ABSTRACT
This is not a typical day at McLeod Lake since, as the narrative makes clear, it is a weekend and the end of the month. People have more money and drinking is more pronounced than usual. The children are not at school. Not all the events happened exactly as described in the narrative nor are they necessarily in the sequence in which they occurred. Obviously I have had to respect people's privacy and fictionalize the descriptions of people and events somewhat. None the less, the descriptions of what people were thinking is an accurate depiction of what they said at the time that similar events took place and what they described afterwards. This book is largely about the history of a concept, the Sekani idea of brotherhood, but I realized that for someone who was not there the Sekani ran the risk of being described in terms that over-emphasized pan-Indianism and politics. I wrote this chapter to correct that impression and in the hope that a reader will be able to place the following chapters in context, to remember that the Sekani are people of flesh and blood with strong views and complex emotions despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that they live in a very small community.
