Monday, November 21, 2011

Yellowknife For Christmas

I'd been thinking about how nice it would be to be in a cabin in the bush during this winter. Quiet. I was kind of hoping that I could get a little more north after my fabulous time in Jokkmokk, Sweden. I'm a Northerner,these thoughts happen. So, snow covered Great Slave Lake. Scroll down to discover when this blog began. Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada for the first time. Loved it. Highly recommended. It helps to have great family to take care of you. So, going to visit the Prudens, their friends, neighborhoods, the City of Yellowknife and the bush. To find out more of the Prudens, scroll down, or, wait for more!< Invitations to scroll down, such is my bloggery. As an adventurer, I'm preparing myself. New black and white Sorels (waterproof and good to minus 32 - so city boots). I have my long black down coat, double wool mitts that my mom made, lots of wool socks, long johns, scarves, down vest. I need a better hat or double hat. Adventure Timeline Wednesday November 14, 2011 - fly to Wpg Thursday, November 15, 2011 - fly to YK Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - fly to Wpg Saturday, January 14, 2012 - fly to Thunder Bay and Home This blog wasn't able to let me choose a file so that I could add an image. I'll need to sort that out as I've been taking more photographs and want to share them. Also, getting a bit of HTML in the text. blog talk for a few technical issues. Welcome to another adventure!

Friday, September 23, 2011



Lily Belluz, Summer 2011


Lisa from The Fish Shop in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The fish chandelier is whitefish, trout and herring.
Some recent recipes. 
http://punchfork.com/recipe/Mujaddara-Lentil-Bulgur-Pilaf-Global-Table-Adventure, http://www.food52.com/recipes/14217_peach_tart, http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/mocha-scones-recipe/
http://www.lottieanddoof.com/2008/10/apple-jellies/ 
http://www.food52.com/recipes/2018_magical_coffee


I like Punchfork. My profile is AdventureswithBetty. 

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Falu Red

A lot of homes are painted deep red. The paint originated from the copper mine at Falun in DalarnaSweden which operated since the mid-13th century and closed in 1992. Extracting of copper and gold from the Great Copper Mountain is believed to be the oldest still-existing enterprise in the world. 


The paint consists of waterrye flourlinseed oil and mine residue which contain silicates,  iron oxidescopper compounds and zincThe actual colour differs depending on how much the oxide is burnt. You also see a dark green colour, Falu Grön which has been produced by mixing black and ochre.


Falu red is effective in preserving wood and remains a popular choice.



Heirloom Rice from the Philippines

I received an email from Vicky Garcia, the RICE Ino-Director. 


It read in part, "Greetings from Manila, Philippines! It's a gorgeous Saturday here and enjoying my first nice weekend since we got back 2 weeks ago :-) You know-adjustments and catching up crazy mode at work!!! Anyway, my name is Vicky. We had the last opportunity to know each other as delegates at the Lulea to Stockholm airport. We were all rushing and quite confused when you found us. I was with the group of Malaysian, Indonesian and with me were two men trying to get our boarding ticket from the machine, remember!"

Here's the website for the Cordillera Heirloom Rice Project.

http://www.heirloomrice.com/

Friday, July 1, 2011

Pics from Cordillera Rice









Thoughts

Discussions about altering the paths of the earth to allow for our need for energy and connectivity have not included much of the dialogue of the people whose lives are intimately connected to the land. How can we be more cohesive as a planet and less fueled by rapid development and finance? 


I looked around the tent at Terra Madre and saw a lot of electricity and technology being used. Sometimes the lights were on when they didn't need to be. Actually, during the midnight sun there's very little use to have the lights on. In the middle of the night when I was reading - didn't need a light. Something purifying about that much natural light.


Today, my sister, Sheila Pruden's posting on facebook was, "
  • Is sad for the land to be flooded by the Lower Churchill Dam in Labrador. Keep filling your pockets and to hell with the consequences.
    6 hours ago ·  · 
    • You like this.

I Would Call This Yoiking

Heard at ITM: "I'm going to yolk this yolk for you."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9hSDWvoZjk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Where The Samis Buy Their Shoes Online

http://www.kero.se/en/
Check out the video, "Feel The Kero Beat". 

iPad Notes

What I Ate
Wednesday, June 15
Toronto - Pearson Airport sushi and a chai tea latte from Starbucks
Air Canada flight from Toronto to Copenhagen - Dinner! Rice with mixed cubed vegetables, chicken with a creamy sauce, a roll, corn and bean salad, a chocolate brownie. Uninspired muffin and coffee for breakfast before landing in Denmark. 

Fascinating Day in the Stockholm Arlan Airport. 
Arrived at 11:55 a.m.
Slow Food greeters Gunborg Mellegard and Ola Buckard
Had lunch, talked. Very friendly.
Delegate from Mali? And Columbia. Needed to speak Spanish - rusty.
Meet other people.   Keep running into them throughout the day.
No free WiFi. Paid $ for an hour and it functioned inconsistently. Oh well, Arlan has an inordinate number of handsome men.

Images by Jessica Duncan Blog: http://foodgovernance.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @foodgovernance

Sami Kids - I love the one girl's tights. This is during the ceremony where we all gave soil from our native lands. My soil was from Brule Creek Farm where the land was cleared in the late 1800's. 
Where I didn't stay beside Lake Dalvvadis. My traditional dress - down vest, backpack, Timex watch, black tunic and skirt, John Fluevog Guides and shawl I bought in the Sami market beside the conference site.
These guys switched their traditional dress! India and Jordan. Jordan and India. Khalid from Jordan got into the switcheroo a few times! He declined, when I asked if he wanted to switch with me.
Styling! I think - Bhrvad from India. Then, Bolor from Mongolia and Lalji from India.
Lovely conference site vs. a hotel near an airport.
One of two Canadian delegates.
Jess and girls!

Midnight in Jokkmokk - view from the highest point. Bhrvad - always styling! It was so interesting to see how the clothing was used. Lalji showed Tahnibaa and I how he tied one type of turban.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Walk of Many Nations

On Saturday, June 18th, a group of about 30 Terra Madre delegates walked for about 4k to a lookout over Jokkmokk. We were quite a lively group with representatives from Italy, Jordan, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Spain, India, Ethiopia and Canada. Lots of laughter and everyone taking pictures. Lalji, a pastoralist from India told me later that they were laughing at me because the fast walking Canadian was leading everyone up the hill. 

Met so many lovely people who are passionate about their role in the global food community. The presentations, discussions and conversations were part of a positive dialogue that will create much needed change.


Here's a link from Slow Food International ...


http://www.slowfood.com/international/slow-stories/100743/photos-and-videos-from-indigenous-terra-madre/q=FC4E77?-session=query_session:50D80BEC0f36709E69JJR12CA51A

Monday, June 20, 2011

Indigenous Terra Madre

The gathering began at the Stockholm airport. Indigenous Terra Madre had a table at the arrivals area. Ola Buckard and Gunborg Mellengard where just sitting down for lunch and asked me to join them. Other delegates arrived from various points on all four continents of the globe. Quite an exotic group. Many spoke very limited or no English.

Ola is on the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity as the Suovas Presidium Coordinator. Gunborg was married to a Sami man and they raised their children in Jokkmokk. She now lives in Stockholm. Ola lives in Stockholm and invited me to give him a call after ITM - he was feeling sad that he wasn't going to be there but felt that the event was in good hands because his former colleague, Frank Roy was going to be attending.

Arrived at the airport in Lulea at midnight - it looked like the middle of the afternoon. A bus took us the two hours to Jokkmokk. The country side was a mixture of boreal forest and small fields where hay is grown. Small log huts are used to hold the dry hay in the winter. The trees are a mixture of spruce, jackpine and birch. From the bus I recognized many of the smaller plants - red alder, willow, labrador tea, arctic cotton and buttercups. I was kind of surprised how pastoral it was.

The houses and outbuildings are painted either a deep earthy red, green or yellow. Didn't see any fauna or people. Arrived in Jokkmokk just after two a.m. The landscape and the community reminds me of a combination of Lynn Lake (where I grew up), the north shore of Lake Superior on the U.S. side, Yellowknife and somewhere strange and alien. 

On the bus I met fellow Canadian, Jessica Duncan whose living in Barcelona and about to move to Bath, England to continue work on her PhD. Jess was travelling with a food and agricultural group from India whom she's worked with in community capacity building, rural development and youth engagement. She wasn't there as a Canadian delegate. Met the other Canadian delegate, Ama whose a coordinator for Eco Economic Forum an Indigenous peoples network situated in the Eastern Region Ghana.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

New Technology

The night before I went to Yellowknife I began blogging. Tonight I'm learning on an iPad. The keyboard is ultra sensitive.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Cultural areas of North American Indigenous peoples at the time of European contact

Cree Mocassins




Sami Shawls


Footwear







Found Pics


Tundra

"tundra" ← Kildin Samitū̄ndra "of the treeless plain" (via Russian) 


In Kildin Sami, the word for tundra is tūndâr

The Sami Language

"There is great variety not only in inflections but in other forms. For example, new words can be formed with the help of derivative suffixes. For example, starting with the verb borrat the verbs borastit ‘eat a little’, borralit ‘eat fast’, boradit ‘eat for a long time’, borahit ‘get a bite to eat’ can be formed. Passive verbs can also be formed by means of such suffixes, e.g. borrojuvvot ‘be eaten’. 

The language is well equipped to form new words with the help of endings. For example, a few years ago the word cálan ‘printer’ was formed from the verb cállit ‘write’. As times change, new Sami words are found for new phenomena, just as in other languages. Thousands of new Sami words have been invented in the last few decades with the help of derivative suffixes, neolo- gisms or loans, for example dihtor ‘comput- er’, dáidda ‘art’, girjerádju ‘library’ and interneahtta ‘Internet’."

This is from Mikael Svonni, Professor, Department of Sami Studies, Umeå Universityhttp://scandinavian.wisc.edu/dubois/Courses_folder/Sami_readings/Week3/LanguageToday.pdf

Friday, June 3, 2011

Itinerary and Accomodation

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - Depart Thunder Bay via Air Canada. Stop in Toronto and Copehagen. Arrive at the Arlan airport in Stockholm on June 16th.
Fly to the harbour town of Lulea and take the bus to Jokkmokk. Staying at the Jokkmokk Hotel. http://www.hoteljokkmokk.se/
On the road from Lulea to Jokkmokk is the Tree Hotel in Harads. I love the Tree Hotel. http://www.treehotel.se/en/start
ITM
Back in Stockholm on June 20. Staying in a hostel. I found City Backpackers fairly effortlessly online. 
http://www.citybackpackers.org/
Last night in Sweden, staying in a room with a window at the Kungsbron Hotel. Flying home via London, Toronto, Thunder Bay. Arrive in Thunder Bay on Saturday, June 25, 2011.

Eva Carpick

My mom's mother was from the northern Manitoba Nelson House Cree and her dad left Scotland when he was 12 and they settled near Bangor, Maine, U.S.A.. When she was thirteen my mom had a baby porcupine. She delivered the baby by performing a cesarean on the dying ill mother porcupine. The first thing that the baby porcupine did was to put its tail up and climb a tree. 


My grandmother, Josephine Dysart delivered hundreds of babies. The oven of the woodstove was often used as an incubator. There were no power generated utilities. None of my mom's brothers or sisters were born in a hospital. My mom was born "somewhere" between Nelson House and South Indian Lake. There were 13 kids in the family. Six girls and seven boys. Betsy, the twins - Margaret and William, Sarah, Adam, Eva, Charlie, Willy, Sam, Evelyn, Roger, Irene and Ronnie.


Eva's 79. She doesn't bake much anymore except for bannock. Bannock and Roger's syrup were a treat when she was a kid. They had butter after her dad went by dog sleigh to get groceries. It would take three days to travel from where the trapline was on North Indian Lake to South Indian Lake. It was two sleeps. He had eight dogs. The sleighs were called toboggans. In South Indian Lake there was a Hudson's Bay post.


Charlie Dysart, my grandfather would buy: candles, coal oil, flour, baking powder, lard, salt, pepper, tea, coffee, dried fruit (apples, raisins), dried beans, salt pork, yeast, sugar, honey, big 5 lb. cans of jam (raspberry, strawberry). "Everything was in cans in those days."


He bought fabric and Josephine sewed the clothes for the kids by hands. She made the two dresses that she owned. She knit. Made socks and mitts. Made mitts and mocassins with caribou and moose hide. They kids didn't have shoes. When there was no snow the kids wore mocassin rubbers or went barefoot.


They only ate wild meat and fish. They ate mostly caribou (more tender than moose meat), moose, rabbit, beaver, muskrat, ducks, geese, ptarmigan, grouse. The fish were whitefish, pickerel, trout, jacks, sturgeon, red suckers. 


Charlie put a garden up at the main camp. Potatoes, carrots, onions. They were farmers in Maine. "Uncle Bob always had a nice garden." Bob was Charlie's brother who joined him up north. Bob also a married a native woman.  They had a large family. Everyone had a large family.


Of course, there was no electricity. 


Candies and bars were a treat. They used to make a taffy with Roger's syrup in the winter. 


"Our camp was very small. It was made of spruce logs. There was a loft with the wood stove down below."


Josephine made caribou hair mattresses. The hide was used for clothing. Charlie had a caribou hide parka. All the feather robes and pillows were filled with goose or duck down. 


My mom came to Thunder Bay from her home in The Pas last Saturday. She brought pickeral from the north. When she cooked us a fish dinner she breaded the fish in Betty Crocker Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, flour and Club House La Grille Lemon & Herbs seasoning. We also had mashed potatoes, boiled beets, boiled frozen peas and local greenhouse tomatoes. Delicious.









Saturday, May 28, 2011

Muskrat

What does muskrat taste like? 


Delicious. 


Every spring I crave muskrat. 


"The muskrat is the largest species in the subfamily Arvicolinae, which includes 142 other species of rodents, mostly voles and lemmings. Muskrats are referred to as "rats" in a general sense because they are medium-sized rodents with anadaptable lifestyle and an omnivorous diet. They are not, however, so-called "true rats", that is, members of the genus Rattus."


Muskrats feed on cattails and other aquatic vegetation. In the spring, they eat the fresh shoots. The meat is dark and rich. In the "tastes like chicken" vein, muskrat "tastes like duck". But, really, muskrat tastes like muskrat. Evocative. 



Friday, May 27, 2011

20 DAYS

Encouraging Fred Cattroll to go to Jokkmokk. He's my cousin and a photographer of some renown. Grew up and lives in Ottawa. I remember him as a kid - a dreamer. He's over six and a half feet tall. We are from the Norway House Cree. Watch us Jokkmokk. 


I know how to make bannock. I crave muskrat meat in the spring. I gather spruce buds. I'm interested in plants. I'm attracted to berries. I love the smell of wood smoke,  I've made birch bark baskets. I know the ecstacy of running on snow in moccassins. So much lightness. Don't wear moccassins in an urban environment in the winter. B's advice. 


My grandmother and her family lived in a teepee. When my grandfather Charlie Dysart declared and negotiated his love for Josephine, what was his language? He was from Bangor, Maine. 


In The Pas, Manitoba - going to the movie theatre when I was a kid. There was an Indian side. It was to the left ... which was somewhat of a relief. I sat on the left edge of the middle section. 

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Traditional Sami Clothing

Thunder Bay to Jokkmokk


View Larger Map

The Yoik

The yoik is one of the Sami styles of singing.

"Each joik is meant to reflect a person or place. This does not mean that it is a song about the person or place, but that the joiker is attempting to transfer "the essence" of that person or place into song - one joiks their friend, not about their friend. It usually has short lyrics or no lyrics at all. This type of song can be deeply personal or spiritual in nature. Improvisation is not unusual. However, there are other forms of joik (in the expanded sense of the word) that have a more epic type of lyrics. Joik is traditionally chanted a cappella and often dedicated to a human being, an animal, or a landscape as a personal signature.

In northern Sami areas, most joiks are personal, that is, tied to a specific person. A joik is often made for a person at the time he is born.
It has traditionally been sung a cappella, sometimes accompanied by a drum, but not a Sami drum which is used for ceremonial purposes only. It is sometimes set to other instruments. The tonality of joik is mostly pentatonic, but joikers are at liberty to use any tones they please."

Sofia Yannock is a Swedish/Sami Yoik/Pop/Jazz singer-songwriter. "Irene" is the first single from the album "Áššogáttis/By the Embers". 

The Arctic Circle

Where is Jokkmokk?

I was born in The Pas, Manitoba, Canada. North of 53. I lived in Lynn Lake and Leaf Rapids, two towns north of 56. The furthest north that I've been previously was in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (North of 62). I went to Churchill, Manitoba for a volleyball tournament in the winter of 1975. Churchill is North of 58. Jokkmokk is North of 66, north of the Arctic Circle.

When I transferred the map, the location of Jokkmokk disappeared. It's in the middle of the upper yellow area. Need to find a better map.


Welcome

This sign and the landscape reminds me of northern Manitoba where I grew up. I've seen the sky brooding like this. I don't know what the little circle above the "a" is called. I'd like to find out.

NEW! Adventures With Betty

Flying to Jokkmokk, Sweden in 22 sleeps for the Slow Food Indigenous Terra Madre. Thunder Bay, Toronto, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Jokkmokk. I'm very excited.

I've been sharing some of my discoveries on facebook, twitter and emails to friends. Reviving my blog. Enjoy!