Interviewed by grade nine students taking Native Studies at Northern Lights Secondary School, Moosonee, Ontario
I’ve always told my kids to help others.
"How long have you and your husband been together for?"
We’ve married for 61 years.
"How old were you when you got married?"
Twenty. Twenty years old. I said wasn’t going to get married until I was 25, “I’ll stay single.” And then that fool came along.
"What’s the most important thing in your life?"
My family. My husband. My children. My grandchildren. My great-grandchildren. We have 8 children, 15 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandchild. So that’s what’s important in my life. But I want to be able to help young people like you guys too.
I volunteered my time to a lot of agencies [such as] Children’s Aid, for consultation services, translation services, talking to the kids. Sometimes the kids would be apprehended, they couldn’t speak English, they’d be crying all the time. So I would go to the home, to the foster parents, go and explain to the kids in Cree, you know, that they’re there to be taken care of. I would hold them and the foster mother would come take the kid and hold them and hug them, so I would tell the kids that they are loved there. And anytime the foster parents would have trouble, they would call me and I would go talk to the kid again, you know, comfort the kid, see them in school, comfort them. So that’s one way of helping with young people there.
“So they went to learn English?”
Yep, they learned English, but sometimes the parents straightened up, you know? They straightened up and the kids were returned to them. I worked with the parents too.
I was trying to address those issues that were at home in the communities. I volunteered, providing interpretive services for them, you know, talking to the parents, talking to the kids, even at the schools: going to the school and talking to the classes, on racism.
She shows them medals, pins, and plaques from Children’s Aid, Province of Ontario, etc, awarded to her for her volunteer work
“So these are for all you did?”
Volunteer work. If you know your language, you can do a lot of help. Do you speak your language? See those doctors, they need help, they need interpretive services. You should pick it up and learn it, you can be a teacher.
I belong to the Ontario Native Women’s Association - I needed a political voice to address the concerns I had that needed addressing. Like say the environmental issues, I want to bring that up to the political body, not just at the community level. So that’s the Ontario Native Women’s Association, and we’re part of the Native Women’s [Association] of Canada’s national body. Being involved with the Ontario Native Women’s Association, I travelled right across the country, from BC to PEI, and to Alaska, and Northwest Territories, for meetings and stuff like that.
I was a court worker too, go to court for those people who had to go to court, find out what happened, provide interpretive services for the grandparents or the parents when needed. I used to travel to Chapleau, Hornepayne, Cochrane, Kapuskasing and Timmins. Five days a week I’d be on the road, going to courts.
When we got to [residential] school, I couldn’t even talk to my sister. Even though we were in the same school, they separated us, and because they didn’t let us speak the language... they hit, with a ruler, a yardstick, a 36” ruler. Can you imagine yourself at 5 or 6 years old being away from home, in a strange place? It was hard to sleep at night; the teacher who would supervise you would hear you and come hit you.
We left the residential school: my father lost his status, so we were not treaty Indians then*, so Indian Affairs said, “You don’t get your education paid for, out you go.” So we got sent home. We were happy to go home. And then my dad said, “You know you thought you had it rough because you had to mind your Ps and Qs. Now you know what it’s like...now you have to pay attention.” Anyways that’s what happened.
Somebody was saying they don’t like reading, but I did a lot of reading.
There was one teacher, I tell you, she used to make me read, in the classroom, come and sit with me… We had a one room school. She’d come and sit with me, take time out, learn a page, read a page... even at recess she’d come and get me, five minute, we have five minutes, read a book. Her name was Mrs. Chalmers. Of all the teachers I’ve had that’s the only one I remember, because she instilled that love of reading in me. I’ll be forever thankful for her too.
Because there was absolutely nothing here for teenagers when we were young, you know 17, 18, we used to have those record players, we called them gramophones. You wind them up like this. So we would take records, walk up to the station up there, up to the platform, play that music and we would be square dancing up there!
“It’s different, comparing what type of music they listen to now. Those records, did you know they still sell them?”
"Has the land changed over your lifetime?"
So much had changed. The mines coming up, ruining all the land. The rivers too. They ruined the river system. Clear cutting: lumber companies that come in and cut all the trees down.
Over in Kapuskasing, people there would say, “The Indians are overhunting, they’re killing all the animals,” but when you look at it, the lumber companies that were there, [they] were cutting all the trees for the paper mill in Kapuskasing, so those animals [didn’t] have any plants to eat. They live off those plants: the leaves and barks and the roots. They kill all that, so those animals don’t come here, they go away. That’s what really bugs me. The Indians were getting blamed for over-killing ‘cause the animals wouldn’t stay there.
The land has changed lots. Now the diamond mines, what are they’re doing to the earth? The tailings that they have there, it’s going to pollute the water.
The MNR in Kapaskasing would pick up a square mile of land and they would spray. One time there were blueberries we used to come pick, a certain area [of the] bush. I told them, “You’re affecting the earth, you’re killing the blueberries, it’s spraying those blueberries too.” He says, “No, no, ‘cause we’re only picking this area to spray.” I said, “Oh yeah, your common sense, something they don’t teach you in college. You have your plane here, you’re spraying, but the wind is coming from this way: the spray is coming over here too. So you’re not only spraying this, you’re spraying this too. There’s lots of blueberries here too, and the plants, all the medicinal plants. And it falls in the little creeks. The spray falls into those creeks, and those flow into bigger creeks, and it goes into the river system. You are killing the plants and you are polluting the water; you’re killing the fish. If I pour a jug of water from up here on the balcony of a three story building, it’s not only going to land in one spot, it’s going to splatter wherever the wind is going.” They don’t teach them that.
"What types of traditional games did you play?"
There were bones put on a cord - I still have it someplace - they called it Tabahon, you go like that with a needle, eh. My dad used to make his own snowshoes. My mother did the gill nets, the fish nets. She’d do the tanning, her own moose hide.
"Do you ever … make moosehide slippers? Do you still do that?"
Yeah, I still do that. I teach. I teach at Northern College, here. They made slippers one year, they made mitts before Christmas, now they want to make mukluks-
“Oh, you make mukluks?”
Yeah, mukluks. I make parkas too. The work that I do, teaching kids how to bead and all that, that’s a skill that I have. People don’t have it. They’re not taught in schools or colleges or universities to do that, so aboriginal people have to go ahead and do that. So there have been some changes: people are more receptive now to our way of life.
"Have you ever tried to eat bear?"
I wouldn’t eat bear. A lot of people eat bear, but you know what? The Crees from this area belong to the Bear Clan.
“Yeah, that’s what my grandpa told me.”
We don’t eat bear. And my dad says, “If you look at a bear, you get up close, when they have their cubs, they be just like a mother. They’ll be sitting up and the cubs would be on their lap, you know, nursing.” So it’s just like a mother nurses her baby. We don’t eat bear.
"What are you most proud of?"
Well, if I can change one person’s attitude, or the way that they’re living, change one person, that’s a plus for me.
I’ll tell you a story:
When I was at school, because of my colouring… I was the ‘Indian’. And there’s a bully: in our school there’s a bully. He wouldn’t let the other girls play with me…[or] skip.. or anything. He’d hit them. One time there was a tiny little girl, we used to call her ‘Tiny’ because she was so small, and she was skipping with me - we had those plastic skipping ropes - bare legs. We had to wear dresses back then, no such thing as slacks. He grabbed that skipping rope from us and he slashed, he hit her across the legs with that. Ohhh, [it] left red marks. Ever make me mad. I said, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” He outweighed me by about ten pounds. He says, “Well, I’ll fight you then.” I says, “Okay, you fight me.” We were taught never, never to fight, I’m told time and again. Last thing my mother would say, “Behave yourself, don’t fight”, [before I] went out the door. So I said, “Okay, after school.” Our school was here, and there was a road here, [where] my dad used to deliver fresh milk and bread after the train used to come in. And the kids knew that there’s going to be a fight after school. So when we got outside to the school yard, he jumped on me, and I was just so mad, so fed up, and all that strength, eh, it makes you strong when you’re so mad. I finally got him down at last, got him in between my legs, POW!
I didn’t even hear the tractor coming around; I was so engrossed in what I was doing, I was so mad. All of a sudden I felt somebody lift me up at the back of the neck: my dad, holy smokes. He says, “You go home, I’m going to deal with you when I get home.” You know at home my dad never hit us, neither my mom, but my dad had a strap. He used to hang it. He used to call it Henry, that’s his name. “If you don’t behave yourself, if you’re really bad, Henry’s going to deal with you.” So we didn’t look forward to that. So he says, “I’ll deal with you when I get home.” I [thought] uh oh, I know for sure I’m going to get it now. I went home, my mom said, “How come you’re so dirty?” So I told her. She said, “What your dad say?” “He says he’s going to deal with me”. She says “Okay, you know what going to happen, eh?” I said, “Yeah”. I expected the strap. So when he came home, my mom, [she] serves the food, she says, “You gonna eat?” I said no, I didn’t have no appetite. After [my dad] finished supper, my mom says, “Come and eat”, so I ate my supper. And then my dad says to my other siblings, “You guys go out and play.” You know my dad says, “I went around delivering that milk, and those mothers came out, the mothers of those girls there, said that why that fight started, how come it happened, because [you were] defending that little girl and if there was any punishment, [you] didn’t deserve it. The guy had a punishment coming to him and he got it. Maybe it will smarten him up.” And it was true: he never did that to anybody after that. ‘Cause you know what happened? [They’d] tell him, “I’m going to tell Dorothy on you!” That was funny.
“So you taught that guy a lesson, huh!”
I used to speak up for other people too. But to me, you know, if I can help... Help the organization, help the individual, help the children. Because that why I got those [awards]: being helpful.
* I later asked Dorothy why her father lost his status, and she explained to me that, at that time, you lost your status if you had full-time employment. An ‘Indian’ could only work part-time or seasonally. She then also lost her status when her father did. She regained status when she married a man with status, only to lose it again when he, in turn, gained full-time employment. These were the laws until 1985 when amendments were made to the Indian Act. Even after these changes, if a native woman had children with a non-status man, her children could still not inherit status until further changes were made in 2010.
More information about the history of the Indian Act, visit the following link: http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-indian-act.html
