Our Third Dinner Invitation on a Northern Reserve, Alberta!

We stay at this house during our visit to a reserve in Alberta

Our second Saturday in this northern reserve, we were invited by Wa. a worker at the Youth Centre to her house for dinner - this was our third dinner invitation in a week's time!

Wa. is a very warm, open and friendly lady we met in this community. Since this small Reserve has no motels or hotels, our team members have been boarding at people's homes.

My husband and I have been staying in one house while the four young people are given accommodation in W.'s house. Two other families are are at two different members' homes.

A maple leaf puzzle done by W.

Princess sits under a dog puzzle in the living room

W. and her family love animals. They have dogs, cat, and a ferret in their house. W.
loves doing puzzles. The walls on her house are decorated with puzzles she spent hours putting together.

These puzzles are beautiful pictures of animals and nature scenery.

Crisp crunch smoked whitefish caught and prepared by  R. in the traditional Native way 

We had homemade hamburgers with pickles, salad and other trimmings. We tried the wild whitefish
 which Ro. caught in December. We asked about winter fishing and he shared with us the natives' technique.

He did it by cutting a hole in the frozen lake and lower a net under the snow leaving it there overnight. The next day he found 30 fish caught in the net.

However, not everybody can winter fish as you need to know the ice condition well so that you won't fall into the icy lake water underneath.

Romeo showed shared with us the smoke whitefish

The aboriginal people's way of catching fish is not allowed by the general public. General Canadians are not allowed to fish using a net. We must purchase a fishing license and are only allowed a certain number of fish each time we go fishing.)

Native people are under different laws as the first nations signed treaties with the government of Canada and they are allowed to preserve their traditional way of life. 

Ro. smoked the whitefish he caught by leaving them in his smoke house for three nights and days. The fish was crisp as if it had been deep fried and crunchy, but not oily. Pretty good!

Some of the young people went hunting with Ro. while we stayed and talked to Wa.

We were picked up from Le.'s house every morning

It was another really enjoyable evening with the local people in this northern Albertan community!

R.T.
Alberta