Our ancestors had to work extremely hard just to survive. In the
summer, they would begin working early in the morning. They hunted in both
summer and winter, year after year. In the summer they dried meat and fish,
and they gathered berries. As soon as the berries were ripe, the women of all
ages picked berries day after day. The men, young and old, hunted moose
during the summer. They caught fish, too. A young person would never been
seen just sitting around or having nothing to do while everyone else was
working.

When my grandfathers used to tell me stories, I paid close attention
and noticed how they told them. In early times, the people lived a simple
life, off the land. Before the Europeans came and disturbed their way of
life, they knew very well how to take care of their own needs. They gathered
in the summer and prepared pemmican. They prepared their own grease. The
dried meat, fish, pemmican, and berries were stashed away for the winter.
That way they would be ready if the winter turned out to be cold. The
foodstuffs were consumed after Christmas. They did not spoil.

In a shady place by the muskeg, a hole would be dug for the winter
stores. The foodstuffs were buried there in a way that water could not seep
in. That stash was just like a refrigerator; the food never spoiled there,
and it served the people’s needs until warmer weather came and the hunting
and trapping resumed. The stash would last the whole winter. The spring was
the time to make traps. In earlier times, my grandfather used to tell me,
store-bought traps were not available. Our ancestors made traps out of trees
and thin roots. They made snares from these. They snared beaver, you know,
but I don’t know exactly how they did it.

This is the way my grandfather told it. These were the things they used
before the snare wire and the steel trap were introduced. It was in the
spring, too, that they made birchbark canoes. They would strip the bark off
a birch that was really big around, peeling off just enough to make one
canoe. They used rocks to hold the birch bark underwater until it softened,
according to my grandfather. It was tied together with tamarack, but I don’t
know exactly how it was done. I have tried it myself many times but have
never been successful.

It amazes me; I am sure the people must have been very clever to be
able to do things like making birchbark canoes. They looked just like the
canoes that we have today, but that is how they made them. My grandfather
told me, too, how the sticks were bent at an angle to make the ribs for the
canoes, how the birch bark was put on, and how tar was put on the roots that
they used. The women, young and old, gathered those roots in the bush, as
well as the spruce gum. The spruce gum was the only thing available for
sealing a canoe and making it watertight. They used the roots to tie the
canoe together. They glued the canoe together and hung it up in the air to
dry, my grandfather said. Afterwards, they poured water over it to find out
if it would leak. Wherever there was a leak, they would patch the canoe with
spruce gum while it was still hanging there. Then they took the canoe down
and tied it up properly with roots so that it would be strong. When they were
finished, they made paddles. After that, they would just paddle away. The
canoes that they used were strong, but they were very careful with them, not
banging into things with them.

The Native people were very clever before they were disturbed, before
the European came and disturbed their way of life. They were perfectly
capable of looking after themselves. They made clothing for themselves, too.
When they killed a moose, the women immediately made tanned hide. All sorts
of other things they made, as well, like bearskins. When they killed bears,
the bearskins were used as mattresses. Caribou and moose hides were used to
make jackets, footwear and mittens. These were all made from animals,
including rabbits. They used to snare the rabbits, my grandfather said, with
the thin roots. They cut up branches, willow wands, for snare support sticks.
Every time a rabbit was snared, it flew up. There it hung, and there was no
way it could break it, even though only a little willow wand was used for a
snare. From the rabbit skins they made blankets, and they did this year after
year for survival. They always worked in the same way, changing nothing.
And they played games. Of course, they played games. For example, there
was the game of chance that they played using stones, the way the Eskimos
used them. However, the rules were different. The people here played
checkers, too, but they made the checkers themselves. Where the game came
from or who invented it, I do not know. My grandfather said it was the old
people who made checkers, as well as the checkerboard. I don’t know how they
got the idea to make checkers, but they did it. Yes, they played all kinds of
games.

They did the same things year after year, and they always worked for
survival in the same way.

Long ago, they had the ability to see into the future. My grandfather
used to tell about his father and grandfather, how they saw things before
they came here, like potatoes. The vegetable gardens were first introduced in
the Highrock area when my grandfather on my father’s side was a young man. He
and my mother’s father, too, used to tell me the old stories the way they had
been told them when they were young.

Once long ago, my grandfather said, there used to be a very wise
person, one with shamanistic powers. My grandfather told me about it, the one
called Albert Linklater. He passed away when I went out at nine years of age
to attend school in 1943. That old man was about 90, probably 95 years old,
when he died. I remember him telling me the story as if it was today. It is
the story he told us when we were young. He would always have us sit together
when he told his story.

It is amazing, all the things I have seen in my life. Right now, I am
63 years old. I was only eight, nine years old when he passed away. When he
made us sit together, he told us stories of the things he had experienced,
maybe in the early 1800s. He had himself experienced the time when there were
still wise men, shamans. They went out to have vision quests, he said. They
used to make preparations, the people of long ago did, whenever they left to
go out to seek spirit power. And they did not do this on the land, but under
the water. But he never told me what happened when they went into the water.
“I don’t remember what happened...I wonder if they turned into rock,” he
said. “It’s the only way to stay underwater and sleep there. It was in the
winter that they did this. All winter they had these spirit dreams under
water. These elders, they were the wise old men,” he said.

That was my grandfather named Albert Linklater. Whenever spring came,
and it was almost summer, all of a sudden he would appear. I saw him myself.
I saw him, like that kind of an elder just arriving from a spirit quest. And
at that time he would tell us what was going to happen in the future. He told
us everything, what he had experienced in his vision quest. Maybe that was a
divine gift. That’s why they believed the first time the Christian religion
was brought here. That’s what happened long ago. That’s the story the old man
told us.

Okay! “As you grow up you have a priority,” my grandfather told us,
“which is the Christian religion. That’s what the old man told us about
religion. They believed that someone would be there to give life, to guide us
in how to live our lives. They believed. He told us not to discard our
religion, the one we were given here on earth. The person brought to us was
Jesus. God sent his disciples to teach us the religion we are practising now.
He did not, however, create a different religion than the one he had already
made, but I did hear that old man tell me that in the future we would start
seeing all kinds of different religions which the white people would invent.
Now, I see all sorts of different religions, but I will never give up mine,
the one I was taught.” My grandfather said all this. “Follow the way you were
brought up. Do not stray from the path. Follow just his road, the way that
you were taught as you grew up.”

The radio already existed by that time. Long ago, radios were made out
of wood. He had one of those. “All of a sudden,” he said, “you are listening
to it talking now, but in the future you will actually see a white man
talking and showing himself in it.” The first time I saw a television, I
remembered what the old man had told me. That was what he meant, eh? He
already knew what was going to happen. He told us what we would be seeing in
the future. (At the time we were living at Granville Lake.) In the future, he
said, there would be towns surrounding us here. There would be roads all
over, too, with vehicles moving everywhere. He meant Lynn Lake, Leaf Rapids,
Thompson, and this highway here. He saw it all in what the white people call
a vision. That old man saw it coming in the future. He told us about it long
ago. Now I am starting to see everything that the old man foresaw. That’s
why, whenever a person is granted a vision, I do not reject it out of hand or
make fun of it if he is convinced. It was authentic, that one. Moreover, he
told us, a railway will run through where these Pukatawagan people live, not
very far away from here. That is the same railroad that did go by here
(later), on which ran a steam engine with fire. “It will go as far as the
town to the north (Lynn Lake),” he said. You see, this is what he came and
told us long before it actually happened.

“Don’t ever abandon our way of life and the way we were brought up,” he
told us. “We always have to teach the new generation. When you start to have
children yourselves, teach them how to make a living, how they should not
treat the wildlife with disrespect. In the future it will be difficult. You
people in the transition stage, in the middle, will be all right. You will be
like kings. You will have rations, money will be given to you freely; it will
not be like right now, the way we are living and the way you are being
treated now, even though the trappers’ fathers buy their food in the store.
The lifestyle of buying food from the store is becoming more common. You are
living so much that way that you should take a look at what is happening.
Tell your leaders to be cautious; many of them will think that they have made
it and are like kings when things are going well at the moment. I have been
seeing this going on since 1970, this lifestyle. I am always reminded of what
that old man told me long ago. That’s why at every meeting I speak out and
encourage the leaders to look to the future and not just at themselves. Now
I see with my own eyes what that old man foretold. His grandfather had told
him the stories, and he passed them down to us. There are not many of us
still living who were there when my grandfather Albert told those stories as
they had been told to him. These are the same stories I always tell; I have
not forgotten them.

And then there was the time when my two grandfathers used to take turns
taking me out trapping with them. I started to learn how to trap when I was
seven or eight years old, before I went out to school. Sometimes I would help
my grandfather trap over at Granville Lake, and sometimes I would trap with
my grandfather here at Pukatawagan. They had the same lifestyle and did the
same things.

I used to go berry picking with my grandmother, too. She would tire me
out picking berries. Oh, yes, I almost forgot to tell about how they used to
store their food, my late grandfather Albert’s father and his grandmother.
They used to make bark baskets from birch bark. They made those to store
their food and they buried it in them. My late grandmother and my late
grandfather did the same thing. My grandmother used to make baskets into
which she put pemmican, dried fish and dried moose meat with homemade grease.
We used to go and bury them, my grandfather and I. This is what we had to eat
all winter until spring came.

There were already potatoes here in my grandfathers’ time. They were
introduced when a man brought six of them from Sherridon. The people at
Highrock cut out the eyes, divided them among themselves, and planted them in
the summer. Then they harvested them in the fall. They stored most them, but
set aside just enough for their own immediate use. And that’s how these
potato gardens came into existence there. Eventually, potatoes were brought
to Pukatawagan, too, where people divided them equally among themselves. Long
ago, the people always shared, always helped each other. They did not sell to
each other. Survival was difficult, so they helped one another.

However, the white people, the Europeans, were already here and
continuing to arrive. It was the same at Granville Lake, where there were a
white woman and her husband. His name was Dick Matour. His wife set up a
store there that I still remember. My late father used to cut lumber by hand
over there at Granville Lake, at apisci-paðipânakosi, where lumber was being
cut for a store that was under construction. It was that white lady who was
having it built. People even used to paddle from Pukatawagan to buy
groceries, because it was the only store in the area. Then, as time went by,
retail merchants from Sherridon came in, and the French Company was
established across the water from here. But back then, the people were not
always here, because when fall came they would all pack up and leave, with
only a few remaining behind, those whose traplines were close-by, like my
late grandfather, my mother’s father. He trapped right across from here. They
all survived the same way, burying foodstuffs in the shade for use in the
winter. They set nets, too, which they made by hand out of cord and rope.
They were given rope. But already at that time people were receiving social
assistance. I remember seeing it.

They used to tell stories about a wihtiko that was still around in the
1950s. You know, these people from further north who were dying of starvation
turned into wihtikos, people were told. Our grandfathers said that they used
to come here. Our grandfathers of long ago were shamans, very wise. They knew
when a wihtiko was coming because they could sense when this not quite human
being was coming to get them. Over there at Granville Lake, there is a lookout
rock shaped like a tower. In the spring, before I went out to school in
1943, we used to go there. It is a hill with a tower-like rock that juts out
about twenty feet. My grandfather said he used to climb up it to watch for
the wihtiko. I wonder how he climbed it, that old man, because it is very
steep and slippery. The top of it is shaped (scooped out) like a seat. Many
people go just to have a look at it, not very far from the community of
Granville Lake. It is only about ten miles across the water from where the
people are living, across West Arm. You can go there anytime and take a
picture of it. I even tell the young people that they should go and see it
for themselves.

Grandfather Michel, as he was called, really was a wise man, a shaman,
and I guess everybody was related to him there. He was a wizard who used to
talk about how he had flown. This is exactly what my grandfather told me
about him. Whenever anyone needed him, no matter where, he would see him and
recognize him. It is because there were shamans in those days who really knew
the people. He just took off. I don’t know how he managed to fly, and nobody
actually saw him do it. “He flew,” they said. He flew to wherever he was
needed, and when he got there he would just walk in. That was how much power
he had, my grandfather’s grandfather. But then, some people called my
grandfather a big liar. I suspect that he had some of that shamanistic power,
too, because I used to think of him in that way, whenever I went trapping
with him right across from here, at the narrows. Once he told me the story
when I had just finished school, in 1949.

I was fourteen, not yet fifteen years old, when we finished school. My
father did not let me continue my schooling because he had to teach me too
his way of survival, as he explained it to the priest. Even though I had not
yet completed my schooling, I had to learn to survive in the wild and not
live the European or white man’s way. I was taught a lot about the Native way
of survival. The time I am talking about with regard to my grandfather was
when I was becoming a man of fourteen. Long ago, nobody sat around with
nothing to do; such a person would likely starve to death. And this is the
way I followed at that time. When I went out trapping with my grandfather,
we travelled early in the morning, before sunrise. We had a team of just two
dogs, the only ones that he had. I controlled the dogs, and he packed the
snow down for a trail. There was a cabin over there in the bush. Just as the
night sky began to brighten, at maybe four o’clock, we left in a hurry and
got there at daybreak. We built a campfire there at the cabin.
“Okay, we’ll go over there another five miles, I guess, and will stop
there, okay, and set up camp,” he said to me. “There is a pond with beavers
that we will snare.” Snare wire was already in use by then, also traps. That
is where we set up our tent. I made some tea there. Then, he told a story:
I’ll tell you a story, my grandson. Long ago, when I was
young, this is where we used to camp, your late grandmother and
I. But for a long time we did not use a canvas tarpaulin. Deer
hide is what we used for a tent. One time, after I had wrapped
these deer hides around the poles, and when I had made the
bedding and started a fire inside and fetched some water, your
grandmother made tea. Then, she said to me, ‘I have been
listening and am really worried.’ I said, ‘I have a funny
feeling that somebody is planning to do something to us. I
think I will go out for a while.’ While I was standing outside,
there was a strong wind, like a tornado, and suddenly it was as
if someone wrapped me up and carried me off to somewhere in the
northeast, Grand Rapids, maybe, where I suddenly dropped down.
There was a tent in that place, a kind of tipi. I walked in
there and noticed elders sitting in a circle. Some young people
had gone out by canoe to get groceries. They were to paddle by
way of Nelson House and Grand Rapids, and finally to Winnipeg.
When they completed their purchases, they would travel home by
way of Swan River, Cumberland House, and then all the way along
the Saskatchewan River. This is the route they followed, those
who went out for groceries long ago. Well, those elders were
talking about the young people and plotting to do something to
them, and they had not even reached Grand Rapids yet. Because
it was such a long trip, they must have overwintered somewhere.
I listened to them, but they did not know that I was sitting
there with them. Then, I went outside, where a wind wrapped me
up and carried me back. I walked back in slowly, just as your
grandmother was taking out the teapot, having made tea. I
laughed at her, because she thought I was a liar, or so I have
heard. But it’s true what I say. If I had not adopted the
Christian religion, I would still be very much a shaman today,
and all of you would be shamanists.

But myself, I was told absolutely not to abandon
Christianity. My late father told me this, and it is how he
raised me, and that’s the reason I quit shamanism myself. Many
people quit shamanism, and yet many of them have it in them to
this day. Some people really use it to do good. It is a divine
gift. These are the medicine people. I see that. When somebody
uses it in a bad way, however, he is not acting right. He will
not be taken into heaven when he departs this earth. That is
why I discontinued it. And your forefathers, who are related to
us, they all started to quit shamanism. They chose Christianity
instead.

Now I will tell you about my other grandfather,
my mother’s father. I always used to accompany him
when he went out to do a little trapping in the
spring. We used to trap over there on the Churchill
River at Granville Falls. It was a place called Bear
Bay, over there towards apisci-paðipânakosi
“Little Narrows,” and at another place called
wîwîsi [wîhkîsi-wâsa ‘Calamus Bay’](?).

I never heard that old man swear. He always Calamus (Wild Ginger)
prayed fervently, that grandfather of mine. Whenever wîhkîs
we made camp, we always prayed before turning in for the night, and when we
got up in the morning he prayed. Before we started out he would sing hymns.
He was always singing hymns. One time we went hunting with him in the fall,
my late cousin and I, trying not to make any sound. Nobody had killed a moose
yet. This cousin was the son of my aunt, the one living in Sandy Bay. Paul
was his name, Paul Morin. We hunted, we explored Little Groundhog River,
camping at an inlet on a bay. When we were setting up camp there, he told us
to be quiet. We moved silently, because when we were camping we did not want
to frighten off the moose.

By the time we had made camp and changed, it was already dark.
Suddenly, he said, “Okay, let’s pray, let’s pray!” Then he started to pray
full blast. When he had finished, he started singing hymns. My cousin kept
nudging me to get my attention and then said to me, “We probably won’t see
anything. The way our grandfather is making so much noise, the moose will
probably run far away.” It was the same thing in the morning, even before
the sun was up. Our grandfather woke us up, saying, “All right, wake up!
Don’t make too much noise! Make a fire, make tea!” When we had finished
boiling the tea, we gave him some to drink, because that’s how we were taught
to look after an elder, you know. We cooked for him after we had given him
tea. When he had finished his food, he said, “Okay, let’s pray!” And then you
could hear the echo while he was singing. Finally, my late cousin, who did
not care what he said, told him, “Grandfather, I am sure you scared the moose
very far away already. We can hear the echo in the forest.” Our grandfather
replied, “All right, my grandchild, I will tell you something. It is not to
the animal that I am praying. It is to our God that I am praying. He is the
only one who hears me. The animal does not hear me.” He repeated himself and
once again told us to be quiet. “Be silent,” he said. And just a moment
before, he had been singing so loudly! We fell silent again. As we left the
shoreline of the bay, we noticed two moose not two hundred feet away on the
other bay. I shot the pair of them.

People used to do something when they killed an animal, you know. Long
ago, our forefathers used to throw something into the fire as a sacrificial
offering. Whenever my grandfathers killed something, I saw them make a burnt
offering like that. They would throw in a piece for their grandfathers so
that they would be given something in return. Our great-grandfathers did it,
too. Still today, whenever I kill an animal, I always throw a piece into the
fire. I even save a little of the tea to pour into the fire, and I say to
myself, “Here, Grandmother, I give you tea.” I still remember my grandfather
Albert saying this. He used to tell us this. He talked about it continually.
“Don’t forget about this,” he would say, “what I am telling you, if you would
live a long life, eh?” I am already sixty-three years old myself. At the
time my grandfather told me this, I was nine. This is what he talked about.
“The leaders today are only looking after their own interests. That’s
why everyone who becomes chief says, ‘I heard about this or that, but I don’t
see it with my own eyes.’ They all have a business. They take our money and
use it, eh?” That’s what the old man was talking about when he said, “Your
leaders are going to be, a lot of them, misguided. Try to put them out while
you are still alive if you see this corruption, especially for the young
people who are just now going to school and growing up. Meanwhile, we can see
these children and teenagers starting to act different. If we don’t teach
them right, they are going to be troublesome in the future. They are our
grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. They will start to see the hard
times coming back. They will be broke. You people in the middle, the
transition stage, will be given welfare.”

“There is a lot of work, but in the future it will stop. The white man
will use everything but will only have to press a button,” he said. Oh, I
forgot about that. He said, “Long ago people used to make open fires. In the
future, though, you will only press something and the light will come on.”
That’s what my grandfather Albert said. “And if you want to make fire,
you will only have to release a little button and you will be warm.” See,
that is what the old man foresaw. How he knew this, I don’t know, but I see
it now. Right now, a person lives very differently, and even I am too lazy to
haul wood, because the white man has been a bad influence. But I can still
survive in the bush the Native way, because I was taught it. At present,
people just eat from the store. I do not see many people hunting wild game.
The young people are just following their leaders’ examples. Myself, I quit
the Native way of life long ago, when I went to work in 1963. I used to work
on the railroad long ago, back in the fifties. I worked at all sorts of jobs.
I worked everywhere. And then I started to abandon the Native way of life. I
trapped, I fished. That was how I used to survive long ago, when I was on my
own. I was with my parents for only a short while. I was only eighteen years
old when my father told me, “That’s it, Son; I have finished raising you. You
are on your own now and will try to support yourself.” That’s right! We
succeeded in making our own living because he had taught us to trap and to
survive according the traditional Native way. Look, right now it’s gone, that
way of survival. When I started working for money I also started neglecting
the Native way of life. I have the ability, though, to do it again, because
I have always worked until now. I am sixty-three years old now. I am given my
Native pension worth $703, an old age pension. The Canada pension, too, I
will be paid, because I used to be employed, but I won’t receive it for two
years. Then, I will end up living like a king.

That’s it! All right?