Meeting with a Former. Chief of the Cree Nation

The Ex Chief met with us at the Youth Centre

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with many people in this northern reserve.
This morning, P. arrange to meet with C. who came to the Youth Centre to talk to us.

We sat in a circle in the round room. C. wanted to know something about us and asked each one to say our name and briefly tell something about us. In an aboriginal circle, the person starts and then continue clockwise.

Head piece worn by an Aboriginal  Chief

After each person had his/ her brief introduction, C. told us about himself.

C. - the meaning of his name - water from the mountain. He was born and has lived on this reserve all his life.  Though it was  compulsory for all native people to attend Residential School, C. refused and managed to escape from that experience.

1898 was the year the Residential School started on this reserve. In  1971 – Cree people took over the Blue Quill school. At the time,  the government said the Blue Quill school would not last a day. C. is very proud that Blue Quill  is a university now!

We sat in the beautiful meeting room built by C. & his team while he was a Chief of this reserve community

When C. was young, he was never in a leadership role but was elected as chief at one time. Along with other band council members, they built this hall ( the hall where we were in), the roads and the school, achieving many things for his people.

He also worked in a treatment centre, was on council and went to university to learn his language. C.'s dream was to see his young people to speak Cree. He felt that  people his age need to speak more Cree, but they speak more English when they meet as many were educated in English in the Residential Schools.

We had a wonderful conversation with the ex Chief. He gave us a lot of information and we learned many things from him such as the 1876 treaty which the Cree people on this reserve signed with Queen of England. There used to be four chiefs, eventually they became one. There were the south and north side of this reserve– one side was Catholic while the other was Protestant.

There are seven ceremonies with the Cree people – e.g. Sweat Lodge, Sun Dance, Pipe Ceremony etc. Each one has a chief leading the ceremony.

C. is a funny person indeed! The best thing I remember our meeting was his tremendous sense of humor and his ability to put people at ease.  Throughout the duration of his recall of the hurts experienced by his people, he managed to make us laugh by injecting humorus stories in between.  E.g.

C.:              Do you know why they call Quebec - Quebec?
Our Group :   No, why?
C.              They were coming up the St. Lawrence River and the native kept telling them "Get                               back! Get  back!" So they figured out the name of the place was Quebec, therefore they                        named it Quebec!"

C. was using a lot of Cantonese ( a Chinese dialect)  in his conversations with us and we were wondering how he learned so much of the language.


Our Group:    C. how come you know so much Cantonese? Your Cantonese is amazing!
C.:                  I am part Cantonese, you know.

Our Group:    Really? ( Getting excited! )

C.:                  For sure, my stomach is Cantonese! ( I love Cantonese food!)

C.:               There are about 70% of unemployment here on this reserve. Do you know why?
Our Group:     No, we don't why?

C.:               Jesus told us not to do anything until he comes back. That’s why people are not doing                          anything!

The ability to laugh and see the humour in life is an excellent life skill. I need to learn from Chief C. and see the bright side of everything when I am faced with obstacles and difficult situations in life.


R.T.
A Northern Reserve

Alberta
May, 2016

An Invitation to a Moose Dinner on a Northern Reserve, Alberta

Our second dinner invitation on this northern reserve!

Our team received our  second dinner invitation at one of the local's house.

The hospitality of the people of of this northern reserve is incredible!  We did not even know the host who invited us for dinner.

M. and W. invited all 15 of  us for dinner !

W.  from the Youth Centre invited our team for a moose and bannock dinner.

We had great conversations with the family members

I was really surprised that someone we hardly knew invited all fifteen of us, including P. and J., for supper!

W. showing us how to make bannocks from scratch

We got to W.'s sister's  house and W.  was cooking up a storm making Bannock from scratch.

Delicious bannocks go well with everything!

The ingredients for making bannock are quite simple - flour, milk, egg, baking power, a pinch of salt and sugar. It could be deep fried or baked.


Both are very fresh and delicious!

Delicious fried moose meat !

It was a moose feast at M.'s house!

W. and M. and her family prepared a lot of food and set up the table with stewed Moose, fried Moose meat, ground beef and all the trimmings for Indian tacos.

Stewed Moose meat, yummy!

We were treated to a feast at M.'s house!


The moose dinner was fantastic!  For many on our team, it was their very first time tasting wild game meat. For all of us, our first taste of the Indian Tacos.

S. relaxing in our host's living room

M.'s house was spacious and comfortable!  Our host made us feel at home! Some of us relaxed in the living room while some watched the bannock making demonstration in the kitchen.

Since the house and the property were quite big, there were a lot of activities going on and everyone was engaged in one thing or other.

We enjoyed meeting the family!

Our team members mingled with other people at the house. We met our host, the family and a few other people. We got to chat with them and know more about them

I spent sometime talking to S. and we had a good chat about school and the topic of bullying came up.

Relaxing after dinner in the backyard

From our conversation, I learned that being a teen going to high school was not an easy thing for some, especially for those not so outgoing teenagers as they could easily become a target for bullying.

W.anda, M. and her family  invited all of us for a dinner at M's  home

The dinner experience was beyond words!  The food was fantastic; W., M, her husband and her family were so warm and welcoming!

M. warmly welcome us and showed us around her property

We were very blessed to have been invited into people's houses to partake a dinner with them who were willing to open their homes and welcome us.

 The best of all was the opportunity to get to know our aboriginal people and foster an understanding and relationship wit them!

Thank you. W., M. and W. for your hospitality!

R.T.
A Northern Reserve
Alberta

Residential Schools : A National Crime - Listening to the Victims' Sad Stories

As a teacher in the public school system in Ontario, I was required to follow the Ontario Curriculum and  teach an unit on the Native Peoples of Canada to my elementary school students.

I knew very little about aboriginal peoples and their history at the time, therefore, I did some research on my own before teaching the lessons to my students.

Today, along with my team mates, we heard the true stories and experiences of our aboriginal people who went through the notorious Residential School System when they were children themselves.

What a revelation and shock it was to us all! In my mind, I always thought the residential school was the government's way of making sure that aboriginal children received a good Canadian education. Nothing more than that. How wrong was I!

Little did we know that the Residential School Policy was part of John A. McDonald's - Canada's first Prime Minister, Nation Building Plan which was to isolate aboriginal children from their parents and to assimilate them, a quick way to get rid of " the Indian problem."

Under this Residential School policy, the Indian Agent went into communities, rounded up all the aboriginal children (aged seven to fourteen) and removed them forcibly from their parents, and their community. Native parents had no say in what was happening to them and what was taught to their children. Parents would face jail term if they refused to send their children to Residential School.

A Residential School in northern Alberta 

Native children were treated differently from non native children.  They were denied of their language and culture.  Aboriginal children were subjected to a different culture while their own culture was demeaned and ridiculed.

 They were neglected, punished and beaten for speaking their own mother tongue. Many were abused physically and sexually.  Some of the stories we heard from  Residential School survivors brought tears to our eyes:

Story 1 – At the residential School, porridge was served to the students every day throughout the year. Everyday the students were expected to finish their bowl of porridge. A little girl did not want to eat it, the person in charge slapped her hard on her face and forced her to finish her porridge. The girl did eat it reluctantly. But later on she threw up the porridge she ate, the person in charge forced her to lick up the vomited food.

Story 2 – One of the Residential Schools in British Columbia was built with an apple orchard in the back of the school. The children did not have enough to eat and they were always hungry. So they went outside to pick up some apples fallen on the ground to eat, but they were forbidden to do so and were told to drop the apples on the ground.  However, being hungry, these children thought of other ways to smuggle the apples in their pants.  So they learned how to steal food being in the Residential School.

We took turn  sharing our comments and about what we had learned

Story 3 – Being hungry all the time, aboriginal children came up with creative ways to find food. They played the marble game with each other.

Whoever won the game got marbles from their peers. As a result, they learned to use the marbles as a form of currency to buy food from each other, e.g. five marbles for a piece of bread, ten marbles for something else. So the Residential School taught the children how to steal food and how to gamble for food to fill their hunger!

Dr. Peter Bryce visited thirty five Residential  Schools at the time. He found the condition so deplorable that he resigned from his work with the government and wrote a book titled - A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System  (  1999)

 

With 42% of aboriginal children died  due to their Residential School experience, what parents would send their children to school?

We found these stories and incidents shocking beyond belief. As an educator all my life, I could not imagine anyone responsible for teaching and taking care of children could be so cruel to the little innocent ones?

At the end of the presentation, we were asked to express how we felt and what we had learned. When it was my turn to share and dialogue in the circle, I could not hold back my tears and expressed my sorrow and apology to the aboriginal people among us.

The Residential School System existed over a hundred years; it was the darkest chapter in our Canadian history. The stories of the first nation people who suffered at the hands of our government need to be told and heard!

R.T.

Alberta

May, 2016

Our First Dinner Invitation on the Reserve - We have so much to learn from Our Aboriginal People!

Our very first dinner invitation on the  reserve

Since our task was done for the day, it gave me time to catch up on my writing back at the Youth Centre.

 It was also my turn to cook dinner. I put the pork tenderloin which was marinated from the previous night along with some potatoes, carrots, and pineapple into the oven ( preheated at 400 degrees F.)  After an hour, dinner was ready and the pork came out beautifully cooked! 

Our host's family keeps some horses on their property

We received our first dinner invitation on the reserve. We were pretty excited and took the dish over to A’s house and shared it with her family.

The animal lovers on our team were very excited!

A. and her family live in a house on the reserve. The house is built on  a pretty large property where animals like horses and dogs can roam free. 

Since there were a few animal lovers on our team, we   spent some time with the animals while we were there.

A. shared some native games and stories with us

A student of the notorious Residential School for ten years,  A. was taken from her parents when she was young separated from her family and community.  She shared some of the unpleasant stories with us as well as some Cree traditions, games and stories.

A. demonstrated a popular hand game to us

A’s mom was a mid wife and she told us about the trick her mom used to help deliver babies among aboriginal women.

Before the invention of the epidural, in order to reduce pain and help the baby to turn around in the mother’s womb, A.’s mom would ask the husband to go out, find a snake in the woods and bring it back. 

The mid wife would place the snake on the mother’s stomach to help induce labour. Feeling the movement and vibration of the snake of the mother’s stomach, the baby would turn around with his/ her head down towards the birth canal and ready to come out from the womb. We were all spellbound by these very interesting native tales indeed!

The Saskatchewan River flowing through the Cultural Heritage Park of this northern community

Learning about the Cree stories and cultures outdoor 

A. and her family were very gracious and hospitable toward our group. 

The whole family including A., her husband, Audrey, her daughter and her grandchildren took us to the Cultural Heritage Park where we could see the Saskatchewan River flowing below us.

A. & family were generous with their time and gave us unique experiences

We lay down some blankets and listened to A’s stories about the native Sweat Lodge and the treaties between the first nation people and the government of Canada.

These little fern leaves make great mosquito repellent!

When the mosquitoes started to attack us, A. and her family showed us how to prevent the annoying bugs from biting us the native and natural way!

They pulled up a few pieces of fern like leaves off the ground and told us to squash them in our palms and spread it on our hands and feet.  

We have much to learn from the wisdom of  our Aboriginals

A natural bug repellent was made! 

We have so much to learn from the wisdom of our aboriginal people!

Three bottles were set up for target practice

Hunting was a way of life for aboriginal people for centuries. Some still hunt on the reserve.

After the stories were told, A. and the family  took us to the gravel pit. .

They set up three bottles on a pole and showed us how to do target shooting. 

Some of the young people tried it for the first time. I was not interested in guns therefore I just stood there and took pictures. 

The young people all had lot of fun! It was something they did not expect to do on this trip!

We got back to our host’s  family at around 10pm. L. was there and we chatted a little while she showed us pictures of her family and her daughter’s wedding. It was a lovely time we spent with our host and learning a little bit more about her. We look forward to more time like this with our host!

R.T.

Alberta

Trying New Food and Meeting Local People on aw Northern Reserve, Alberta

We met and debriefed each morning  in the meeting room at the Youth Centre

We were up early this morning as we were supposed to meet at 8 am this morning at the Youth Centre.

We did get there on time.  We had our devotion and  morning debriefing meeting and it was great to hear what everyone else was doing in their respective host family.

P. came and shared with us what our assignment was for today.

Sewing Centre on a Reserve

I volunteered to be at the Sewing Centre. However, when I got there,  I  was told that I could not volunteer at the centre as there was no insurance coverage for me.

I went looking for S. and Y.Y next door and joined them in their assignment which was cleaning up the basement and getting it ready for the evacuees from the wild forest fires from the Fort McMurray area.

This was a task which I would never have volunteered to do as I intensively dislike physical labour work. 

We helped to clean up part of the basement ready for evacuees

But God taught me a lesson. I was humbled by the experience and found that I was able to perform such a physically demand assignment and I was not in too bad a shape at all!

With the three of us working hard, we were able to clean the place in a few hours. Very proud of our work! 

We went over to the Admin building for lunch at the only restaurant in town.

The restaurant at the Admin Building

The restaurant was a nice bright place decorated with pictures and artwork of native themes.

We tried a bannock burger for the first time!

It served pretty good food, I ordered the Bannock Burger ( a beef patty sandwiched between fried dough, delicious!)  

The  dry ribs were delicious!

S. ordered dried ribs and Y.Y tried the mushroom burger.

The food was delicious! 

Joe ( not his real name), a resident of this reserve came up and introduced himself to us, a very friendly chap indeed. 

Son of a chief from previous years,  he was very frank and open sharing with us about the tragic events that happened to him recently. 

An aboriginal statute stands proudly on a reserve, Alberta, Canada

We invited him to join us for lunch and had a good long chat with him. Joe was interested in what we were doing on this  reserve. We asked him to come and join us at the Youth Centre the next day and hope that he would come.

 What impressed me was Y.Y. asked if he could pray with him and they prayed right there standing in the middle of the restaurant!

 I wish I could be as bold and direct as my counterpart!

R.T.

Alberta

May 10, 2016

How to Become a Cree Nation Princess in a Northern Reserve, Alberta, Canada?

 I met a Princess today!


Her name is Niyanah  and she was the 2015-16 Princess for a northern reserve in Alberta.

N. just came back from a Pow Wow and she was wearing some beautiful beaded accessories. I admired the gorgeous bead work she was wearing and asked her many questions of what each piece meant.

Since I showed so much interest in her culture and dancing, she was kind enough to change into her full pow wow costume and danced for us!!!

She did an amazing jingle dance for us at the Youth Centre.  N. is not just a beautiful girl; she is very smart, articulate and most of all, there is an air of confidence about her.

Since she was the reigning Princess on this reserve, I asked her about the process of being chosen as the Princess.

The First Nations Princess competitions are open to everyone on the reserve. There are three categories.

Tiny Tot Princess - Opens to girls from 2 - 6 years old

Junior Princess - Opens to girls from 7 to 12

Senior princess from 13- 17 years old

To be crowned as a princess, one has to be a good role model, has good leadership skills, and must be addiction free of alcohol and drugs.
N. took part in this community wide competition. She learned about it from a poster she saw in the band office and followed the process:

• She registered for the competition; she needed to fund raise for the Pow Wow by selling raffle tickets.
• She had to compete in public speaking by preparing a 5 minute speech and presented it in the Pow Wow. The band gave the contestants a topic to write such as:   Why culture was important. and as a youth, how they can bring tradition back to the community and why sorority was important?
• Writing an essay on a topic of her choice
• The contestants came fully dressed in their regalia and took part in a dance competition against the other contestants,

There were three judges judging all the categories of the competition and they would choose the princess who they feel can best represent their community.

N. was crowned  a princess three times, as a Tiny Tot Princess, then Junior Princess and last yea as the Senior Princess.  As a Princess on her reserve, she was expected to go to a lot of pow wow to represent her community.

Judging from what we have seen of N., she must have done a fine job representing her community in 2015- 2016,

We are very proud of you and it has been great meeting you a couple of time this week!

R.T.
A Northern Reserve
Alberta

My Personal Experience with Five Loaves and Two Fish

The highlight of our third day in this northern community was a communal dinner at the Youth Centre. Due to our packed schedule for the day we didn’t have time to stop for lunch.

.

We were starving! As soon as we got back to the Youth Centre after the afternoon activities, we got busy and helped L. and Y.Y.  to prepare for our lunch/ dinner at around 4pm.  The lunch menu was mixed vegetables, fried rice, mushroom and eggs. 

 Just when we were about finishing the preparation, we were told that about twenty youths be joining us for dinner.  We welcome the youths eating with us and the opportunity of getting to know them! ( We were briefed beforehand about the youth in the after school program and were mentally prepared for it, therefore, it did not come as a total surprise to us.)

We scrambled to cook more food to feed thirty plus people ( many of whom were hungry teens!) Finding whatever we could in the fridge, we worked as a team efficiently chopping and cooking more vegetables and eggs and tomatoes to feed our guests.

Would we have enough food for everyone? This meal was supposed to be our lunch and dinner and we were starving! Our team alone could have wolfed down tons of food. What happened if there was not enough food for everyone?  As we were happily slicing more vegetables, we were a bit worried. However, the picture of how Jesus fed the five thousand with only five loaves and two fish came into our mind and we used that story to encourage each other in the kitchen.

We took a peek at the dining hall. What a beautiful picture!
 All the youths and our team members (except for those who were cooking and serving ) were sitting down enjoying a meal together! My Polynesian coconut palm seed salad was a hit!!!! Everyone loved it and many asked for second.

I was glad that the young people enjoyed our food and we were able to interact with them. What a polite and gentle group of students! They  all took a little bit of food to start with making sure everyone had something to eat, then they would ask for second after everyone had something. There was no loud talking, or rude comments or complaints of any sort. Some came into the kitchen, thanked us and told us how much they enjoyed the food. The youth guests were simply delightful!

We did have enough to eat for everyone!  After everyone ate, the few responsible for cooking sat and enjoyed our food in the kitchen. The eggs and tomatoes dish I had was the most delicious food I have ever tasted in my life!!!

Praise God! We had our very personal encounter of five loaves and two fish at this northern reserve!

R.T.

Alberta

May ,2016