Sid's Sweat-House Rebuild Campaign
On December 16th 2015, a unique and beautiful log cabin sweathouse burned to the ground after a fire got out of control. This sweat house was the dream of Sid Fiddler, local Cree Elder at the Waterhen First Nation, who for several years has invested significant time and resources to act upon his dream to build a culturally significant gathering place to support his family and community.
Sid is a residential school survivor of the Beauval Indian Residential School in Northern Saskatchewan. Sid has dedicated his adult life to righting the wrong of the past, to reconciliation, healing and to the promotion of Cree culture and way of life.
This Sweat house was a massive undertaking. Sid invested his residential school settlement funding and savings towards this effort. His goal was to turn the legacy of his abusive experiences at the Beauval Indian Residential school into a legacy of healing, wellness and family/community building.
The Log Cabin Sweat house was contructed in the style of a northern bush cabin, however with some modern touches. The front of the building was carved into a beautiful eagle. (see pictures below) and the interior was rustic in feeling with log benches, a spiraled centre pole representing all of humanity coming together and a beautifully crafted custom built fire pit (which ended up being this cabins undoing!) (interior pictures not yet received to upload)
The Sweat house was scheduled to launch its Grand Opening on December 19th with a community gathering, feast and sweat. However as Sid was preparing to dry his sweat canvasses, a fire broke loose and quickly destroyed what had taken years to realize.
This GOFUNDME campaign is intended to support Sid and his wife Mary to replace some of the items that were lost and hopefully assist in making it possible for Sid to rebuild this important site. Our communities need more places like this where we can gather, learn our cultures and provide support for our families, communities and the cultural awareness of all those who would attend.
Sid had paid for this whole lodge to be built with his own money up to this point. Hopefully the community can help him rebuild!
