Native heritage rekindled at New Year's teepee party

While most people last night were looking ahead to the next 1,000 years, one group of Ottawa area residents spent their New Year's looking 1,000 years back in time.

They rang in 2000 sipping Tim Horton's coffee and roasting marshmallows in a smoke-filled teepee in some woods between Bells Corners and Kanata.

"Being in a teepee, it's what the people would have been doing here 1,000 years ago," said a parka-clad Louise Conty. "Normally we wouldn't do anything for New Year's, but this is a special New Year's, so we wanted to do something different."

The 34-year-old Kanata resident and her husband, Stephen Conty, who is of Mi'kmaq heritage, thought of throwing their teepee party about two months ago. They have owned the five-metre high canvas teepee for more than a year and use it for special ceremonies four times a year at a reserve in Sheguindah on Manitoulin Island, about 60 kilometres southwest of Sudbury.

Adjusting his rabbit and raccoon skin hat, family friend Giokimamejsey (Chief Kind Eagle) explains that oral traditions have it that his ancestors, the Odawa, lived here (like this) in teepees hunting and fishing 1,000 years ago.

He says the Ottawa region is the southeastern limit of the Odawa settlement. Archeological evidence has traced Algonkian-speaking settlements in parts of southern Ontario as far back as 10,000 years. But the local historical evidence is scant on the particulars of 1,000 years ago.

Chief Kind Eagle, the Contys and Mr. Conty's 17-year-old son Cory stuck it out for the whole night. About a dozen visitors dropped in yesterday. Most were friends, but "a few skiers stopped to asked what we were doing," he said.

His son Cory said most of his high school friends were probably out drinking last night, but he wasn't wistful: "I'd rather be here, I do enough drinking during the school year anyways."

The four plan to stay camped out in the teepee until Monday, "or until a conservation officer evicts us."

Continued Mr. Conty: "After going through all the trouble of putting this thing up (which took five hours) we might as well enjoy it."

Inside the teepee last night a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sleeping bag, plastic coolers stocked with peanut butter and Coca Cola bottles, and a cell phone with a Christmas ring stood out as modern relics amidst traditional items -- deerskin tobacco pouches, ceremonial cedar kindling and sage and eagle feathers for a smudging ceremony.

"We have to mix it up because we don't know enough about the old ways," lamented Mr. Conty, referring to the legacy of government assimilation attempts and laws banning native traditions.