“Kavadi Attam is a dance performed by the devotees during the ceremonial worship of Murugan, the Tamil God of War. It is often performed during the festival of Thaipusam and emphasizes debt bondage. The Kavadi itself is a physical burden through which the devotees implore for help from the God Murugan”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A devotee pulls his procession burden connected by hooks pierced in his back during the Thaipusam procession at Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple on February 7, 2012 in Singapore. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Originally known to the First Nations of the Okanagan Valley as Khiluk, which was- and remains today revered as a sacred site producing therapeutic waters. During World War I the minerals of Spotted Lake were used in manufacturing ammunition. Later the area came under the control of the Ernest Smith Family, for a term of about 40 years. In 1979 Smith attempted to create interest in a spa at the lake. The First Nations responded with an effort to buy the lake; in October 2001 they finally struck a deal. First Nations arranged the purchase of 22 hectares of land for a total of $720,000, and contributed about 20% of the cost. The Indian Affairs Department paid the remainder.

Labourers stack dried bricks inside a kiln, where they will be fired, at a brick factory on the outskirt of Sanaa, Yemen, June 1, 2016. Traditional mud brick tower houses have always been a source of pride to Yemenis, and over a year into a devastating civil war, they are also providing some much-needed jobs in the ancient capital Sanaa. (Photo by Mohamed al-Sayaghi/Reuters)

A man poses for a photo with a life size cutout of Pope Francis at Bicentennial Park where the pontiff celebrated Mass for an estimated half-million people, in Quito, Ecuador, Tuesday, July 7, 2015. Francis told an estimated half-million people gathered for the Mass that in a world divide by wars, violence and individualism, Catholics should be “builders of unity”, bringing together hopes and ideals of their people. (Photo by Ana Buitron/AP Photo)

A Syrian migrant family enters Hungary at the border with Serbia near Roszke, Hungary August 28, 2015. As Europe struggles with its worst migrant crisis since World War II, Hungary has become, like Italy and Greece, a “frontline” state. So far this year, police say around 141,500 migrants have been intercepted crossing into Hungary, mostly from neighbouring Serbia. (Photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)

In this aerial view the officers' building and an auditorium stand at the former Soviet military base on January 26, 2017 in Wuensdorf, Germany. Wuensdorf, once called “The Forbidden City”, was the biggest base for the Soviet armed forces in communist East Germany from 1945 until the last Soviet troops left in the early 1990s following the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A boy moves away as a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) helicopter lands in Rubkuai village, Unity State, northern South Sudan, February 18, 2017. South Sudan on Monday declared famine in some parts of the country, with more than three years of war leaving nearly five million hungry in what aid groups called a “man-made” tragedy. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)

An ice covered entrance door to the international gene bank Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) near Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen, Norway, October 20, 2015. Two consignments of crop seeds will be deposited next year in a “doomsday vault” built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global supplies. The vault, which opened on the Svalbard archipelago in 2008, is designed to protect crop seeds, such as beans, rice and wheat against the worst cataclysms of nuclear war or disease. (Photo by Anna Filipova/Reuters)