About the drum, darkness and reinforcing words of tolerance

Something that really spoke to me while visiting Canada, and still returns to my mind almost daily, was the chance to meet some Canadian First Nations people while there. I had not thought about the fact that First Nations are still so strongly represented in Canada, somehow I had associated it more to the U.S. This was a type of reality check to me, when realizing how very Europe-centered my worldview is. North American history is surely mentioned in schools, but often surpassed by European history, especially WW2. We were offered a chance to listen to a First Nations person tell about his life and views of the current situation in Canada. He wore a suit and had a PhD (although he did mention those to be rare within the FN population of almost 700,00 people) and there I was, a naive Finnish girl looking at him and thinking in my mind "he doesn't look any different from any of us". All in all, the trip was filled with such brainfart-thoughts that helped me realize that no matter how tolerant and educated I believe myself to be, I too fall for prejudice and childlish thinking when in a completely new situation. 

When meeting this man had already planted the seed of thought in to my mind, it grew to a young tree when the program continued. We had a sweat lodge scheduled in the program. Back in Finland I had no idea what this meant: by googling it I understood it must be some sort of a sauna - and of course to a Finn who considers sauna to be a almost-holy place and thinks that outside Nordic countries people just don't know how to use a sauna, I had my prejudices ready and set. That afternoon we visited the Manitoba museum and fastforwarded through the regions history. After this, we walked along the snowy Winnipeg streets, shivering in the icy wind, towards the Thunderbird house. We stepped inside the beautiful, circle-shaped house and sat down to wait for our Elder to arrive. I assumed some daily gathering had just ended, since there were plenty of First Nations people outside the building. Some were in better shape, both mentally and physically, some in worse. My initial assumption was that this was a community centre for the First Nations people, and I wasn't far off. We got a message that the lady who was our Elder and hosted the Sweat Lodge Ceremony for us was stuck in traffic and would arrive late. I looked around me and asked a staff member about the four different color flags they attached in the ceiling. When I was going for earth, wind, fire -sort of explanation, I was again surprised as he answered the flags to represent people; all people, with black, white, yellow and red skin. Hearing this made me think, how can a community once hunted and killed to the brink of genocide by westerners be so incredibly tolerant, whereas westerners seem to have learned nothing.

As we still waited, another woman came in, pushing baby strollers. She had an adorable little boy inside them, and she told us she first adopted him 2 weeks ago. As the baby got anxious she asked us if we'd like her to sing for us, as her singing calms the baby. We all nodded, and smiling back to us she disappeared with the baby to one of the rooms. As she came back she had a drum in her hands and a skirt on. I twitched of surprise as she started singing, loud and clear. A language I understood nothing of, song tradition that I recognized only from movies. I watched and listened to her, with the same undisturbed attention her little son gave to her. I wondered what she was singing about, and who had taught her. It was beautiful, new and inspiring.

After a while a beautiful woman with long black hair, Shannon, walked in and greeted us with a calm voice. She explained us about the Sweat Lodge tradition and introduced us to her partner who was one of our firekeepers that evening. We walked outside to a Tipi-type of shelter made of solid wood. The sweat lodge itself was in the middle, and a big fire was burning in front of it. We changed, women were to wear long skirts and shirts, men could go in shorts and shirtless. The basic structure of the sweat was to step inside, one by one, after the Elder had given you a permission. Before crawling inside the dark hut everyone had to throw some tobacco to the fire and think of their own name, this way introducing themselves to the spirits. The sweat lasted altogether about 1,5 hours, with four sessions. There were stones in the fire that were handed inside by the firekeepers for each session, the number of them always representing some specific spirits and given by the Elder.

 After the red, burning hot stones were handed in and placed in the middle of the circle inside the small hut, the door was closed and the only light in the darkness came from the glowing red stones. She talked about different themes with each session, and each session represented a different compass direction, started by east where the sun rises and life begins, ending to west where sun sets and life ends. She sang prayers, drumming; sprinkled herbs  and poured water on the hot stones, we listened in the darkness. None of us quit before the sweat was completed, and everyone seemed to have enjoyed the experience on some level. After the sweat one of the organizers had prepared us a Manitoba-dinner, consisting of local ingredients such as bison meat, wildrise and Saskatoon berry. As Shannon and the firekeepers joined us I thanked her of the experience that had meant a lot to me, and helped me to let go of some things that had been troubling me.

This was an experience I'll remember the rest of my life.

First impressions

To Mark & Nancy, sorry for the wait.

As we arrived in Winnipeg that Friday night I was eager to see how Canada, or even North America  looks like. It sounds stupid, but I really had no expectations or idea what I was about to see. As we drove along multiple highways a relatively short distance from the airport to the hotel, I was staring out of the window hoping to get a grip of what my new surroundings were like. The "highways" themselves were something new to me, and I saw signs with strange company names flashing by me in the dark night. Houses were different, oddly placed right next to the busy streets. Suburbs everywhere; some really nice, some reminded me of tiny white matchbox houses. 

I had been told that as soon as I would get to North America I would notice that people are bigger, on average. The Fast Food Nation of the world surely has given its children some extra baggage, but this wasn't something I noticed in Canada. People weren't that heavy, everyone looked normal to me. Maybe the difference wasn't as striking as it might be when arriving in, say China, where some people would be shorther than myself. And well, it's not like Europeans are all tall, skinny and healthy.

One of the first things that I noticed was that people were very friendly. By this I don't mean that the flight attendant on plane or waitress at a restaurant asked me if I wanted some more coffee extra many times - I mean that people very genuinely friendly, no phoney small talk in Canada. This was something I had never thought about, the nature of Canadian people. Somehow from my European perspective I had assumed Canada to be the northern part of North America, the cool (in both meanings) country straight north from the U.S. In my past I have never really wanted to visit the USA, yet somehow I've created a crush for Canada - this country I apparently knew very little about.

Winnipeg wasn't anything that special as a city (although I did not know this was the city where the famous Winnie the Pooh comes from), but it was a North American city. Everything was just so very different in comparison to all the European cities I've been to. As I walked around downtown I spent my time simply looking at the buildings and the architecture, reading the signs for brands and shops I had never heard of and wondering how can it be possible that I felt more "home" in some Asian city than here. On my way back to the hotel I felt strange joy each time I saw a familiar sign from the bus window, belonging to some big American chain I recognized from a TV show.

Crossing the Atlantic

The journey to Canada was rough. I woke up at 3AM on Friday morning, too anxious to sleep. Hopped into the taxi I shared with two members of the UArctic staff at 5AM, and our flight from Rovaniemi to Helsinki departed at 6AM. In Helsinki we noticed that the connecting flight to Copenhagen had been canceled and hurried to book another one - our transatlantic flight departed from Copenhagen, and we didn't want to miss that one. Fortunately all went well and due to the cancellation we had some time to relax and have breakfast at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. In Copenhagen the transfer time was shorter, which was a pity: the airport is one of the nicest I've ever seen, and I would've loved to walk around a bit. 

First when boarding the Air Canada flight from Copenhagen to Toronto we started to get excited about the trip, leaving Europe behind. The flight felt really long, and the thought of skipping time zones made me feel tired. I watched some movies (disappointed to the AC movie collection) and stared at the map as we flew over Iceland and Greenland. When approaching Toronto, we filled out the forms for customs and I remembered how nervous these occasions made me on our previous trip to Asia and Australia. Well, that was nothing compared to the North American Customs. The officer asked me all the possible questions and few on top of that, doubting the whole Rectors' Forum even existed. What she seemed to be especially doubtful about was that why on earth would someone from Finland be invited to such event in Canada - and why was it just one student. I got through after showing some additional documents of the existence of the Forum. Our flight had arrived late and there was no way we could've made it to the connecting flight, so we once again needed to wait for a new one. So that things wouldn't get too easy, shortly after we got to our gate there was an announcement saying that our airplane is not coming after all, and a new one will be arranged asap. Of course, this would delay the departure even more. We ended up in a tiny plane filled to the last seat, finally arriving to Winnipeg 3 hours later than originally planned.

After the final flight I was so tired, that I really needed to focus in order to stay awake, walk straight and talk understandable English. One of the staff members who flew with me was born in Winnipeg and knew the town well. He had a rental car ready and waiting for us and he gave me a lift to my hotel. After getting to my room, I turned on the computer to quickly send a message home telling I'm okay. I took a hot shower and waited a while to see if C was still awake in the U.S. and I could tell him too I've arrived. We talked on the phone for a while until I had to give up and go to bed. By this time I had been awake for almost 30 hours in a row, sleep was needed.