. Fighting slush and spaying snow, the kids towed behind the skidoos in sleds laughed away as I got knocked around by chunks of frozen snow and thrown around by the bumps in our path. Once we arrived, we quickly began opening holes in the ice and examining our area. Josy Flett, one of the old people and hunters from the reserve grabbed his catch of the day - a marten, the first I've ever seen in person (see blog title photo). During our time there, Josy described how they used to live and the abundance of animals during the fur trade era. At one point, a stack of beaver pelts reaching around the height of ones hip was the price for a rifle. These days, while there are still far more animals than down south, the numbers of fur bearing animals and fish has fallen in recent years.

The kids, growing warmer to Dave and I by the minute, couldn't help mentioning that they were going to sit at the lake edge and play around the snow. After the third mention, I joined them looking around for birds and watching as their teacher prepared to lay nets under the ice.

In the end, the ice had frozen to the rope under the ice, and we weren't able to catch any fish. However, as we arrived back at the cabin behind the school, we we're quickly served bannock and rabbit stew (another first for me). We spent the rest of the day conversing and warming up after our day out on the ice, leaving the community awhile later.

Heading Home

I never cease to be surprised by the warm and welcoming attitude Dave and I receive from the Indigenous communities we travel to. Without failure, we are met with lots of humor, soup and bannock, and an eagerness to learn from each other. We learned a lot from the land-based group in TCN teaching their kids how to live off the land and providing fun experiences and memories outside the classroom. It is incredibly refreshing to see a community like theirs, despite their struggles and history, pushing forward to continue practicing their traditions.

For people like Dave and me, it was an enlightening experience to see the changes happening in the environment as we traveled north and then south again. With our changing climate, the wild fires, shifting migrations of birds, and moving habitats of animals, people on the land are trying their best to adjust. The forests of the North have a rich history of treaty relationships between peoples, one that we had the chance to exercise as we learned and shared knowledge with the Cree people of the area.