Dene Games

Like the Arctic Sports, the Dene Games do not require much for equipment. They are also greatly intertwined with traditional and cultural values which focus on demonstrating sportsmanship, a competitive desire to perform to the best of their capabilities and to have fun with their teammates as well as their opponents. These Games portray an amazing sense of camaraderie where everyone is helping one another achieve their utmost potential.

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.

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