Mamoweedow

The Mamoweedow (“gathering” in Cree) is a yearly celebration on Fort George Island, the original location of the community of Chisasibi, lasting around 10 days. For the mamoweedow, lots of people from the community spend the week in their cabins on the island and participate in the festivities that include traditional dancing and games, social activities, and feasts. We got a chance to attend part of the activities on the weekend.

This week, we finally completed our reports and sent them to the pediatrician on the developmental clinic team. We are also almost done with our intervention plans and we will spend some time this week putting materials together to send to the daycare educators.

Anny was part of a multidisciplinary clinic for assessment and intervention of  Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. The multidisciplinary team organized a workshop for the case managers working with families in various communities. We volunteered to help Anny prepare some of her materials and activities for the language assessment and intervention section. On Thursday, we attended the afternoon portion of the workshop and helped out a bit during the group discussion activity. It felt a bit like being back at school!

This weekend was the beginning of the mamoweedow on Fort George Island. We went to an evening event with traditional dancing and games that lasted part of the night. We joined in for a few games. The mamoweedow committee was nice enough to translate the instructions into English for us, but we still didn’t understand half of the rules and got eliminated pretty quickly. We took a break from the festivities to get a late-night snack. We learned the virtue of patience while we waited an hour and a half for poutine at one of the chip stands on the island. We’re glad to say it was worth the wait.

Our friends invited us to stay in one of their cabins for the night. We got our first clear view of the stars since there is no electricity on Fort George and we were finally up late enough for the sky to get dark! Even though the island is close to town, going to Fort George is a good way to find peace and quiet and take a break from the city.

The next morning, we enjoyed a traditional breakfast at the michuap of the mamoweedow, where food is served pretty much all day during the events. We are hoping to go back to the island to participate in more events during the week.