Snow snake at the Arctic Winter Games does what it’s always done: bring Indigenous people together

He balances a spruce spear on his index and middle fingers and looks down the long track with a quiet intensity. Then, he snaps into a short run and gets low. He flicks his wrist and launches the earthbound javelin. 

But it’s not a javelin. This is a snow snake, and a game rooted in cross-cultural traditions, whose practitioners have kept it alive across Turtle Island for centuries.

That ethos was no different at the Arctic Winter Games (AWG) this week in Whitehorse, where dozens of athletes from the circumpolar North lined up to take their best shot along a 200-metre track. Snow snake is one several events included as part of the Dene Games at the AWGs.

Tyreke Scurvey's throw was just shy of the halfway point, enough to earn the Team Yukon player a gold ulu.

Not easy, a shot like that. This is a game that requires a strict balance between strength and finesse. 

Watch long enough and you’ll soon understand why it’s called what it is. Eventually, the spear begins to quickly undulate laterally, much like the animal of its namesake.

Marcus Herron, who’s part of Team Yukon, while fairly new to the game, is hooked. 

“If you get a really good throw, it feels so good, you can kinda feel it when it leaves your hand, and it's just perfect, man,” he said. “You’re so proud of yourself.”

Justin Johnson, a citizen of Champagne Aishihik First Nations in the Yukon, said traditional stories drew him to the game, which is why he took it up. To his ancestors, it wasn’t so much a game as a means of survival, he said.

“It was definitely used for hunting back in the day, hunting caribou,” said Johnson, whose Tlingit name is Cúch oox. “I definitely wouldn’t mind trying to do it in the modern days.”

There’s northern-style snow snake, then there’s the version that’s been continually played for centuries further south by the historic Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a league of Nations that includes the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora.

Called aterahwènta in Kanyen’kéha, the Mohawk language, snow snake is played during the colder months in Haudenosaunee communities that span primarily Ontario, Quebec and upstate New York, often coinciding with mid-winter ceremonies. 

Out east, it’s different. For starters, Haudenosaunee, which means People of the Longhouse, have a different technique. We place our index fingers at the bottom and shoot the snakes down a much narrower track, a long, waist-high bank with a channel cut through.

Plus, the snakes are twice as long as the ones used in the Arctic Winter Games. Made of hardwood like maple, makers tend to carve a head, which is tipped with metals like pewter or sometimes lead.