Ed Reeves from Deline recently sent me this link to a very cool CBC North radio project that was done by the kids of Deline, Northwest Territories. The kids interviewed the Elders of Deline to learn more about their spiritual and cultural history and connections with the the land and the water and especially the lake--Great Bear Lake.
Click here to see the website and listen to the audio segments: http://www.cbc.ca/north/features/waterheart/index.html#photo
An excerpt from the website explanation of the project which is called Waterheart: The Deline Project.
"The Watereheart is a Dene legend. It's about a medicine man who found a giant heart beating at the bottom of Great Bear Lake.The lake is among the largest freshwater lakes in the world. After a trout steals the medicine man's hook he takes on the spirit of a loche, the largest fish of the lake, and dives deep into the lake's abyss to retrieve his hook. In his journey he finds much more. He finds a living, breathing heart, called the Tudze in the Slavey language. This medicine man finds that the fragile Tudze is what gives life to the everyday physical world of trees, fish, water and human beings. The heart was also surrounded by every species of fish found in Great Bear Lake, guardians of the powerful Tudze.
The Waterheart documentary explores the metaphors of this legend. The heart is the culture of the Sahtu Dene people. They live in Délįne, a small cluster of houses on the tip of the eastern arm of the lake. The waterheart and the culture represent everything the Sahtu Dene live for, but, the heart and the culture are weak.
The weakest link between the culture of the past and present is the essence of culture itself; language. The youth speak mostly English today and their elders only speak Slavey. The Waterheart documents the emotional journey of ten teenagers from the public school in Délįne as they grapple with the cultural gap. The students were introduced to the basic tools of radio feature making and storytelling during an intensive 10-day production workshop in April, 2008. They set out to interview the town's elders, their grandparents and great grandparents...in Slavey. These men and women recalled their working life from 1932 to 1960 at Port Radium - a uranium mine across the lake from Délįne."
Click here to see the website and listen to the audio segments: http://www.cbc.ca/north/features/waterheart/index.html#photo
