News from Fort Providence Community Prayer in a Long Summer
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November 14, 2023Forest fires have been in the news across the world this summer. Here in the NWT, the territorial government had to pay out 4 times the budgeted cost for firefighting. Sixty percent of the territory’s population were evacuated because of the fire risk.
Here at Fort Providence we were blessed: we were one of the few communities that did not have to evacuate. Instead, we hosted about 100 evacuees from Yellowknife and Hay River for about three weeks. Most of them camped in the local campground. Our Friendship Centre prepared three meals a day for them, and during the evacuation from Yellowknife, 12 volunteers from our Friendship Centre made and gave out 1,000 sandwiches and lunch kits to those evacuating by car to Alberta destinations through Ft. Providence.
It has been a very warm and dry summer here, and people were very concerned. So our parish organized a community prayer service to pray for rain. Several community members said that a local elder had recommended a novel way to pray.
The Dene people here have a special custom – “feeding the fire”. A fire is lit, elders offer prayers, and then each person present puts something into the fire: tobacco, food, or some fire and smoke from a wildfire are shown in Hay River, Northwest other small meaningful item. The elder I mentioned above suggested praying by “feeding the water”. So in our little service we offered our prayers for rain, and each person placed a pinch of spruce needles into a bowl of water set out in the church.
No one rushed the gesture. Some first made the Sign of the Cross, others held up the needles to the sky, others just stood in quiet prayer for a moment before placing the needles in the water. To end the service we went from the church to the dock on the Mackenzie River, just a short walk away. There we emptied out the bowl of water into the river with a prayer that God would see these offerings as they floated down the river, and recognize that they represented the prayers of all of us.
We got rain only about two weeks later. But the memory of the devout prayer that day is still strong.