Elders teach the finer points — and spiritual significance — of Snow Snake

All week inside the Rail River Folk School in Bemidji great deals of individuals strove scraping and sanding long pieces of wood into snow snakes, prepared to be released in competitors.

Keeping warm by a big heating system in the corner of the room Frank Sprague and Kevin Finney of Great Lakes Lifeways Institute in Michigan explained the finer points of their building, consisting of the 5 variations of snow snake style. Some carry out much better when there’s a great deal of snow on the track and others on icy surface areas.

Cultural significance

Some non-Indigenous individuals might acknowledge snow snake from their days as a Boy Scout. However, for Indigenous countries the video game isn’t just a sport, it has excellent cultural significance.

That’s where Sprague, a Gun Lake Potawatomi older is available in.   

“I’ve been doing this about 13 years and for me it’s a sense of community and it’s a sense of working with the spirit and doing things in a good way,” Sprague said.

Snow snakes vary anywhere from 2 ½-6 ½ feet long. They can be made from several woods. The real video game can take various types. Among the eastern Nations video games of range are popular however in northwest Minnesota throwers pursue precision. The playing field is a track leveled by pulling a log throughout it.

“The farthest thing that’s ever been thrown by a person is a snow snake in the world,” said Sprague.

Design pointers

For this workshop Sprague and Finney brought a rack of precut wood with them for participants to style their own snow snakes. Elders got very first option.

Discussing style Finney held up a completed example, accentuating its center.

“If we actually set this down on a really flat surface, it would only touch in a little area of about maybe 6, 8 inches right here. That’s ideal,” said Finney. “And so as we work it down, we fine-tune it increasingly more that method. So, when you take a seat among the guidelines of sculpting, we inform everyone, and this is truly essential is you can take it off, however you can’t put it back.”

After workshop-goers picked their unformed snow snake they utilized sanders and other wood-shaving tools to begin the shaping procedure. 

“That takes some time to knock down that wood and to be gentle with it, and we’re thinking of the outcome of it,” said Sprague. “And we’re putting life into these snow snakes, and it’s a part of us and so we do these things in a good way, and we try to be in a good mind when we work with our snow snakes and we work with our communities.”

The Snow Snake origin story

Bob Shimek has actually been making snow snakes for thirty years. He’s likewise been sharing their development story. He says it informs how Fog Woman brought snow snake to the Anishinabe individuals at a time when they required help.

Some state this taken place on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Others state it took place on Red Lake. Shimek says he believes “maybe it occurred at both of them.”

He said the legend of Fog Woman explains life running out balance with individuals putting their own interests above that of their households and neighborhoods. And it speaks about bring back that balance.

“For us around here it has to do with what some call the rolling hoop, some would describe it as the circle of life,” Shimek said.

According to Shimek, Fog Woman informed individuals to head out into the bush when the leaves had actually fallen from the trees with their Indian tobacco. She said they would be assisted by the little individuals to a stick or sapling which they would cut and reclaim with them. Then they were to peel the bark, ravel the stick and embellish it. Then await the snow.

Shimek said Fog Woman informed the Anishinabe that’s when they need to carry out an event with offerings of food and tobacco.

“When the snow comes you fashion a hoop you fashion a circle. That’s maybe 2 ½, 3 feet across, and you have that ceremony. And you ask permission for these ginebig, these gooniikaa-ginebig, these snow snakes to come out and play in the snow,” he said. “Because usually ginebig is sleeping under a rock or a log someplace during this time of the year when there’s snow on the ground.”

And then they were to play a video game where they try to move their snow snake through a rolling hoop. In so doing, a huge snake, a spirit Fog Woman brought with her, would enjoy. According to the legend a huge snake lives under all of the towns.

Shimek said when the Anishinabe play these video games the huge snake “will make sure we have plenty in the up-and-coming spring, summer and fall harvest of all the different gifts. You know, our Indian foods, or our medicines, our wild game, or our meat or furs, hides all these different things, will be there in abundance for us.”

That custom will become part of the Indigenous Winter Games through Saturday at Paul Bunyan Park in Bemidji. There will be a number of kinds of snow snake occasions with rewards, food and activities for any ages.

For a number of the workshop individuals this will be the very first time they get to take on their own personal snow snake. The senior citizens state if the liveliness from the workshop rollovers to the video games the huge snake underground will be rather happy.