Pokegama

           My mom said that this year she wants to enjoy winter instead of waiting for it to pass. She said she wanted to go snowshoeing and skiing. Another thing she wants to do is go ice fishing. My mom loves to fish during the summer but she has not gone ice fishing since she was a kid. She is never on the ice for very long; once she hears the ice crack she usually gets off quickly. On the warmest weekend of the winter so far, my mom decided she wanted to try ice fishing. My dad and I loaded a sled filled with ice fishing gear in our truck and my mom and dad left to go fishing. My sister her friend and her friends dad met them on the ice. I left later in my own vehicle because I had basketball game that day and would have to leave early. When I got out there all of the holes were drilled through the ice and my dad was working on setting up the ice house. I got rods ready for my mom, sister, and her friend and they got to fishing right away. Very few fish were caught but everyone had fun throwing a football and enjoying a unusually warm winter day.

Lake of the Woods

My dad, uncle, grandfather, a family friend and me recently spent three days near Baudette Minnesota at Lake of the Woods. The first day we took two vehicles up to our cabin we were staying at. We left at four and finally found the cabin at nine. When we got there it was much more than we expected. When we walked in it felt like it was someone's house, a full kitchen, living room, bathroom and five beds. When we got up the next day we got to our ice house at about eight. The first fish of the trip was a Tullibee. On the first day we caught around 100 fish between the five of us, most were Walleyes or Saugers. My uncle and I caught 5 Tullibee and I caught a 12 inch perch. The first day we caught six fish over 23 inches my dad caught the biggest walleye of the trip at 29 inches. The last fish of the day I caught on a bobber I left in the whole as we were picking up all our stuff getting ready to leave for the day. It was a 25 inch walleye my biggest walleye of the trip.


My dad's 29 inch walleye

My 25 inch walleye



 We got off the ice an hour after sunset and drove back to the cabin. We kept 20 fish the first day and once we got back to the cabin we cleaned and cooked the fish, after we were finished eating we still had extra fish we ate the next day. In the morning of our last day we got to our ice house 30 minutes before sunrise. The first fish of that day was an Eel pout the only one we caught all trip. The last day of fishing was slower than the first but we caught 10 fish over 20 inches, including a 33 inch northern that tangled up every line in the ice house. We had to cut all of our lines to untangle them and after all that we had to release it because it was in a protected slot. It took us about ten minutes to get all the rods how they were before the northern. We left the ice house at four and came back to our cabin to grab our gear; we left our cabin at five and got back to Duluth at 11:30. 

What I learned from the Sherman Alexia project

             Sherman Alexei is a poet, writer and performer. He is the author of the book we are reading in class, Flight. I was in a group with Jack Baker, Jake Serrie, Dan Kulas, Stefan Granados, and Hanvit. Sherman was born 1966 on the Spokane Indian reservation. He attended school outside the reservation where he was the only Indian. He currently live in Seattle with his wife and two sons. Our group also learned about the Ghost Dance and the Sand Creek Massacre.
              A Ghost Dance is an important ritual in the messianic religion that many native American groups used to summon spirits to help them with cultural revival. Two other ways to describe it is , as a plea for supernatural intervention in their lives by people whose culture has been destroyed, or as an effort by a minority to regain power and dignity that will give them a sense of meaning and stability to their lives. Jack Wilson or Wovoka was the prophet that had a vision from god. In That vision god told him the earth would die and come back alive; all the white people would die; and all Native Americans dead or alive would be reunited free of death, diseases, and suffering. For the prophecy to come true Native Americans would have to follow Wovoka's Doctrine of pacifism and take part in the sacred dance Wovoka taught them. Wovoka went from a prophet to the messiah and the religion he created spread to multiple other tribes. Wovoka's prophecy never happened and tribes that followed his religion were forced onto reservations.


Sources
Alexie, Sherman. "Fiction and Poetry Award Winner: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Horn Book   Magazine [Plain City] Jan. 2009:      25-28.
Print.
McLoughlin, William G. "Ghost Dance Movements: Some Thoughts on Definition Based on Cherokee History."   Ethnohistory 37.1: 25. Print.