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One month on the Nahanni

“It's really just extraordinary,” said Rochelle Yendo in Fort Simpson on Thursday. “I can't explain the feeling I have right now.”

Yendo, a 19-year-old woman from Wrigley, had just stepped out of a 40-foot moosehide boat that she and a team of others had taken 400 km from Virginia Falls, past sacred sites and hunting grounds, to Nahanni Butte and Fort Simpson.

Rickey Andrew works on an oar lock for the moosehide boat that 16 men and women from first nations in the Deh Cho, as well as the Shotagotine First Nation, travelled in and with for a month this summer on the Nahanni River of Forgiveness Trip. John Bingham/90th Parallel Productions photo

The Nahanni River of Forgiveness Trip took its 16 participants, men and women from first nations in the Deh Cho as well as the Shotagotine First Nation, close to a month to complete. Yendo says she’d drop everything and do it again in a heartbeat.

The paddlers were greeted in Fort Simpson by a huge, welcoming crowd, and by drum dancers, and with a gunshot salute.

“The drums have our heart beating and there's people all around,” said Yendo, her voice slightly trembling – she felt elated and said her compatriots did as well.

“I've learned so many things about moosehide, sewing the moosehide, about the different groups coming together to complete this and here we are in Fort Simpson.”

The Nahanni River of Forgiveness Trip marks the first time in 100 years that a moosehide boat has been paddled down the Nahanni River, according to the trip organizers, citing Dehcho elders. The trip was filmed by 90th Parallel Productions, and the documentary will eventually air on CBC Docs.

She said the trip was not easy, but the group’s positivity was behind its perseverance.

Robert Horessai, left, Leon Andrew and Rickey Andrew inspect the work being done on the moosehide boat that 16 men and women from first nations in the Deh Cho, as well as the Shotagotine First Nation, travelled in and with for a month this summer on the Nahanni River of Forgiveness Trip.

“Whenever one of us would feel down, we would go to one another and cheer them up and put some positivity into the day to keep on going.”

Lory-Ann Bertrand, from Nahanni Butte, says the moosehide boat didn’t have drag like you’d find with modern fibreglass canoes.

“Once the boat hit the river, it would take off like really fast – when it takes off, it really takes off,” said Bertrand.

She says it was hard to get used to having a camera crew around at the beginning, and being on camera, but she got used to it by the end.

Both Bertrand and Yendo said they made friendships with their companions that will last forever.

“There are some things out there that happen for certain people – something in the sky, something in the weather – that people would take as a little sign of why we were here.”

Bertrand, who also says she’d love to have the opportunity to do a trip like this again, said a lot of people she talked with before going couldn’t imagine doing such a thing – but for her, it was going back to her roots.

“I just think of it as how our people lived for so many years before colonization. We used to live and breathe out there. So, it's not really anything different.”