Sports > Dene Games
The premier sports, particularly for spectators, and what really sets the AWG apart from other winter competitions, are the Inuit and the Dene games. Actually, there are a number of distinct events encompassed in these two groupings and all are representative of traditional forms of competition and activities of the Eskimo (Inuit) and interior Native (Dene) cultures. While all other sports in the Games now focus exclusively on youth, the Inuit and Dene games have retained adult competition. One of the major reasons for this decision is that there are very few opportunities for young people to receive coaching from experienced athletes or to learn the traditions that accompany the sports.
The Dene games include five events: the finger pull, pole push, stick pull, snow snake, and hand games. The first three events are tests of strength and strategy. The finger pull is painful to watch and just plain painful if one is a competitor. An ice bucket is always close by for the competitors to plunge their hands into after a grueling round. The snow snake consists of throwing a spear underhanded along a snow field. The longest throw wins. Perhaps the most fascinating and certainly the most perplexing event in the entire Games are the hand games. Two teams of four face each other and take turns trying to deceive the other about the location of a token in one team member’s hand. This is accompanied by drum beating and bodily gyrations. Introduced to the Games in 1990, Dene was a males-only sport until 2004.
The events included at the 2008 Arctic Winter Games are:
1.
Stick Pull Competitors have three chances to pull a greased
stick out of the opponent’s hand. The stick must be kept horizontal
at all times and may not be twisted or turned.
2.
Finger Pull The object of this game is to straighten the opponent’s
finger or to force the opponent to concede. If neither occurs, the competitor
who is designated the defensive player prior to the match is the winner.
3.
Pole Push Two teams of four grasp the opposite ends of a pole
and try to push their opponents out of the ring. The pole must stay
between the shoulder and the hip. Teams must push forward at all times,
with no letting go of the pole or moving up on the pole. The best two
out of three wins the event.
4.
Snowsnake The object of this game is to throw a spear underhand
on the surface of the snow for distance.
5.
Hand Games In these games of deception, two teams of four take
turns hiding tokens in their hands. The object is to make the opposition
incorrectly guess the location of the tokens.
