Jesse Fiddler

I want to show some of the cool videos that Shawna put together this weekend. These are AMVs which are Anime Music Videos. We watch a lot of Naruto episodes together and she put these videos together from her favourite tunes and characters from the show. Pretty cool huh? Well enough talking and take a look yourself. BTW she did these all in Windows Movie Maker.

Man or Animal - starring Sasori

Mr. Jones - starring Deidara

Animal I Have Become - Sasuke
She made this one for me... cool mix of Sasuke :D

Good morning, good morning....

I just got up from my second morning sleep-in. Angie was up at 5:30 this morning, so I got up too. Then we both did our emails. So of course Brian was awake at the same time so we were emailing all morning, lol. Crazy eh. After getting the kids to school, I took my second nap. Here we go again and time for another shot at work.

Well its almost winter road season. I heard they are up to Magiss Lake which is getting pretty close. The in-laws will hopefully be driving up the road for X-mas.

Man that winter road is wicked. Me and Angie were getting a kick out of that time we drove up with Nash, Damin, Les, and Wyatt. This was a couple of years ago.

Anyways, we went into Winnipeg to buy vehicles for my best cuz Nash and my aunt Damin. She picked a Ford Ranger and he got a Chrysler Intrepid. So we were driving up the Red Lake road and then we hit the winter road. We knew we were in trouble because the snow was so deep and any time we stopped the car we would get stuck. So the entire trip was filled with ramming our way through the snow without trying to lose momentum. There was some crazy ass bumps and ruts all along the way with all our gear getting shifted in the vehicles. I must of hit my head 10 times on the roof.

Nash was driving his moms truck with her and I was close behind with the rest of the gang. Close to North Spirit Lake, Nash tells his Mom to watch out because they were going to hit a bump soon. I don't know if she heard him or not, but she just kept doing her thing which only Damin can do. At the time she was enjoying her 2 Litre bottle of Sunny D.

So she was taking this big drink out of this humongous bottle and then they hit the bump. BAAAMMM! Sunny D was everywhere. It was all over the cab of the truck. It was all over the windows, the ceiling, seats, and all over Damin LOL. Once we got close to Sandy Lake at the check point, Nash was telling me the story and showing me the juice all over the truck and I couldn't stop laughing. LMAO it was so funny. Of course she didn't think it was funny, lol. It wasn't till we got to the checkpoint that we found out the road was actually closed. We had a lot of close calls with spinning the car out a few times, barely getting through the slush, and barely making it out of the ruts. Man those vehicles took a beating.

Yeah, see what happens this winter road. Something crazy always happens. We should publish a book with stories and pictures of all the winter road craziness.

Have a good Monday

This is a collection of different notes taken from my trip. The only time I had to write was before and after the conference since it was so busy. If you want to read my report, it's available at http://media.knet.ca/node/3238 and pictures at http://media.knet.ca/v/UNDP/

A lot of this is pretty boring I warn you. If you want some entertainment, read my wife's page at http://angiemorris.myknet.org

Dec 10

Airplanes - Flying Home
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Anyways, I'm writing this on a jet from Kota Kinabalu to Hong Kong. I just finished meeting a group of extraordinary people with many purposes and things in common. Primarily
among them how we can benefit our own peoples using this same technology that I'm writing on.

Lots of learning happened in both ways. I learned so much from all the people here and saw many directions that our own people can take.

Agriculture
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Many of the Asian communities are very self-reliant. They have their agriculture and combine the harvests of the jungle with their agriculture to create a healthy, varied, and delicious diet. Our hosts at the Labang Longhouse was David Labang and his sister Lucy Bolan. Before our first meal, Lucy said that they can't provide a fixed menu for us, their guests during the week. They could only offer us what the land and people
can bring to us that day. Outside of the longhouse, they had fish ponds where they stocked fresh fish. There was also many farms and rice paddys/fields where many fruits, vegetables, spices where grown.

When I see and experience this I want the same for our own people in our communities. Yes we still gather from the land but not enough to sustain us on a daily basis for our growing population. We need to find new solutions that come from us as a family, community, people, and nation which doesn't entirely rely on what the outside world can shove to us.

Many of the easiest choices that are brought into our communities are unhealthy, quick fix consumptions that destroy us in the long run. If we are going to try to make ourselves healthier overall, we will have to sacrifice these "potato chip" solutions in favour of more beneficial, hard working options.

Agriculture and food options is what concerns me first since that is what we are feeding our bodies, then mind, emotions, and spirit.

Finance
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My second concern for self-reliance is our financial resources since that is what generates the material things our bodies rely on. We currently rely on the government to provide us with the funds and incomes that drive our economies. They money is pumped through our communities and then back out through the corporate system of the colonies. This money can be stored in our own financial system and be used to establish our own economic system. Just think of the millions of dollars each community passes through every day and week.

Outside banks and financial institutions take a bite out of each dollar which goes through their doors. We should establish our own Credit Union with all our Aboriginal Communities, Businesses, and Individuals as shareholders. We can take all this money being pumped into our communities and store it in a Credit Union.

When the government money eventually trickles down to nothing, we will have money to invest in worthwhile operations that benefit our communities instead of the corporate agenda of big outside companies. Already there is a void of financial services in our communities and companies like Northern are filling this void and making a profit out of our situation.

Dec 5 - Arriving in Miri, Malaysia
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Had a pleasant morning. The sun started rising at around 5:30. 6:00 I went downstairs to see if there was breakfast. Breakfast wasn't until 7 so I went for a morning walk. I picked a direction and went uphill. Nicely enough I walked straight to a local park that had lots of nice walkways and scenery. There was people out and doing their morning exercises and jogs in the park. One thing I noticed from all my travels is that people are very fashionable wherever you go. Myself I'm a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy, but it's time to bring out the khakis and polo shirts, lol. Anyways, the park was nice and there was an observation tower that I climbed up and got to see a nice view of the city. Lots of greenery everywhere. Lots of animals everywhere, birds chirping-singing, roosters cookooing in the morning and dogs barking here and there. The humidity is alot higher here and found myself sweating just from a morning walk. And this is the coldest part of the day too. I'll have to avoid going out during midday.

At 7 , the restaurant was open and I was the first one there for coffee and breakfast. It was simple, 1 egg, beans, sausage/weiner, and light toast. A couple of other guys came in and had their breakfast and started talking at the next table. I recognized their conversation on ICTs and the conference and joined them with coffee. Jianhua (Ayoe) is an Akha from China/Thailand . The Akha are indigenous to that area of Mainland Southeast Asia. Sanjay is Indian and works with and studies with the University of Hawaii . The discussions was mainly about the Akha and their language, writing system and culture. There was lots of talk about the diversity of the languages and the similarities between them all. Alot of the languages in Asia have a common core language or derivative. Sanjay says a lot of it comes from Sanskrit just as most European language are derived from Latin. He says that even Russian is very similar to Sanskrit in its grammar and some words. So it was an interesting conversation since there are so many languages in each country including the indigenous languages. The Akha have some similar problems to us in that they don't have a standardized writing system for their language and they kind of borrow the best parts of different writing systems and use it for their own. But this makes it difficult when they want to use computers and send emails and such. The same goes from syllabics in our area. Its hard to use syllabics on your computer without customizing it to work with syllabics properly. Very common language issues all around the globe.

A few other people joined us. There are 2 guys from Cambodia, Nyan and Sovann. There was one lady called Ruuka who works with UNDP and is from Indonesia. The last guy to join us was Stephanus from Indonesia. The pronunciation of names is alot harder to memorize here, even more so because it looks different from the way you spell them and read them phonetically.

So yeah, lots to grok and figure out our place here.

Good Morning,

Here I am, sitting back at my comp with my coffee and my wife/co-worker by my side bugging the crap out of me. I can tell she missed me, lol. Its nice to be home again. We spent the evening last nice going over the pictures and the things I brought home and telling them the stories of all the people I met.

That was the best part of the trip I would say, was meeting all these new interesting friends from all over. Everyone had their own story of their indigenous people living in this world with different challenges. Some more than others.

cal posted some of my pics on the K-Net Media site while I stopped by the K-Net office in Sioux. Check out http://media.knet.ca/v/UNDP/ for the pics. I'm in the process of adding some captions right now.

Have a good day for everyone home and those out and about doing their pre-Christmas travels.

Jesse

Yeah really, I don't get to say that too often. Angie, Mya, Keenan and me are heading out today for the cities of Sioux and T-Bay. Hopefully we'll get to see all the different fam's out there. Shawna's staying at Kayla's so she doesn't miss school. Angie is coordinating the Youth ICT workshop in Fort William this coming week.

Monday morning I will be jumping on the jet plane and heading to the final destination of Bario, Malaysia for a conference - http://ebarioknowledgefair.org/ . I'm going to go share the work that our communities and K-Net have been doing for the past x number of years. If you didn't know, we really are on the leading edge of community based technology and usage up here in the sticks. I'm really grateful that I can do the kind of job I do up here and get opportunities like this trip. If you want to check out my presentation, see it in my gallery at
http://jessefiddler.myknet.org/?q=gallery&g2_itemId=8149

Have a good weekend everyone. Send me requests if you want something from the other side of the world.

Jesse

I hate it when you write a long email and only a couple of people are gonna see. So mashwell paste it here eh. Its a quick story of the satellite re-aligning we did. For you Knerds out there.
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The satellite training went good and went right to the point. Most of us
already had experience in the same or similar satellite installations.
Adi did up the training and instructions so we were all familiar with the
equipment, and steps involved with re-aligning the dish and reprogramming
the equipment. He prepared all the programs and boot files necessary so
that our time setting the sites up were minimal. He prepared all the DVB
receivers ahead of time to allow for the changeover as well. So all the
hard stuff was taken care of him and Terence and made our jobs easier.

We all started the re-alignments on Monday. John and Lyle went to Slate
Falls first. I was already in Muskrat Dam as thats where I live so I got
the dish re-aligned and working by Lunch on Monday. We ran into a hitch
were the MRTG in Sioux had to be reprogrammed and it ended up taking the
sites offline that we did already. I left Muskrat by that time so I
couldn't go back and reprogram the equipment. Sadly they are still
offline until I get back there on Wednesday.

On Monday morning and afternoon the weather threw us for a loop and we
had to cancel some charters we were going to take. I was going to go to
Sachigo Mon afternoon but had to cancel. So I headed to Sioux but got
stuck in Round Lake for a couple of hours because of lack of seats on my
flight. While I was in Round Lake I called up the technician Danny
Kanakeesic there and we started working on the dish while I was in town.
We were able to repoint the dish and reprogram the receivers there and got
it working that evening. Since Adi fixed the problem we had before, the
dish went online and is still working. So I made my flight to Sioux
Monday Night.

Tuesday morning we all met at Robins at 7:00 am and were all set to take
our Charters up to Kas, Webequie and some other sites I forget. The
charters got cancelled because of freezing rain. So we headed back to the
office. Lyle and Jeannie ended up driving to Slate Falls to reprogram
their equipment that morning. For myself, Jeannie got me on a flight
using Wasaya that was leaving from Sioux right away so I drove to the
airport and flew into Kasabonika. I got the dish up and running in a
couple of hours with the help of Keith Mason there. Keith had experience
with working with dishes and Telesat. When we were on the phone with
Telesat doing the crosspole alignment, he recognized the Telesat
technician and had a chat with him while I was getting the equipment
ready. Quite a small world eh.

Naomi Barker at K-Net managed to get me on a charter using Northstar
airways from Pickle and going from Kas to Webequie, since all the regular
flights were booked. It was funny since one of the Bell technician's got
off the charter in Kas and I got on and went on to Webequie, it was a
tradeoff of technicians happening. It seems like K-Net has as much or more
of a presence in the communities than Bell Canada. The plane felt like a
private jet and I was the VIP lol. It had that wood veneer finish and
only 2 seats in the back. It was only missing a minibar with Jim Beam,
lol.

I arrived in Webequie and the Webequie Telecom team met me and we started
on re-aligning it. Paul Quisses the Telecom coordinator, Barney and some
other dude helped me in re-aligning the dish and locking it down. We got
it going within 2 hours of arriving there. So now it is the evening and
here I am putting my feet up and checking my email using the new
satellite.

The big joke around here in Webequie was that it is National Addictions
Awareness Week and the Internet was down for 2 days. Everyone was having
Internet withdrawals from barely 36 hours of lack of Internet. The
effects of the Internet loss was felt in Kasabonika too as staff heavily
use it for work and the finance department does alot of their banking
online. Keith Mason mentioned that it was good to get it back online so
they didn't have to cancel some Telehealth appointments. He mentioned it
in passing to a couple that were walking by that their telehealth
appointment should be ok. Even through Telehealth doctors appointments
are valuable and the effects are felt by patients when they don't get
seen. For KiHS in Round Lake I noticed that class was announced as closed
for 2 days since there was no Internet. I was glad that I could shorten
that time to only 1 day. So all in all, it's been a crazy couple of days
and this experience has shown me how dependent people are on the network
connections we have in the communities.

So it was quite a team effort of everyone coordinating, travelling and
getting the equipment going. It took the local community technicians to
coordinate things at the community level, the K-Net admin staff to work
with them and arrange our travel around the weather conditions to get us
here, and finally the tech staff to point the dishes and reprogram them
with the help of Telesat SNOC and our own SNOC team in Sioux.

Well, if you are a regular reader of Angie'e Homepage, then you probably know that my older littler brother Adam and I bagged some moose. What you don't know is how it happened. So here is my account of the events. It's probably different from what Adam will tell you. ;)

Picture this.... Sicily ... 50 years ago in a small Italian village. oops wrong story.. j/k

My brother as the Deputy Chief sometimes gets to do the Winter Road report from an airplane. He got his turn last Thursday and on their flight checking out the road, they spotted some moose on Favourable Lake. Now if you don't know Favourable Lake, it is along the Winter Road and halfways between Sandy Lake FN and Deer Lake FN. It is the place where my great-grandfather Francis Meekis lived and trapped seasonally and the same with his sons Mike, Fraser, Jeremiah, and my grandfather Jerry Fiddler who married Francis's daughter Sophie (my grandmother). My dad has some good stories about growing up out there. Maybe he'll get a homepage and tell you some (hint hint).

Adam called me up after he got back from the plane trip and he wanted to go out that day. We both ended up having work to do and it was getting late so we decided on going Friday morning.

We got up early with our gear and drove out out to Favourable Lake with our skidoos. We took the winter road most of the way and then broke a trail towards Favourable Lake Camp which is on a peninsula between Favourable and Lemonade Lake. That was a lot of work just cause I have a kopatch ski. One is longer than the other and it kept getting me stuck in the deep snow.

Anyways we made it on the lake and we circled around to the spots where he saw the moose. It ended up being a clear day with not much wind, which isn't favourable since a moose can hear you from far away. So as not to spook the moose we snowshoed in a semi-circle through the bush towards the moose trails on the creek. It took us about 2 and a 1/2 hours to make our way over there. As soon as we got close to where we were going we heard what sounded like a gunshot from back on the lake. We were kind of concerned because we thought we heard a skidoo earlier and it could have been someone coming to get us. After debating on whether or not to go back right away and see what was going on, we decided to just go ahead to the creek without trying to be too stealthy (meaning I just had to be myself). We got there and saw that the moose tracks went further into the bush. I didn't want to go any further so we just went back to our skiddoos by going along the lake and through our previous trail on a peninsula. So much for being a die-hard tracker eh?

Adam got back to the skidoos ahead of me and had his snowshoes off as I was coming down the hill. He didn't find any sign of other people looking for us there. When I reached the bottom and was getting ready to take off my snowshoes, I looked up and saw 3 moose crossing the lake. I stood there with a stupid look on my face and said "Holy Shit". The only other time Adam seen that look was when there was a fire at our house in Sioux and I ran downstairs to get the fire extinguisher. So he said "What!!?" while looking behind and seeing the moose. He pulled out his gun while I was still trying to unwrap mine from the scarf it was in and he fired 2 shots. They were too far away and he missed them so he handed me his rifle and said "Jump in the sled!!" while he ran to his skidoo which had the sled attached to it. I jumped in with snowshoes and all while he tried to start the skidoo. He yelled "Shit!" as he ended up breaking the key when trying to start it. He managed to get the skidoo started and he pulled out and around towards the moose fleeing. By this time they were out of sight and around the point. As he was pulling around, the sled flipped over and sent me and my snowshoes into the deep snow. He kept going and then looked back to see me rolling around in the snow trying to get up. I felt like a stupid goose trying to learn how to walk and flopping about.

He turned around and said again "Get in the back!!" while he took off the hitch to the sled. Stupid me I didn't see him doing that so I just jumped back in the sled. He says "Get on the back on the Skidoo!!" , so I did after quickly ripping off the snowshoes and hopping on with 2 rifles in my bare hands ( I lost my gloves in the snow). We tore off down the shore towards where the moose disappeared and saw that their tracks went to a small narrow land crossing connected to a larger point. We zoomed over there and hit the hump of land and sailed through the air. My only thoughts at that time were "Please don't fall off! Please don't fall off!" as I was hugging the 2 rifles on each side of my chest on the back of the skidoo. We cleared the land bridge, landing on the other side with a couple of bounces. We thought for sure that the moose would have been gone into the bushes but there they were galloping across the bay on the other side. There was 1 cow in the lead and 2 calves following her.

Adam said "Get the big one first!!" as he pulled up closer to her. So I tried shooting with his rifle but it didn't fire after I loaded it. I tucked his rifle under my arm and onto my lap as I pulled out the other rifle which was an old 303 bolt action rifle that belonged to our great-grandfather Francis. The bullet slid into the chamber easily and I fired a shot into the top backside of the cow. Adam said "Shoot it in the neck!!" and I reloaded and put 2 more into the lung and neck area. It slumped and fell into the snow.

He turned sharpley to the right where the 2 yearlings were running away. He pulled up to the left side of the first calve and I fired a shot which ended up in cloud of snow behind it. The second shot aimed at it hit it in the neck and brought it down.

The last calve was nearing the shore when we pulled up close to it. I was having problems getting the bullet loaded into the chamber when he said "Can you do this one or do I have to get it!!!?". I said "I think you have to do it!!" as I managed to get the bullet chambered and then I fired one shot into the lungs. It hit the snow in a clump and we pulled away.

We stopped and the reality of the situation hit in as I said "Holy Shit" again and "Thats crazy". Adam did a "woohoo" and shook hands with a "Congratulations!"! We surveyed the area and saw that we had to finish the cow as she was still moving. We went over and finished the job and then the real work began.

The next 2 days was a lot of work with cutting up the moose and bringing them back to the Winter road. We had a hard time with it as there was a lot of slush and the 2 calves were in slush as well. We got the cow back to the Winter road the next day with Mary Jane and Angie waiting and helping us at the Winter road. Our cousins Fabian, Doug and Garnet were in the next lake ice fishing so they were able to help us go back and get the calves before it got too late. It was easy work with them around. A big thanks to them for showing me how to get my skidoo out of the slush and showing me the "Quick" way of seperating a moose. It was quite a humbling experience learning from these "Real" men.

The Sunday following was a lot of fun after we got the moose pieces back to my moms. My aunties came over and made quick work out of butchering the moose into edible pieces. We ended up giving most of it away to our relations and the elders in the community. Angie got her moose tongue though.

BTW: We paid our respects to the moose and gave our thanks to our grandfathers for such a nice gift. It makes you wonder where that gunshot came from....