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As this is written the opening ceremonys for the confernce is being held,
a lot of delegates from all over the world arrived the day before the conference.
Among them a suprising large number of Maori from New Zealand and Aborigee's
from Australia.
During the conference we'll keep you informed through these pages as much as time
permits, but yours truly -the webmaster- is simultaneously also part of the staff
hosting the conference and also holds a set of workshops.
All pages describing the events will therefore not be available the same day as
originally thought but the day after -i hope you'll excuse this but honestly speaking
i've slept only some 3 hours a night during the last four days.
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| A special thanx to Laara Ahrén for helping me to set up my Laitoke*. But he's a really friendly guy, the only complaint he had was that he thought that a too long time had passed since we've seen each other. Latoke= Traditional Sami Tent |
The opening ceremony was held in the same field where many had spent the night in their laitohkh and tepees (yes there's actually one here!). It opened with a few words from the hosting Sami's and then the aborigee delegate Greg Phillips carried a a message from the Elders of his nation to the conference. Photography was prohibited during the ceremony so no pictures will be shown from this, one of those things i'll happily tell about is that a large bird called a Gåehpele in Saemien (=capercaillie?) turned up at the ceremony. It walked on the ground approached the circle and for a while seemed to consider to join our group. Later on it turned up at the entrance of the conference hall where it lied down and let itself be touched by several persons. The presence of this bird has been seen a sign from mother earth by severeal of the participants of the conference.
Except the work for the newspaper yours truly managed to host a workshop about Indigenous networking and contacts today. Have a look at my good friend Rickard Valkeapaa's thoughts about this in Vaajese found below.
Aanta
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| Richard jamming in the Hotel room at this conference. Believe me, this guy's a riot! |