In Memory of The Milne Ice Shelf

“Look up, young ones.”

Their eyes popped open at the urgency in old Mr. Drybones’ voice.

Over their heads the aurora danced and shed its magical light, this time a dazzling curtain of red, green and yellow. It seemed to blow gently in an unseen wind. It was so quiet—not a sound, just the faint sighs and crackles of the dying fire. 

Spirits are walking...

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

                                       https://books2read.com/flyawaysnowgoose

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Ellesmere Island, part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region in Nunuvut, is about as far north as you can go in Canada. The Island provided the stony shoulders upon which a Pleistocene glacier rested. The Milne Ice Shelf--and once upon a time, many others--extended from the island into the Arctic Ocean.  These ice barrens were once hunting grounds for polar bear, resting places for seals and birds, and traversed by foxes and men, locked in an endless search for the next meal.

The Milne Ice Shelf contained a rarity too, the northern hemisphere's only Epishelf lake--a freshwater lake that floats atop and exists behind a dam of  sea ice. As such, it contained it's own precious world of plants and animals--creatures who lived in the freshwater trenches--had only recently begun to be studied by scientists.

The Inuktitut People had a descriptive name for the area long before Europeans came. Their name, "Tuvaijuittuq" means "The place which never melts." 

Ellesmere Island hasn't been this hot for 115,000 years, centuries before the Inuktitut arrived. Today the Canadian Arctic temperature is a distressing 9 F (5 C) above the thirty year average. Sea ice this year was the lowest it's been since records have been kept. 

2020 summer brought even higher temperatures, resulting in more open, warmer water. The Milne no longer had the thick buffer of sea ice it had once possessed. In August, strong off-shore winds began to blow. Satellite images showed startled scientists that forty percent of the ice shelf had broken up in just two days.  

Due to the pandemic, the scientists who are usually on the ice at this time of year were absent. They kept their lives, but lost $90,000 worth of monitoring equipment when their base camp went into the sea. All those unique freshwater worlds so recently discovered by scientists have probably vanished as well.


...The Milne Ice Shelf--and once upon a time, many others--extended from the island into the Arctic Ocean.  These ice barrens were once hunting grounds for polar bear, resting places for seal and bird, and traversed by fox and man, all in an endless struggle for survival...



Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

                                       https://books2read.com/flyawaysnowgoose

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Solstice in the NWT

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

I went looking for the weather in Yellowknife, NWT, and this is what I found:

On the 22nd December, 2019, it was -28 in the early morning. By noon time it had roared up to -24, and this is an average December day day.

That is  darn cold by my U.S. standards. Some of the coldest U.S. mornings I've experienced were in January, 1969, in western Massachusetts, in a little woodland cabin with minimal insulation (read none) and a wood stove in the kitchen. On one memorable morning, it was -30, although, thank-fully, this was a one-off. We could sit at the kitchen table and extend a hand toward the outer wall and actually feel a slice of cold penetrating. However, that being said, this -28 is just an ordinary December day in NWT.

Accommodations for aurora tourists in the NWT model a higher profile lodge.

Orion blazes blue in perfect dark sky 

They have 4 hours and 57 minutes of daylight, which, on top of the temperature, has to be stressful. From an astronomy site, I learned : "Geomagnetic field conditions will be mostly quiet, with unsettled periods overnight. Watch for gentle auroras above the northern horizon and overhead." As usual, "peak activity expected in the hours before and after midnight." The higher the latitude, the higher probability you'll see the magic of our atmosphere's protective shield.

It's okay for us moderns to exclaim about cold, but imagine the people who came here between the glaciers, ever so long ago. These folks, and their descendants, until fairly recently, spent their winters in family groups sheltering beneath tents of caribou hide, and resting upon beds of spruce bows and furs. Only imagine the work that was necessary to collect the food and fuel that would be necessary to get through a long season of daunting temperatures and snow.

Before the Europeans got well dug into the north -- and that's apt, as Europeans are mostly interested in the north nowadays for what they can remove from the ground, things like diamonds and uranium  -- winter was the time you spent all the warm months getting ready for. It was easy to starve if you weren't prepared--and, sometimes, even if you were. Fish were dried, meat laid in, furs tanned and cut for clothes. Wood was gathered from the more southerly areas still inside the tree line. You were stocking up not just for the human members, but for the dogs, the original pack animals of the north. 

In the long dark, snowbound, in intense cold, family members gathered. Calorie conservation would have been necessary for everyone in this world of now limited resources, so originally, the people did not gather into large groups, but rather dispersed. Some men went with dogs to tend trap lines; keeping the fur and surviving on the flesh of whatever they caught. 

Story telling was one of the activities in the lodges, stories to teach the children and stories to pass the long frigid nights. Here was the time of teaching life-ways, transmitting skills involved in making tools of bone and stone. It was also a time for telling ancestor tales and tales about the spirits who inhabited the land. Prayers were offered to the sleeping roots, plants, to the four legs and to the fish as well as to the spirits of ancestors who danced over their heads in the aurora. Animal stories were told now, as it wasn't considered respectful to tell the stories when the animals were awake and might overhear people talking about them. In a world where survival depends upon animals (such as caribou) willingly giving themselves to men for food, this respect and sense of circle-of-life community is of prime importance. 

The Tlico flag proudly displays the old skin lodges

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

~~Juliet Waldron

A Great Canadian Idea

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

In Fly Away Snow Goose, the young hero and heroine are on the run from a punitive, frightening residential school. They hope, after surviving a long wilderness journey and rejoining their families at winter hunting camp, that they will be able to continue their lives hunting and gathering, co-existing with Nature in the same manner as their ancestors.

"It's the land that keeps things for us. Being our home, it's important for us to take care of the dwelling--the land--for wherever you go is home." ~Rosalie Tailbone

Of course, the time in which Fly Away Snow Goose is set, the early 1950's, was actually the beginning of enormous changes in the NWT. Roads were built and bush plane travel became more common. There was an influx of outsiders prospecting for diamonds, gold, natural gas and oil, all the commodities so precious to the ever-needy Western world.   The new settlers and the industries they brought with them have been a mixed bag for the original inhabitants. The elders became concerned at the growing water pollution and loss of game. They directed the next generation to find new ways to protect the land, as well as their culture, language, and way of life.

Today, as Canada works toward reconciliation with 1st Nations' people, they also face new challenges resulting from a rapidly changing climate. Instead of doing conservation by fiat and disregarding the input of Indigenous communities, Canada is beginning to create protected areas in ways that empower these original and most engaged inhabitants.

Thaidene Nëné

In a recent Audubon article, "Guardians of the North" by Hannah Hoag, I read (happily!) about the newly established  protected area, Thaidene Nëné, encompassing more than 6.4 million acres of land stretching from the easternmost tip of Great Slave Lake northeast toward the Arctic Territory of  Nunavut. The result of 30 years of careful, on-again-off-again negotiation between a host of parties--the Canadian Government,  the government of the NWT, the Yellowknives Dene, The Northwest Territory Métis Nation, the Deninu K'ue First Nation and the Lutsël K’é Dene First Nation--is that this enormous area will be preserved to not only feed but to spiritually nourish future generations of Canadians of every heritage.

It is hoped that this arrangement, achieved by the traditional method of consensus building, will not only preserve something of the tribal, ancient ways of life but serve to conserve the many species who share the environment. Protection for one of the few remaining great Northern Boreal forests will not be an easy task, but it is the kind of dramatic step that is needed in the 21st Century, where "Mother Nature is on the run." Sacred sites will be respected, water will remain clean and full of the fish--trout, inconnu, pike, burbot--and that the forests, unbroken by transmission lines, will continue to give protection to the caribou who enter them to birth their young.   

This new agreement is a monumental achievement for the 1st Nation's who were involved, as well as for the governments of NWT and Parks Canada.  I hope the establishment of such a "park," this wild Thaidene Nëné with its thousands of species, will prove to be such a success that it will become the accepted pattern of conservation for governments the world over. 


~ Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Equinox~Fear and Hope

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

We have arrived at the Equinox again, when our local star appears to circle the earth's equator. This is a time of speedy sunsets and a twilight that creeps in earlier day by day. To compare, back on July 23rd in Yellowknife it was 18 hours, 15 minutes and a few seconds, but today, September 23, it's only 12 hours and 17 minutes. On December 23rd, there will be only 4 hours and 57 minutes of light in the city, and most of that will be better defined as "twilight".  Old Sol can barely haul himself above the horizon in December, peaking around at a mere 27 degrees.

The seasons change with emphasis in the North. It's time for that last big hustle of animals, birds  and those humans who still take much of their living from the land to stash what they need in fat and fur in order to get through the coming winter. So things have been in the NWT for a very long time,  through ebbs and flows which the First Nation's noted as feast or famine. Now, here in 2019, it's become obvious that the old cycles are in flux.

The Northwest Territories are warming at 3x the global rate. The worst warming is during winter/spring so now the traditional ice roads become passable later and turn to mud--or water--much sooner than they used to.  The permafrost is thawing, knocking over homes and emptying lakes. The permafrost melt water contains carbons and many other chemicals which have been locked and stored within for thousands of years. Today these are entering the Arctic Ocean at ever increasing rates, changing the chemistry of the sea water. This will eventually affect not only the red blood denizens of the landscape--mammals, birds, fish--and the green/red plant photosynthesizers with who knows what consequences.

On the Arctic coasts and along riverbanks there is greater erosion because, due to the activities of liquid water, they are suddenly in a new, ice-free world. At the same time, new species are arriving from the south; the moose and caribou and the Jack Pine forests alike are sickened by year round insect infestations.  It all reminds me of that old advertisement (for margarine?) where a voice, accompanied by wind, thunder & lightning and summoned by a wave of an angry mother goddesses' hand, declares: "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature."

Never mind, on we go, miraculously alive on this uniquely welcoming planet, spinning on our way around the sun. We're heading into the dark times if we are in the northern hemisphere, or moving into spring and new life if we live in the southern one. We'll be doing the things human beings do every day as we scuttle around, busy, busy, busy! Inside the confines our global cultural shell, we sometimes don't see the big changes, at least, not until water fills up our basement.

Down south of the Canadian border, I rejoiced to see another new thing on Friday last--young people in the streets, carrying signs and asking for some real thoughtful science to be put to the task of dealing with what are the genuine, speedily escalating problems which threaten our world. I was so HAPPY to see those kids out there beside me, full of anger and ideas and so full of hope that they can save our beautiful planet in all its wonder and diversity--as well as themselves. 

Their presence made me want to take some time away from "Mundania" to reflect upon the great and holy mysteries inside the oldest stories. These are the ones mankind mustn't stop telling--the one about the beating heart of All-the-Waters hidden in the cold clean depths of Great Bear Lake or the one about the muskrat who "will be swimming," because she, though small and humble, is the one among all creatures who will be able to do Creator's bidding.

"We did not weave the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together..."  Chief Seattle.

and from the Christian Bible:

"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell within..."  Psalm 24:1



With hope,

~~Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Soul in a Heat Wave

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

I've just returned from a retreat, a week of living in a cabin at an old boy scout camp with a host of other like-minded beings.  The venue had some comforts, unlike the tent and bunk house communal camping I've been used to. Each cabin had electricity, facilities for light cooking, a couple of flush toilets and showers.  There was also a small common room and a deck, which was mostly used at night for star-gazing (meteors!) and heart-to-heart sharing.

Three meals a day were provided by kitchen staff inside a large shed-like building whose cement floor,  not leveled, sloped down the hill. There was a tin roof, and just enough wall to interfere with the airflow. At the bottom of the hill was a rectangular pond created by damming the outflow of a hillside spring. The rooms in my cabin were small and crammed with beds, leaving only a narrow path in which to navigate. In other cabins I visited, the plan was open, with bunk beds lining the walls and a pair of couches in the center.

We had fans, but besides cold showers,  the pond, or the bone-freezing heart-of-the-rock water from the creek, we had no way to get cool. The week busied itself with setting all kinds of records for heat and humidity.

We had come for Spirit and Renewal and Guidance through communion with the Earth. Although I received many blessings, just as I'd hoped, at that camp in the Appalachian foothills, I came face to face with Mother Nature wearing one of her fiercest aspects. Personal survival had become a big part of the lesson plan.

My historical writer self began to manage the situation in it's own bent little way. Lying down in my room wearing next to nothing after lunch, I practiced the venerable hot weather tradition of siesta--don't move an inch or sweat will pop out in sticky freshets from every laboring pore--to collect and categorize various physical sensations, starting with the slightly moldy smell which oozed from the walls during each burning afternoon. "Get Experience" said Jimi Hendrix, and I collected this in a mental notebook, from the drone of the fan to the images that arose during a heat-trance nap. When the fan in my room turned, it blew air at the same temperature as everything else, so there was no sensation of cooling, that little breeze which can bring relief.

On my way to a meeting, I'd wrap a cooling towel around my neck, wear a hat and scurry from one shady spot to the next. I was constantly reminded of the remarks of a friend after a move to Florida:  "The air is 98 degrees and the water is 98 degrees and your blood is 98 degrees..."

Although we weren't living the cushy 21st Century life most of us are used to, we're far more comfortable and a lot safer and better fed than we'd be if we were migrant agricultural laborers, and leagues better off than 1930's dust bowl refugees and today's homeless people on the streets of Mumbai. After all, we didn't have to work in the fields or shovel bubbling macadam onto a road, we only have to attend classes and feed our souls. We are cooked for (brilliantly, I might add) and cleaned up after. We were safe within our community, which had planned this event and which now sheltered us.

To some, this 1950's era venue might seem rough, but we've all camped together in places where you had to walk distance at night, flashlight in hand, just to relieve yourself inside a fiercely aromatic porta-potty, so this new campground is a comfort upgrade. Nevertheless, when we were this hot, there was a definite feeling that we were also getting a lesson that was personal and separate from our studies or spiritual work. This lesson was visceral, teaching that we, without our the protection of our modern house-machines, without the infrastructure  our society provides are puny creatures, completely at the mercy of the good will of others and our planet's disturbed systems.

Stripped of that ever so recent invention, a/c--I remember the days before only too well--you must attend to this sack of biochemistry and water where your proud spirit resides. You must put salt and sugar into your water bottle each time you replenish it--and you need to dump gallons down--to keep heat stroke at bay. Without the shelter of our complex material culture, I was forced into living fully in the present, as I walked from tree shade to tree shade, minute by sweaty, thirsty minute. It was a valuable lesson to remember that I--a human being, stripped of all that customary, comfortable 21st Century armor, only exists at the pleasure of the planet--that fragile terrarium at the bottom of which we all reside.

~~Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi    Books at Amazon

 

Roan Rose   ISBN:  149224158X

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/roan-rose/id1023558994?mt=11

"Juliet Waldron's grasp of time and period history is superb and detailed. Her characters were well developed and sympathetic."


"One of the better Richard III books..."

Caribou & Men

See all my historical novels @

http://julietwaldron.com/books.htm

KOBO

Smashwords

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

The aboriginal people of NWT were hunter/gatherers when the European colonists "discovered" them. The 1st Nations were already on the land, and many said that Creator had shaped men from the mud that was found between the caribou's toes.  In those days, men and animals journeyed through an immense landscape every year, following the caribou that fed and clothed them. Every bit of what they killed was used, every scrap of sinew and hide and meat.

The great herds moved unobstructed across the land like water and wind. The people followed. They original inhabitants didn't kill for "fun;" they killed by necessity. Sometimes, when the game traveled on new path or their numbers declined (for one reason or another) the people starved. In the old days, the human population cycled up and down along with that population of prey animals.

The Woodland Caribou is a kind of specialist, different from the Barren Ground Caribou--the one you see on long harrowing journeys if you watch wildlife shows. The Woodland Caribou live and feed in old growth conifer forests where lichens and mosses grow. Trees of 85 to 150 years of age are the perfect hosts for the aerial and ground plant life on which these caribou depend. This means that undisturbed old growth forests are of prime importance to their survival.

Mining exploration had been going on in the NWT since earliest times, ("Yellowknife" refers to the gold blades some members of that tribe once made) but it wasn't until the 1990's that the digging began in earnest now with heavy loud modern machinery. The data shows it is not coincidental that this is the time when the numbers of the Woodland Caribou began to diminish. Mining didn't begin in earnest until the 1990's. It is not coincidental that this is the time when the numbers of the caribou began to diminish.

Toxic waste is a typical by-product of mining; moreover, that industry does not have a good record of cleaning up after itself anywhere, but logging at first seems to have been the hardest on the caribou. Not only noise, dust and continuous human activity, but the clear-cutting of the ancient forests--both the soil disruption and the removal of the trees -- cut severely into the supply of lichens and mosses, (some aerial, some ground dwelling) upon which the woodland caribou depend.

Roads, pipelines, seismic and now hydro lines create clear highways along which predators such as Lynx, Wolf & Bear can travel deep into what were once once (nearly) impenetrable forests. Now these predators hunt the Boreal Caribou where they have long been accustomed to resting, feeding or giving birth, times when they are particularly vulnerable to attack. This kind of habitat fragmentation affects all migratory animals which now share a planet with humans.


Caribou are named for the places the places where they calve. One herd that is failing spectacularly--much to the dismay of the 1st Nations people whose ancient way of life is threatened--is the Bathhurst herd. Once as many as 500,000, now there are less than 10,000. The numbers continue to fall.

This year there is a proposed permanent road north, again through what was once boreal forests, an extension of Highway 3 north to Whati', the haven in the wilderness for which my characters, Sascho and Yaotl, search after their escape from the Residential School. Families who live in Whati' year round now will be benefited with cheaper goods, but once again, their ancient ally, the caribou, will suffer -- and diminish.

Noise will be another as yet not much studied factor -- which affects the caribou and the other animals who are accustomed to living in the area of the proposed Whati road. Studies done in 2012 by the University of Idaho showed that simply broadcasting a recording of road noise--in this case of a heavily used climb in Glacier National Park--was sufficient to drive animals away. Some bird migrations that were documented as common in the roadless test area used by the "phantom road" study completely ceased. We humans don't have to do much it seems to disrupt Nature's once perfect balance.

Things don't have to be this way. Governments, industry and communities could work together to create local plans and solutions. Federal budget incentives could be used as both carrot and stick to assist caribou recovery. Sustainability must become the mantra for all who live and work in the NWT, if they want the caribou and some part of their ancient way of life to remain. 


~~Juliet Waldron


https://blog.wwf.ca/blog/2018/04/20/governments-argue-risk-woodland-caribou-decline/


Volumetrics, Why noise pollution is more dangerous than we think by David Owen, May 13, 2019, The New Yorker


https://cabinradio.ca/12442/news/environment/how-nwt-proposes-to-protect-wildlife-from-new-whati-road/

Tlicho Spirits

Amazon

KOBO

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

I have to define them as "spirits," because the Tlicho didn't have "ghosts" as the dominant culturesimagines them until after they made contact with Europeans. Digression: during the last 300 years, though, they've taken on some new religious beliefs, in their case, Roman Catholicism. Along with that, I think, came the sort of 'ghosts' that I've read reported in books written by recent researchers into the culture. Those modern spirits are just like ours: the restless and sometimes violent echoes of the bad, the mad, or the murdered. 

Before the Europeans brought their sometimes sad, sometimes scary spooks, the Tlicho could hardly be called "spirit-poor." An almost endless number of supernatural beings inhabited their everyday world, but in ways it took me a while to get the hang of. Mostly these beings are not angry or bent on vengeance. They are simply part of the fabric of the world the Tlicho observed. Staying right relationship with nature, staying in balance, was a central thought in this world view. This careful observation of the world around them, led them to see their position in relation to their environment as a thread woven into a greater fabric, part of which was a vast host of unseen--but--undeniably present beings.

Pre-contact, they were nomadic hunters whose survival depended upon the weather and the movements of animals, so they paid close attention to every detail of their surroundings as they moved about the dè--modern Canada's NWT.

Yearly, they traveled across an immense territory following the annual migrations of birds, fish, and caribou. Their prey, however, was not a simple commodity. The animals collectively and individually had spirit, just as the men who hunted them did. If a hunter disrespected the caribou, they might walk another path the following year and not come the expected way.

It was believed that the caribou willingly gave their bodies to the hunters. As one should when given a gift, the giver should be gratefully and politely thanked. This was done with certain prescribed rituals (which the Tlicho saw simply as "rules of behavior") for the sacrifice of their living bodies. Those gigantic herds were not just food animals, but fellow beings, in relationship with their Tlicho hunters, emanations of the "Great Spirit," all beings going about their business as instructed by the first great Tlicho magician, Yamǫǫ̀zha.*1

Over centuries, The People walked the same trails and canoed the intricate network of waterways. The landscape itself, from forest to tundra, was filled with a species of entity which I first learned about in long ago Latin classes, supernatural beings which the Romans referred to as "Numen." These spirits of place might occupy rocks, trees, camping spots, waterfalls and lakes, all of which frequently had a "power" or "powers" associated with them. 

Small tokens of respect are still left after camping near one of these places, or after fishing, or even simply as one travels past a sacred rock or waterfall. This is called "paying the land." According too Allice Legat: "People leave on site something they value and use, such as coinage, spruce boughs, or rosaries. A student gave a pencil because it was important to her success in school." Further, "...if human beings ignore rules and do not show respect, they will probably have a difficult time because these entities may withdraw their assistance."* (from Walking the Land, Feeding the Fire.)  (*1)

Spirits could sometimes be malevolent. One kind called "weyèedii or 'animal-beings' were "regarded as dangerous, and consequently, always avoided. Through dreaming and the acquisition of ı̨k’ǫǫ̀ or “medicine”, sometimes “power,” “knowledge,” or “luck”, a person could prepare to deal with the world," and the varied powers which inhabit it.(*2)

Spirits of earth and rock were not invulnerable. In order to explain the "continuing death and decay" in the toxic areas which continue to exist around the polluting Rayrock Uranium mine, Elder Romie Wetrade told a story.* Rayrock, he said, used to be called "The Happy Place," because hunters who traveled through the area felt liking singing. When the mine opened, however, in the 1950's, the happy spirits were driven away by blasting and other human activities. The closing down of the mine has not brought them back, either. Displaced by the tearing up of the earth and breaking of rock, these once joyous spirits are now presumed to be fading, homeless wanderers. The very character of these spirits requires a "home place." 

Spirits could be wind or water as well as rock. One modern story I read concerned a wind coming up so heavily that a gathering of elders and teenagers was trapped beside a lake when their float plane could not take off. While the campers waited it out, an elder told them stories about the wind, "in the boreal forests and on the tundra and on large lakes." When the stories had been told, another elder "built a raft, placed burning spruce boughs on it," and pushed it out onto the lake.  As he did so, he asked for "calm winds and a safe journey. It only took two hours for the wind to die down..." so that their journey could safely continue.  (*2)

Where I stand is holy

Holy is the ground 

Forest, mountain river

Listen to the sound 

Great Spirit circles all around me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ-tNr6nW5E

~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com/
Now mobile friendly!
See all my historical novels, Ricardian, Mozart Collection, American Revolution,  Pennsylvania Victorian and historical fantasy @ 

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?Query=Juliet+Waldron

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Juliet+Waldron

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Juliet+Waldron?_requestid=1854149

*1

This Tlicho story reminds me of the "The Crab Who Played with Sea" in the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling. Here, all the animals "played the play the great magician taught them at the very beginning." Kipling probably borrowed this notion from the indigenous people of India where he did military service. 

~In Europe, all through the 19th century and into the 20th, many historians, artists  and literary figures avidly collected, studied, and wrote and made collections of "world-wide" folkloric traditions. To me, all these tales of every nation appear so intertwined--culturally altered echoes of common themes-- that they must be part of our common "out of Africa" psychic past.

~In Miyasaki's Spirited Away, there is a character who befriends the heroine that is a wandering spirit. In this case, it is that of a river which was relegated to underground channels when a city built over it. This seems to be a Japanese version of the Rayrock story of the way things sometimes happen with displaced spirits. This particular spirit has managed to stay positive about humans, which is not always the case.

*2
https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/walking-the-land-feeding-the-fire

Walking the Land, Feeding the Fire, Knowledge and Stewardship Among the Tlicho Dene 
by Allice Legat

 
*3 
From The Tlicho Nation homesite:
https://tlichohistory.ca/en/stories/tlicho-way-life