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17 ENJOYMENTS AND SPECIAL TIMES This chapter describes some of the kinds of events and times to which people looked forward before there were cars, radio, television, and easy access to urban entertainments . The hand game (chapter 16) is a truly indigenous creation. Treaty time and New Year are observances that were introduced and set by the whiteman calendar and then further shaped by the native people. The brew party was the third major secular institution adapted from Euro-Canadian ‘‘offerings.’’ Accounts of other less structured kinds of pleasures in Dene life begin and conclude the chapter. fun and deportment Two stories told by Dogrib Vital Thomas convey not only the enjoyment of group dancing but Dene emotional styles as well. The first story, about the boy who did not shame himself, reveals a major value in social deportment, equanimity. the boy who did not shame himself before strangers A young man got married. His father and mother told the boy and girl how to behave themselves among strangers so that nobody would laugh at them. Even now, some old fellows teach a boy and girl the same thing when they get married: ‘‘You should keep your eyes down. Don’t watch your husband, don’t watch your wife when you are among strangers. Or those strangers may say, ‘That boy is looking at his wife. He must be jealous.’’’ The boy and girl got married in the spring. That fall, after freezeup, there were no caribou on the lakes or in the barrens. Finally, word came that there were caribou past Lac la Martre. The Dogribs, the Slaveys, and the Mountain Dene from across the Mackenzie all joined together that winter to hunt the caribou. When the snow began to melt in the spring, all the different Indians started back to their own countries for hunting. By this time the young couple had a baby boy named Baptiste, and the young fellow had found a friend, a Mountain Indian boy. When all the peoples began to separate, the Dogrib boy was sad because the Mountain Indian boy was leaving. So he asked his parents if he could spend that spring with his friend and come back to his folks in the fall. His father and mother didn’t want it, and the girl’s father and mother didn’t want it. But the boy kept begging, ‘‘He is so good to me. I have lost all my brothers and I am just alone with my parents. It’s like I found a brother.’’ So finally the parents said, ‘‘Okay, if you come back next fall.’’ So the young man and his wife spent the spring in the mountains with his friend. After the spring hunt, they all went to a big meeting place. The trading chief of the Mountain Dene got all kinds of stuff from the trader, and he made a feast. In those days, all the trading chiefs got feasts from the Hudson’s Bay. The Bay still gives our chief stuff for a feast. Then the people began to dance. When there was a full crowd, the Dogrib boy started to dance, because strangers might say he was jealous if he stayed out of the dance. We would say the same thing now. So the Dogrib boy and his wife jumped into the dance circle. You know how it is, when someone wants to get into the dance he separates two other people and gets in between them. So as the people kept coming into the ring, the boy’s wife got moved way across the circle, from him. And the people were dancing, dancing all night, all the next day, and when night came again, that young man was so hungry and so weak. His wife was way across the circle, and he didn’t want to yell to her, ‘‘I’m hungry! Cook something for me!’’ And he didn’t want to leave the dance to talk to his wife because people might say he was jealous. At last the songs were getting pretty low. Everybody was pretty near all in; they were waiting for someone to make a song. They were all tired, but they were waiting for another song. And the boy didn’t know what to do, he was so hungry and tired. Pretty soon the sun started to rise again. So he said to himself, ‘‘I better figure some way to tell my wife that I want her to cook...

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