During my work at Indian Affairs, I was given availability to work with the trappers and the fisherman from the First Nations. This led me to do things like being part of the Trappers Association. Also I had my sense of doing many extracurricular, I… Read More »Community Life
As a wife of a hunter I had to learn to go out into the bush and learn the skills of being a hunter. To hunt for not just for rabbits, but for elk or moose. On this one occasion, I was brought out into… Read More »Two Shoes And A Moose
Before coming here to Nechi, I was Executive Director of Siksika Healing and Wellness Center, and that offers treatment for Siksika members. And a part of our programming that we had was programs on mental health, FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome), family violence, residential school and… Read More »A Career in Healing
My Grandmother’s name was Mary Waterchief. That was my Great Grandmother, and I just got to know her in the last four years. There was a movie documented on her it’s called “Okon” and it’s about the Sundance. And Mary was well known across Canada… Read More »Faith In Family
I have been an educator since 1960 and how that started out was in the Canadian army for thirteen years and while I was in there, I learned to play a whole bunch of different instruments and of course we were in music all the… Read More »Winston Wuttunee
The way of maintaining a tradition because in the telling of these stories, there is bound to be some Aboriginal words in there like Cree words or whatever nationality is telling the story and a lot of it has like in our stories: Weesakeechuk, I… Read More »Learning A Language
Well the fiddle came from two countries for us. Anyhow, it came from the Scottish and the French, so it came from France and it came from Scotland and back in the 16-1700’s when the Europeans started coming over here. It was the instrument that… Read More »The Fiddle
The dances actually come from all three different cultures: French, the Scottish, also some Irish stepping in there, as well as some First Nations. The funny thing about Metis dancing is back in the 1800’s until about 1900, close to 1950 the Europeans that took… Read More »Metis Dancing
The Metis community is very, very, large. It’s very close knit. I feel very fortunate to be a part of that community because most people, a lot of people, talk about residential schools and all of those abuse things, which my family never ever suffered.… Read More »The Metis Community
It goes back to like the fur trade days. Patrick Cuttingham was very much involved with that, in Bay Company and he came over here and married a Metis woman. But he was at the like Red River and in Winnipeg and he eventually landed… Read More »A Big Family