Chisasibi Week One : Day Five: July 11: The Sweat Lodge

Before I say anything else, I want to clarify that a sweat lodge is NOT demon worship. I ask that anyone reading this leaves all perjudiceses with these opening statements. I`m also going to be writing about the sprituality of the ceremony as if it were facct, but that doesn`t mean I believe it.

Okay? Thank you.

So, the funny thing is that Chris only just mentioned going to a sweat to us like two days ago, then BAM! an other one came up. Now, the thing about sweats is that they are ``scared,`` so girls have to wear skrits, which I didn`t have. So I had to try wearing a house skirt. There were two, which was lucky because Catherine and I both needed one. Unfortunetlly, neither was really long enough for me, but Cindy came to my rescue and let me use her skrit (which was super long and really nice) and she wore a house skrit.  Catherine and I have agreed that at the soonist possible momnet, we are going to go buy skrits together.

Anywho, we all got to the site supre early, so we just hung around. At one point we helped stack some wood that was to help keep the scared fire bruning for youth week. Some of the others and I went into where the fire was burning ( in a tee-pee) and hung out with Nathan, whose job it was to keep the fire.

Unfortunately, Talia was on her ``moon time`` so she couldn`t do the sweat with us, for fear she would over-power the ceremony and everything would go out of wack. Example: if you asked for healing, you might get the opposite.

Because we were so early, we got to see them light the fire for the grandfathers (a bunch of rocks that spritis come to inhabit). Now, the actual sweat lodge was inside an other bigger lodge, so it could be left up year round.  We went inside the outer lodge, and watched the prep for the ``pircing`` ceremony that the cheif and his grandson were doing for the sake of the youth during youth week. (Kinda like a flesh offering.)

Then they were ready to start the actual sweat. Now, there are four rounds in total, one for each direction (East, South, west and North.) Round one it was really crowded. Now the whole point of the sweat is pray and clensing, and while I did end up praying, it was to My Lord God, and I don`t know if the Cree people were praying to the same God or not, although they did keep addressing God in the sigular, which surprised me. I thought they`d talk more about different kinds of spirits.

They have very good reason to call it a sweat though. I don`t think I`ll mind saunas at all after this.

Anyway, round one was the east, I don`t remeber which spriti animal it was, but the cree people prayed for the enfants of the community.

Oh yeah, whenever you enter or exit the sweat lodge, you need to crawl on all fours. Part of it is because the logde is really low, the other part is that the lodge is symblois for mother earth`s womb.
........yeah........

Round two: I went back in early (there are breaks between rounds) and watched the grandfathers getting brought in again, but this time, one women was sprinkleing something over the rocks that made them go all sparkily. It turned out to be tabacco for blessing the rocks. And speaking of tabacco, I`m surprised I never coughed. A lot of people were smoking the entire time (outside) and there was sweet grass and stuff put on the rocks inside. Not to mention that other people who were smokers were coughing queit a bit......

Anywho, round two there was a bit more space in the sweat, it got hotter than the first round (of course) and the direction was south, and they prayed for the youth. I also noticed that there was more guteral yelling than the 1st round.

Then break again. I was actually surprised how level headed and aware I was, despite maybe being slightly light headed.

Round three we had even more room, the direction was west, and they prayed for the adults. Julis ended up laying on my lap for a bit, because when the heat becomes to much, they say to lay down on your SIDE to cool off. (and it really is way cooler!!!!) I had to bend my head down a few times, but I never laid down all the way while the door was closed. (It is pitch black inside, but I kept my eyes closed the whole time, so I wouldn`t start imaging I was seeing things.)

An other important thing to remember is to breath in through mouth and out through your nose. I had to keep whiping my nose with my towel because it kept running, but my sienceses were really clear after.

I wanted to stay and do the frouth round, but Chris said we needed to head home for our 12am curfew.
On the way back, we picked up a wagon off the side pf the highway to use for gorceiry shopping.

I wouldn`t mind doing an other sweat, but I hope I could finish the next one.