'Feels like home': Mohawk and Cree collaborate on teepee project
A place for Cree patients and others to gather, cook traditional food in Kahnawake
For Maggie Brien and her mom Elizabeth, it is very clear how much Maggie's son Elias loves spending time at a new cultural space in Kahnawake, Que., near Montreal.
And while he can't share his excitement with words, Elias finds other ways.
"He really likes coming here. He knows now where we are heading … when we get off the highway, he immediately … gets excited," said Maggie, who is from the northern Quebec Cree community of Mistissini.
"Sometimes you can hear him laughing," said Elizabeth. "He knows that he's going to see people here. He knows that he's going to see other kids too."
A special feast and dedication was held Friday in Kahnawake for a unique, cross-cultural project called the Mohawk-Cree Teepee. Two permanent, hard-walled teepees have been built on Mohawk land near Montreal.
They will allow Cree patients like Elias and others — including Mohawk and Indigenous patients, students, people involved with the justice system and those healing from addictions — a more culturally safe place to gather, cook traditional food and do traditional activities near Montreal.
The project is being jointly funded by the Cree communities of Mistissini and Waswanipi, as well as the Kahnawake Shakotiia'takehnhas Community Services (KSCS). The teepees are located on the land of the Patton family in Kahnawake, Que.
Teepee dedications
One of the teepees is dedicated to young Elias Brien. The other is dedicated to Mohawk matriarchs Beverley and Josephine Patton.
For Maggie, who has been in the south with Elias for close to 15 years, having a bush camp to go to and be immersed in Cree culture near Montreal means a lot.
"It feels like home … like home away from home. I really like coming here. I forget that I'm still in the city when I'm here," said Maggie.
Bush camp began in 2020
This urban bush camp project began thanks to the efforts of Cree husband and wife Philip Matoush and Sharon Pepabano, who have lived and worked in Montreal for more than 20 years.
Philip works as a driver for Cree Patient Services with the Cree health board, driving Cree patients to and from medical appointments in the Montreal area.
In July of 2020, the couple and a group of volunteers, started organizing traditional cookouts with Cree patients at Camping D'aoust, a privately-run park in Hudson, about a 50-minute drive west of Montreal.
It was immediately a hit, said Matoush.
"Some [patients] can't go home for months … so it feels like there's a second home for them. They feel happy … the smell of the smoke … It feels just like healing to them, especially eating the wild meat," said Matoush.
But there were limitations with the original setup. Getting Cree patients all the way out to Hudson was a challenge. Getting wheelchairs into the teepee, with its spruce-bough covered floor was almost impossible. The air inside the teepee was often too smokey for patients with health issues, like Elias and others.
So when Mohawk friend Bobby Patton came to the Hudson teepee for a cook-out and offered a permanent home for a traditional camp in Kahnawake, Matoush and his wife immediately said yes.
"It's Cree and Mohawk working together as one, helping each other. That's what I see," said Matoush.
For Patton, the Mohawk-Cree teepee project will be a place to offer much-needed healing services for Indigenous peoples struggling with substance abuse and justice issues so often caused by residential school and colonial trauma.
It will also be a place where Indigenous peoples needing to carry out community hours can do so, while connecting to their culture and healing.
"We want to bring them here [so] they can learn the cultural ways and bring them back to who they are," said Patton, adding they want Cree and Mohawks to share their traditional knowledge such as hide cleaning, smoking and snowshoe making.
"That's why we call it bringing two nations together," said Patton.
For Elias's grandmother Elizabeth these new permanent teepees will allow her grandson to more fully participate in traditional Cree activities and social gatherings.
Both the Cree and Mohawk teepee in Kahnawake are wheelchair accessible and built in a way to keep them free of smoke.
"This project means a lot to us, because now we can take Elias in anytime," said Elizabeth.
"He can come in here and join other people instead of sitting in a car."
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