Potlatch Take 2

We're backing up in time here (this won't be the last time it happens, either; you still haven't heard anything about last summer) and heading back to Galena. Remember earlier in the season I wrote about Potlatch? Well, my friends Dee Dee and Shirley invited us. We only made it one night out of the three but it was beautiful, emotional, and I would imagine, healing. 

It starts with a community dinner. And it is a community event. The elders are given the best seats. The adults have organized and prepared the food. The teens and tweens serve, dim sum style. Very small portions of huge amounts of food and everyone gets plenty. Several macaroni salads, soups and bear ribs. Yep. Bear ribs.

After cleaning up, the mourning ritual starts. The families come out, bound together by material and furs ~ bear, moose, and wolf furs are most common. The singers stand in the middle of the circle and/or sit just outside of it. They sing the songs for the dead; the families form the circle, dancing round. This continues for two nights. On the third night, the material and furs are sewn together and the families give gifts to the people in the community who have attended the potlatch.

I was honored to be there.

My friend, Dee Dee

Me, in traditional dress (from Shirley), filming for Dee Dee

Potlatch

A woman here at the base, Dee Dee, is holding potlatch at the end of the month for her son. I am grateful that I am astute enough to have picked up on body language and tone to realize that this was not, in this case, similar to a confirmation or a Quinceañera, and didn't get all excited about learning something new and begin to grill her, the way I am wont to do. Because, sure enough, it's not.

For two nights, there will be singing and dancing around the furs, followed by a feast. On the third night, they will honor the people who helped her son. So, she will give gifts to the man who built her son's coffin and to the man who built her son's cross and the woman who prepared her son's body.

He died in 2004. I don't know if this is a yearly ritual or if it has taken this long or ... what. Yes, I could research it, and perhaps I should. But I won't. Not this time. There are some things I don't need to know clinically, rationally, intellectually. If it happens that I can ask her without being offensive, I will. But the death of a child...You walk carefully, there, even after six years. I do know it sounds beautiful. It sounds healing.

I'm honored she chose to take her break in my room and share with me. These are the moments...