Julian Brave Noisecat

LaHal is about, in part, the spiritual power of the people who are playing it.

So the way that the game works is one team is singing a song and trying to hide...

two sets of bones usually it's deer bones and one bone has a mark in it and the other bone is unmarked and the other team is trying to guess which hand the unmarked bone is on the opposite team as they're singing a song and trying to sort of fake them out and use their spiritual power to to hide the bones um and there's an element of of like sort of reawakening your your spirit and acknowledging the

greater than human power that we all sort of carry in our soul in that.

I would also say that it's a way to sort of redistribute goods and wealth and these sorts of things.

Part of what happens at the Le Hal games is that money or different goods, I mean, back in the day, like horses and guns and those sorts of things would be given away.

And that's to redistribute what belonged to the family of the deceased, to honor that person, and also to get people to come to these funerals.

It's really important for us that our whole community comes together to honor the dead.

And when you go to a funeral in Cannon Lake, it is a real event.

It's a real celebration.

Hundreds of people show up.

There's a lot of different versions of La Howe songs.

So this is kind of a mix between a La Howe song and a protest song.

So it goes like this.

Hey-ya-ho, hey-ya-hey-yo-ho, hey-ya-ho, hey-ya-hey-yo-ho-ya, hey-ya-ha, hey-ya-hey-ya-ho-ya, hey-ya-ho, hey-ya-ho.

Canada is all Indian land.

Canada is all Indian land.

Oh, Canada is all Indian land.

Yeah, hey, yahoo.

Hey, yahoo.