I told him that I was not going to remain in LaLoche and would not be able to perform the duties of a clan member. He said he knew that I would leave, but that was not an issue, my only duty as a member of the clan was to remember the people, something I wasn't likely to forget. So without further ceremony I became a member of the Bear Clan of the Dene River People of LaLoche Saskatchewan. He gave me a leather medicine pouch with some bear medicine in it.

On first glance the Native Community of LaLoche would appear to be well acculturated. I did not have to live with these people for years in order to discover this was not the case. These people have protected their native culture very well, taking from the larger culture, only those things that fit well with their own culture such as power boats for fishing, generators for electric lighting, and oil burners for heating. Without farming, they lived off the land, and maintained their old cultural values. They were matrilocal, brothers arranged and or facilitated marriages, much of what they did was by consensus, and they used native punishments for serious offenses effectively banishing the murderer in their midst. More than this, they kept their old clan system intact. From what I encountered there it would have been impossible to differentiate between what was Dene, and what was Chipewayan.