Burton Ahenakew - Those were the good old days.
I was born in 1942 during the Second World War. When I was born, I believe the war ended 1940, 42, or 1943, I’m not quite sure when they quit fighting. I grew up on the farm here on our old farmstead. My dad ran up to 100 head of cows and we grew up working hard. There was no welfare, there was no power, no telephone nothing, but people survived. They learned to survive the winters as they were very cold. Today, we only have a few cold days in a year. Back in them days, there was 40, 50, 60 below. And we'd have to go for hay. If we ran out of the hay on the farm here, we'd have go for seven miles to go and get hay for the cattle. To make a story short, Simon Williams told me a lot of things. I don't know why, but he spent time with me. I was just a young man at 14 or 15 years old, but he would come and tell me things about my great grandfather.
The way I was told, his name was Chatelaine and that they came from down south-east and this is where they took land when the government (Indian affairs) put us on reserves. This is where they chose land as per Basil Starblanket, that was my mother's uncle. My mom was Metis from Mattes. They had a little farm on the edge of the reserve. She married into the reserve here with my dad. My great grandmother was from One Arrow First Nation her last name was Almightyvoice. I forgot her name. I'm eighty years old now and I forgot a lot of things and that her last name was Almightyvoice. She was my great grand-mother, my grandmother was Mariam Starblanket. She was Basil's Starblanket's niece, Baptiste Starblanket's daughter. That was my mother's mom. On my mother's side, we were like my great grandmother was Almightyvoice and then married my dad.
I guess during that time, Tom Pechawis was heading to Ahtahkakoop here. Sandy Lake as it was known then. Nobody ever called this reserve Ahtahkakoop, it was always Sandy Lake. The Anglican priest had called it Hines Lake. But, we called it Sandy Lake and that's where we are today. Tom was heading here and then he stopped at Mistawasis for the night. They were traveling with a herd of cattle and they were going to settle down here. But the chief at that time in Mistawasis went and seen Tom and told him, "you may as well stay here, this will be your land." They invited him, so he decided to stay there. We're kind of related there with Wuttunees, the Tootoosis from Poundmaker and Pechawis in Mistawasis. That's where people were migrating to choose their reserves.
Life was hard like I said, there was no tractors with front end loaders, you had the pitchfork and each family, there was no welfare you had to work to live to have something to eat or you had to live on berries in summertime and especially during winter people were hungry.
That brings me the thought about Almightyvoice. There's a book, my kohkum's (grandmother) nephew, they were starving. I read the book when I was about sixteen or seventeen. My dad had it. They were hungry and their were kids were crying there was nothing to eat. So, he killed his own cow to feed his family and the Indian agent heard about it came and seen him. You know, you weren't supposed to kill your cow without the permit. You never came for a permit. They were arrested and they that agent told him you're going hang for this. So they took him in. But that night, he somehow escaped and went to a friend. They both took off and to make a Long story short, they were surrounded in the kind of a valley with a little bush in the bottom. The police surrounded that place and they were afraid of him because he wouldn't miss, he was a dead shot with a gun. They were in there while other relatives like my great grandmother were up on a hill with the others. Almightyvoice was the name of that book. Almightyvoice would sing a song in the way they sing and sending a message to his mother and she would send a message back. Then towards the end, his friend was wounded and he sang a song and they were hungry. They haven't eaten anything. Just before that a crow was flying over-head, they heard a gunshot that they saw that crow fall down and they ate it. So right after that they were starving and they sang a song to his mom and said, "my friend is dying he's wounded and is dying. I'm going to shoot him and I'm not going to give the police the pleasure of capturing me and I'm going to kill myself too." So, they heard two shots and that was it. For days, the RCMP wouldn't go into the scene. They didn't know if they were alive or dead the police were scared but finally they went down there found them both laying there.
Anyway, that's where my mom side and my dad side was the last name Chatelaine (French). When Indian Affairs came, they were changing names and spellings and everything they made a mess of the names of people. They also changed the name from Chatelaine to Ahenakew because there's a little story. I know there are some that makes it, they swear (Cree version) the way I was told was Chatelaine was one of the best swimmers around this area amongst the Cree Indians. The Blackfoot's heard about this Ahenakew so they came and wanted to challenge him. They brought horses, blankets and everything. The Blackfoot also had a good swimmer and wanted to challenge the Cree's to a race. They all went to the banks of the North Saskatchewan River to hold this race. A canoe took both of them across the river while the rest were on this opposite side of the river. There were horses, the Cree brought some and the Blackfoot there were blankets and beads and shovels and forks and stuff that they brought whoever wins takes it all. So, they took both of them across and they shot a gun and both went into the Saskatchewan river and they came and they said Chatelaine was ahead for about ten to fifteen feet ahead of the Blackfoot and about twenty feet from the shore he had cramps. As he was struggling there with the cramps, the Blackfoot swimmer passed him and the crowd yelled, "Ahahay-nakew!' and that's where he got this name Ahenakew. That's where we got this name as explained by Simon Williams.
Those days in the 1940's life was hard. Before, there were no tractors with front end loaders and there were no bailers, no combines. Everything was done with stooks and pitch forks to feed the thrashing machines. Everything was man handled. People were always in shape. There was no welfare and my dad ran about one hundred head of cattle and had about forty to fifty head of horses. Horses were most important. We had about six to ten teams of horses and everything was done with horses, even when we're clearing the bush here on the hill side. My dad and I pulled the stumps out with the horses. Today, we got bulldozers clearing up everything, it was so hard them days. Everybody worked hard, even bachelors used to come work for my dad. He had a place here, a little house where he put up workers. They didn't want any money, they just wanted something to eat and have a place to sleep. My father kept one man, Adam Genereaux. He was a good man and he was in the army. When he came out (military life) they started working for my dad right up to almost the time he died. He was a good worker, he looked after the horses. As for us kids we worked from when we were little just about four or five years old. We were taking one or two sticks in the house, wood for cooking and stuff. Everything in the garden, we're all lined up cleaning the garden. This is the way of life in them days. Today, you can't put young people to work because they don't even know how to handle anything. It's hard to get good help.
But in them days, we used to go six or seven miles for hay from here in the winter in a hay rack. I was thirteen years old when I went over there. We had stacks here, my dad said, "we're going to run out of hay." He said, "let's try and get as much as we can from the sloughs and we will use these stacks in the spring when the calving starts."
I was thirteen (13 years old) and nobody was here. I was home alone and my oldest brother was married and on his own and my other older brother was in British Columbia working in mining over there with Hector Ahenakew and others. I was the only man at home. I was thirteen, my dad sent me early in the morning. He packed lunch for me and off I went. It was forty or fifty below and I was running behind the hay racks and when the horses would start to slow down, I would jump on and whip them a little bit so that they would trot. I was also running behind to keep warm. There were thirteen coils and there were snow two to three feet high drifts on the coils of hay. There were sixteen coils, I had to shovel. Clear the snow off so I could load up my hay rack. It was springtime, and in the springtime and the roads, the snow was packed two or three feet above the ground and then the spring the sun was starting to warm up and the sleigh would cut in (the load would spill) tipped over. I got everything up again and I filled it up again and took all the hay, put it back on. I went to put 100 feet and it cut in again. Of course, three times that happened. All that day, it was 10:00 o'clock before I got home but for my dad, Rod Genereaux and Wesley Bowman, my brother-in-law's, just came that evening. My dad said,
"you go look for Burton, he left at 9:00 o'clock this morning."
So, they hitched up another team of horses. They were standing outside and were just getting ready to come look for me. My dad was out there walking and just worried about me. All of a sudden, the cows started bellering and they started running. They met me over there at the end of this field. They heard the sleigh you know, you used to hear the sleigh coming and they came and my dad told them, he said "never mind he's coming." See the cows, he said, running and they met me at the end of the field, they were following me and they were eating and they were hungry. I only brought about not quite a half a load. I was played right out. I was only thirteen. I couldn't talk my mom would talk to me and I wanted to cry and my dad said, "don't talk to him, he doesn't feel like talking." I had tears in my eyes.
Today, we have young strong men, what are you doing? We got gangs, killing one another, getting into drugs and stuff like that. Back in those days, we didn't have time for anything like that. Everybody worked the whole family survived they worked together kids, right from small in order to live. There was no welfare. In 1969, the welfare started and that's about the time, the power came in but that's only the main area. The telephone came and there was one telephone, you turn that, you turn it like this. There was one telephone in the main area everybody would go to phone there.
Things begin to change, in 1969, the Indian Affairs sent my dad a, thirty-five dollar welfare cheque. He said, I don't need this and he sent it back and he put a note in there. I was standing right there watching him. He said, "I don't need your money, when I can't work I'll ask for it and when I can't support myself but until then. I don't need your money and sent it back." Now you have people from teenage life they're waiting for the next welfare cheque. They can't put up them to work. I need people here. I'm eighty years old I’m crippled, my shoulders and knees hurt and trying to get help. It's hard to find them. They just don't want to work. They just don't know what life was like when I was a young man.
I want to talked about my uncle Alex Ahenakew, (my father's brother). He was a smart man, he had his B.A., Ph.D and whatever, I don't know what all in university. When he came home, he didn't know what he wanted to be. So, he decided to attend the Anglican Bible School (College). He told my dad, I don't know the more I read the bible, the more it doesn't make sense to me. So, he went to marry a Dene woman from Patuanak, Saskatchewan . He was going back and forth to Ile-a-la-Crosse and he was a Hudson's Bay Company store manager. But he was a clerk over there. He got a job as a clerk with the Hudson Bay Company. HBC like him because he was a smart man and he was doing pretty good management on the store and they looked after that Hudson's Bay Company stores up in the north. Simon Williams told me he said he was the brain of the reserve. He organized a lot of things. When Alex came down from Ile-a-la-Crosse to visit, he came and asked the chief to let him go, he wanted to disenfranchise, give up his Treaty status and his band membership. He didn't need it because he was educated and he had a good job that they liked. The Chief wouldn't let him go, he said no. We can't, we need you guys we don't know how to fight for ourselves. We don't know what the deal with Indian Affairs the way they're treating us. He said, we need you. So, he went back up north and sometime later he came back. They killed a cow and they invited all the people, RCMP, Indian Affairs and the preacher named Hines. Later, on the chief got up and said. You made this feast, what is it that you what? Alex said, I want ask you could just let me go. I want to disenfranchise (Cree Version) I want to leave the reserve and I have a good job. Simon Said, the Chief got up and he cried and he said, "I hate to let you go because we need you to fight for us. You know how to speak English you're a smart man you know how to fight for your people." The Chief cried, but if that's what you want I'll sign it and he put cross (his X) on the paper. You are disenfranchised. Today, my nephews and relatives up there a lot of them want to come into the reserve. I have a nephew at my other house that wants to get his status and just can't seem to get it. Some of them have received it. But, life was hard in those days. If you didn't have an education, you have nothing and you had to find work to live.
People were working on the building homes. Everybody worked together to build a house. I was about four or five years old, the old farmhouse is right here. All of this was bush and at the end of that house, there was a spruce tree about this big. That's where, we made the farmhouse here. There was only a little trail going up there, a wagon trail. This is where my dad built his house and started this farm here. All the people would help when somebody wants to build a house, the whole community came together. You can hear the wagons coming and men they were cutting down trees. They were hauling them. Etienne Gerard , my uncle and another person, they knew how to cut the ends so they interlock. That's what they were doing and the woman over there. There's a little opening, they had blankets on the ground and they were cooking food and when dinner time comes. They would call the men and everybody would come and eat and after they eat they would go back to work. The whole community came. There was no money. Today, you'll get a pension, you get jobs, you get welfare. You get everything. In those days, there was nothing and the whole community worked together. They didn't have what we have today.
Today, people are neurotic, they're nervous, they're not happy. But them days, they were happy and healthy. They enjoyed life, they enjoyed working together. Everybody was laughing telling stories as they are working together.
"They were happy, people were so happy, those were the golden years the forties, fifties and towards the sixties. Like I said, when the power came in, the telephone came in, television started to come in and everything. Today, they have all that, and they're miserable, they're committing suicide our young people. If they could go back to the way we lived, when we were young, they would still be alive today. But, people are so miserable and they're nervous they live in fear and anxiety."
People used to talk about building these log houses. They would go get clay by Mont Nebo road. It was applied inside after mudding was complete. It was brown when it was applied. But when it dried up, it turned white like a whitewash. It was lime. I've seen that, when I first got married in 1963, I had bought a little log house on the other side of the bay from John George Starblanket had a little log house. I bought it for one hundred dollars ($100.00). I was twenty-one years old when I bought it. I moved it. There were two teams of horses on skids that dragged it. Over there on Mont Nebo road. That's where I settled down at first. We chinked it, inside and outside and after it dried up we use lime and we painted that. It was white lime. Every day my wife would be sweeping and it would fall off pieces of mud or lime. She'd sweep every day but it was home and we were happy people were basically happy.
Today, I was talking at the funeral just last week and I said, "what can we do to redeem our young people?" It's just our young people are mostly dying. It is very rare that an elderly person dies. Almost every week, young people are dying or teens go missing. Just down the road here another young person was shot. There's gangs and different things, we've never seen anything like that.
Everything was different, young people were happy. We played, "kick the can" and all kinds of little games when we visit one another. Throw a ball over a roof game was called, "anti I over" and everybody run to the other side and see who got their first. There used to be so much fun. Today, kids don't know what fun is. Young married couples they don't know what to do. They're having lots of problems, health problems, physical problems, mental health problems and they have all kinds of issues and marriage problems. Just everything, every evil you can think of and I was saying, "what can we do to redeem our young people?" Things were so different when we were young. Everybody was community minded. Today, you meet them down the highway, you don't see them wave anymore, we are strangers right in our reserve.
Education was important. There were a few people that used to live way on the north side of the reserve by Polworth. When the school was open, they moved closer to the core area. Men built a walk bridge by the river and they began to settle there. They didn't have to go that far to attend school. They had to walk to school every day.
From where we live here and to the school, it's about three kilometers. I was six years old when I started and my mother had to dress us warm. We had to run to school every day from here and then come back after school. It was forty or fifty below (minus 40 or 50 degrees celsius). It didn't matter how cold it was, they'd push us out and we'd be crying. I remember my sister Selna was just younger than me. We were screaming, we didn't want to go outside in the cold and mom, I noticed she had tears in eyes as she pushed us out the door and told the older kids to go look after these little kids. So, we'd run, there was a path in the bush to go across. Sometimes if it wasn't so windy, we would go across the lake. We went to school like that and later on Clifford Ahenakew's mother was a taxi driver. She was our bus school bus with a team of horses and with a caboose. She would come pick us up here. We would fill the caboose up her own kids and us that was our school bus.
Today, children are picked up right by the door. Life was so much easier yet they are most miserable people you can think of and us, we were happy. In the spring time, there were six or seven sleighs full of young people and we would have snowball fights. We would meet each other full gallop and towards each other, we'd be throwing snow balls. We had fun, young people got along.
I remember when I was a kid, there were dances. When a couple guys were starting to fight they were thrown them out and the music kept going and people kept dancing, until the best man wins. They would fight with use their hands and their fists to fight. Today, they put out a pull out a knife or a gun. Back then the best man won. Nobody paid attention to them and the music just continued. Freddy Sasakamoose was telling me, he had a picture of me standing on a stage. He said, you were so annoying (in Cree) they had balloons hanging on the ceiling and there were these sharp little plants that had looked like a spear. We were busting balloons at that party. Freddy said, you guys are busting up all of our balloons! People had lots of fun. There was rodeos every Sunday here with just ourselves. Every year they had rodeos here. People came from different reserves that whole area was full of tents there was pies, there was everything they were selling. It was beautiful them days. Today, it's just sad. I don't know.
Back in the day, they would make a cake and they would place of penny in the cake. Whoever had the penny in their piece of cake, that person would host the next dance. Every weekend there was a dance. Then one time, Evaline Cardinal (Māyāchun) (Nickname) they received the penny, so they had to make a dance at their house and her husband used to play the fiddle, his name was Robert Cardinal. So, they hosted the dance and it was getting late or two o'clock after midnight the dance kept going and Robert kept his eyes closed and enjoying himself as he was playing. Suddenly, Eveline chased everybody out because she wanted to go to bed. Robert kept playing and not paying attention what was going on. Then a man, we called Raggies said, "wait I'll have a talk with her." So, he went back in the house had his arms around her and held her hand and convince her to come back and continue the dance. Evaline (Māyāchan) agreed and then everybody come back in and the dance started again. But then, she really wanted to go sleep. Then suddenly, she got up again and grabbed Roberts fiddle from his hands and then threw on the floor and she stomped on it, crushed it and she broke it to pieces. Robert had to pick up the pieces of his fiddle. Then the dance was over. It was so much fun, everything happened that way. Today now, it's a different world, totally different world.
Robert (Louputch) and Evaline Cardinal. Cardinals, there was three of them Robert, Stuart Bowman's wife (not sure of her name) and Wahpihkwes. They came from south Shell Lake area. Lawrence (Wahpihkwēs) had come here during the pestilence and people were dying, south of the tower. There was a reserve there. He was a jockey and had went to Mistawasis. There was a sports day there with horse races. He rode for horse owners in different reserves. He was asked to go ride in Mistawasis and he won then onto Muskeg Lake. The following races were in Sandy Lake. Mistawasis asked Lawrence (Wāhpēkwēs) to ride for him again in Sandy Lake. That's when he met his wife here and stayed to be with her.
There was a small hamlet south east of Ahtahkakoop named Hawkeye with seven to eight houses over there. There was a little store there with a post office and an elevator. It was mostly made up of Metis people. That’s where my eldest sister met Rod Genereaux (Napew) and she married him. We used to go visit her and cut across here with a horse and wagon or sleigh. Sometimes we'd run over there. There used be fun to visit over there. There was Martin Robinson and others. Issac Genereaux had five boys and they were huge men. Whenever they drank, they would fight and made each other cry. It wasn't uncommon to see big men cry.
One of our ancestors, David Ahenakew had four boys; Baptiste, Henry, Louis and John. Our grandmothers came here from Hobemma, Alberta (Ermineskin First Nation). There were four sisters arrived and settled here and married onto Sandy Lake. One of them was my grandmother. Shem's grandmother, Norman Fraser (Minnie Fraser's mother) and my grandmother, they were sisters. One of the other sisters married onto Red Pheasant into the Baptiste family. Arlene and Mike (Maymēchitch) took me home to Red Pheasant after they got married for about a half a year. John (Maymēchitch's) son came and ask me to go cut prairie wool. We cut all of the prairie wool in all of the fields there and we baled it. He asked me to stay with him there. So, I stayed there to help him around the farm until fall. Pete Wuttnuee came looking for men and nobody wanted to work so, I said, I'll work for you" I said, "you don't have to pay me." I'll work for you for one week and then you can take me home. I want to go home. This was getting late fall, so we baled his hay. He was so surprised with my work because I already knew how. I grew up on a farm. We finished all of his fields and made square bales. He wanted to keep me and work but, I said no. I said, I want to go home. Take me home and then he agreed to bring me back home. I had met Clara Wildcat whom is a cousin from Hobemma, her grandfather was a sibling to those four sisters. She had planned to come and visit her cousins here in Ahtahkakoop, but she never had a chance to come out. So, there is a lot of connections and relatives on different reserves. All the way down to Rocky Boy, Montana, USA.
We had traditional lands trapping and hunting. Right here, when David Starblanket arrived here. He had asked people to come with him to go hunt and trap at Hawkeye southeast of the highway up on a hill. We arrived at a camp and we put up a tent and we were trapping and hunting. The farmer not far from there seen us. That evening, they brought a box of supper. His wife made supper and he brought it out, he knew that this area was Indian lands. Nobody bothered us, they knew this was Indian land where they could hunt and trap. We trapped muskrats and mink and whatever. So, I came home and I went and sold my muskrats. You know I started buying my own clothes when I was fifteen. Just shooting squirrels and trapping muskrats and selling them to buy clothes for myself. My dad told me you don't have to buy your own clothes. But I said, that's what I want. I started putting clothes on my back when I was fifteen. Today, we don't see that anymore.
My dad pulled me out of school when I was fifteen. This was about January. My dad was getting paralyzed and he used the cane and finally two of them and didn't help. So, then he had crutches and he was going down a set of stairs and the crutch threw him out of balance and he fell. Finally, he couldn't walk. While he was still on crutches, he came to the school and the principal called me out of class and said, "you were leaving us, your dad needs you to go look after his cows." He was just right at the end (of mobility) he couldn't walk anymore. He was bed ridden. Completely paralyzed waist down. I looked after his cows, I was fifteen when he pulled me out of school, I was doing my seventh grade. So, I started looking after his cows and my mom they had everything, pigs and hogs, chickens, turkeys and feeding I looked after everything. My dad looked after the reserve bulls. There were sixteen bulls including ours that I looked after. I worked like five or ten men today. I worked as a man, like I said, I was thirteen when I went to get my first load of hay. I just turned fourteen when I joined the thrashing crew and I kept on with the men. In the evenings, after supper they used to go watch a movie. Hancock used to have picture shows and me, I went straight to bed. My fingers were locking the first day. I had to try straighten out my fingers. But, the next day, I was up again at four o'clock in the morning. The men were feeding their horses and I fed mine. I worked the next day with the men and that's the way we worked. Oh boy, I tell my kids when they're lazy to do something you guys are not the man I used to be. That was the lifestyle for a few of us not very many see no what we see and you can't tell them anything. The whole family worked including kids and all pick berries, garden work, we're all lined up pulling weeds. We grew our own food.
There were no checks coming in any way shape or form you had nothing if you didn't eat. The bachelors used to come and my dad used to turn them down we couldn't have all the bachelors working there was never enough work to go around. In the morning you could see them coming. Mom used to feed them and my dad used to take them out and put them to work just to eat. Some of them would sleep outside all they wanted was a place to eat and sleep. There was community work today, there's no such thing.
I remember everybody went to church. There was three bells and you can hear the church bells from here. My dad would make us listen. When we heard the first bell, we would go in and then the second one would go off and he'd say, "let's go." By the time the third bell rang, we used to arrive there it would be church time. Everybody went to church. The church was just packed. I was going to say, after my dad got paralyzed, he pulled me out of school and that's when some Pentecostals we're having service along the lake by George Starblanket. We came out of church. I was standing with my mom we walked to church that day. She was dying, she was just skin and bone and that day she wasn't feeling too bad and she said, "I want to go to church,"(Pentecostal church) come with me, so I went with her. Emily's Starblanket told my mom, there has been services next to my place by the lake and they are having healing prayers for people. My mom said, is that true Emily's? Emily said, that's true. Send your pastor (Waterhouse), I want to see him. That was when my mom was dying, witchcraft. We found out because six specialists sent her home to die. She was skin and bone and she was like, you're looking at death. One of the specialist spoke up and he said, "we don't know how to treat you we checked you from head to toe, we can't find anything wrong with you. We don't know how to treat you. You may as well go home and be with your family." Hancock sent somebody went and told my dad that he was supposed to go pick her up. My dad had a 1951 International truck and he went to pick her up. When she got prayed for she was healed and when my dad later on became paralyzed, pulled me out of school. And my mom said oh Kane you are so proud humble yourself and ask for prayer you seen the way I was. I'm OK today, she was completely healed.
I had looked after my dad with a bed pan. I looked after his animals and I looked after him. He couldn't get up to go to the bathroom. I used to put the bed pan under him and he used the bathroom that way. I used to look after him too. These things are so entrenched into my mind. What I've seen were miracles. One day, my mom came walking in and said, "Cane, your crying what's wrong?" He said, Ida (the house was right there, pointing.) I used to love working. (He was a work-a-holic). I went up that hill a million times. All I do now is to look out the window from my bed. I can't even help myself to the bathroom." And he said," Ida, I want to see Waterhouse." My mom, went into the kitchen and motioned to me, you get on that horse and you go tell Emily's to send Waterhouse over here. So, three days after, a car came down the hill. I told mom, Waterhouse is coming. I stood behind her and she said, "Cane is ready." I didn't know what she meant. He wasn't going anywhere. Anyway, he came in and mom placed tea and cake on the table and Waterhouse stood by his bed and they started talking. My dad was a Hereford man and Waterhouse had shorthorn and they were talking about cattle and finally Waterhouse said, ah Cane, you didn't want to talk about cows. You wanted to see me. What is it? My dad didn't know nothing about Jesus or prayer or the bible, nothing. All he had was this prayer book. He had us pray every morning and evening from that book. That's all we knew on the farm. Anyway, He said, I want what Ida's got (healing prayer) it worked for my mom. She was completely healed and it was a strange sickness. If could tell you some day. But, she was completely healed from it. My dad pointed at my mom and said, I want what Ida's got. So, my dad talked to Waterhouse and he talked to my dad and they prayed and after he prayed, he said, now we will pray for the healing of your legs. Now that is impossible, scientifically and medically impossible. Waterhouse said, "you will walk again Cane." And he laid his hand on my dad's shoulder and I could barely hear him but I can hear him enough and he said short prayer and then he said, well, Cane I have to go and I have to go feed my cattle. He got up and he got to the door and he turned around and point at my dad and said to my dad, "Cane, you are going to walk again." Just like that and off he went. To make a long story short, "He walked again!" Later, we were coming down from the barn, me and my dad and my brother-in-law, Rod Genereaux, We, were coming down and I pulled my dads sleeve on his shirt and I said, "come on, race me!" you said you were a fast runner. My dad said, "ah come on, quit fooling around." And just a little-ways from the house, all of a sudden, he took off and I was chased him. He left me behind about a foot. He was paralyzed, the man that was paralyzed. I never forget these things as a young man. It's still in my mind. That was a miracle, that's how I became a minister. Since I was eighteen, I've been preaching the gospel right until last Sunday.
Our father is powerful but, we have lost faith. We have put him aside. The only time we pray is when we are in trouble. That is where we strayed in many different ways. Now, we gossip about each other, that's how person is and this is how this person is and so on. Rather than looking at the issues, never mind the bickering, only then we can get back together. We will understand one another. There is only one God that we pray to. What is good for me what is good for you, we live by experience and that’s how you begin to understand other people. Putting all of that aside and learning to get along and to love one another. We will eventually forgive one another. Those are the most important things. It has become difficult because we talk too much about one another. It creates a division in our community today. Nobody used to care too much about that. They would just go to church and kept busy trying to survive.
My mother, when she was dying, we went to Whitefish twice to the Sundance. My parents were prayed for. At the opening of the Sundance Lodge, they put my mom and dad and us kids around behind them and the man that was running the Sundance was praying to the pole there I remember he was crying and praying for my mom. He had his arms around the center pole. He cried and was shedding tears and then he came and placed his hand on my mother's head. He then shook my dad's hand. I always remember that, twice we went over there. We went to doctors all over the country. She could not get healed until Waterhouse prayed for her. She had faith and my dad had faith when he was paralyzed he believed what Waterhouse said, "Kane you are going to walk again," when he walked out of our house.
Wilson Waterhouse was a farmer from Parkside. She had purebred short horn cattle he was also a grain farmer when they were harvesting, him and his brother Jim Waterhouse the PTO grabbed his sleeve and ripped his arm right off up to his shoulder. He only had one arm then he couldn't do what he used to do, so he sold his purebred herd and just went solely into grain farming. During the winter, he had a lot of time. He was a Christian man and he came to the reserve. He went all over the country, onto reserves to Indian people and telling them about the Lord. He helped a lot of people that's how my mom and dad were miraculously healed. I told you what my mom was like it was a strange thing it would come and go. She would be perfectly normal and all of a sudden it would hit her. Light tormented her and my dad made a small room with just a bed in there. A dark room. The light would torment her, that's where she would go right away when she knew this thing would come and hit her. She would go there and she would be moaning day and night for three or four days, sometimes for a week. Then all of a sudden, she'd go quiet and the door would open. She would come out just soaking wet. Blankets were soaking wet. We put a mattress on top of her she was still freezing. She also had a foot warmer with shad irons on there. Any small light irritated my mother. If there was a very small light, she'd say there's a light above door. Then we would jam strips of clothing up there with a butter knife and we would close it. She couldn't even stand a little bit of light. As a young man, those things you never leave you. When you see a miracle. Doctors couldn't do anything. Nobody couldn't do anything. All different faiths, she would go run to that. "Go over there, go get prayed for" and she would be gone. My dad went to the states with my mom and said "I will sell all my cows, and we will find healing for you". They heard of a doctor in the states, I don't which part of the states, but they were gone for two weeks. He got a brand new truck, a 1951 truck and they took off. We had babysitters look after us. They come home sad, no answer, no healing. I watched these things as young kid.
I started working for Bill Auto, he was a Ukrainian. He lived in Hawkeye. That's his farm there right along the highway on this side. That was my second home I was fifteen. He came driving here with a team of horses here at Ukrainian. He told dad, I am looking for a couple of men, do you know of a couple of men who would like to work? My dad said, no I don't, he said go to the reserve center, you'll probably find somebody there. He said I seen some, but they don’t want to work. I sure would love to get a couple of them to come help me. He was making a fence, then my dad said, "I'll lend you Burton for the weekend". I was 15, I always remember that, so I worked there Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday he brought me home. After that, I was working. I would come and catch up with field work or whatever, haying with my dad. I was back and forth until I was 21. I told Bill, you're going to lose me, I am getting married and I need get on my own. So, I was 15 and I was looking after two farms. Those were the good old days.
The way I was told, his name was Chatelaine and that they came from down south-east and this is where they took land when the government (Indian affairs) put us on reserves. This is where they chose land as per Basil Starblanket, that was my mother's uncle. My mom was Metis from Mattes. They had a little farm on the edge of the reserve. She married into the reserve here with my dad. My great grandmother was from One Arrow First Nation her last name was Almightyvoice. I forgot her name. I'm eighty years old now and I forgot a lot of things and that her last name was Almightyvoice. She was my great grand-mother, my grandmother was Mariam Starblanket. She was Basil's Starblanket's niece, Baptiste Starblanket's daughter. That was my mother's mom. On my mother's side, we were like my great grandmother was Almightyvoice and then married my dad.
I guess during that time, Tom Pechawis was heading to Ahtahkakoop here. Sandy Lake as it was known then. Nobody ever called this reserve Ahtahkakoop, it was always Sandy Lake. The Anglican priest had called it Hines Lake. But, we called it Sandy Lake and that's where we are today. Tom was heading here and then he stopped at Mistawasis for the night. They were traveling with a herd of cattle and they were going to settle down here. But the chief at that time in Mistawasis went and seen Tom and told him, "you may as well stay here, this will be your land." They invited him, so he decided to stay there. We're kind of related there with Wuttunees, the Tootoosis from Poundmaker and Pechawis in Mistawasis. That's where people were migrating to choose their reserves.
Life was hard like I said, there was no tractors with front end loaders, you had the pitchfork and each family, there was no welfare you had to work to live to have something to eat or you had to live on berries in summertime and especially during winter people were hungry.
That brings me the thought about Almightyvoice. There's a book, my kohkum's (grandmother) nephew, they were starving. I read the book when I was about sixteen or seventeen. My dad had it. They were hungry and their were kids were crying there was nothing to eat. So, he killed his own cow to feed his family and the Indian agent heard about it came and seen him. You know, you weren't supposed to kill your cow without the permit. You never came for a permit. They were arrested and they that agent told him you're going hang for this. So they took him in. But that night, he somehow escaped and went to a friend. They both took off and to make a Long story short, they were surrounded in the kind of a valley with a little bush in the bottom. The police surrounded that place and they were afraid of him because he wouldn't miss, he was a dead shot with a gun. They were in there while other relatives like my great grandmother were up on a hill with the others. Almightyvoice was the name of that book. Almightyvoice would sing a song in the way they sing and sending a message to his mother and she would send a message back. Then towards the end, his friend was wounded and he sang a song and they were hungry. They haven't eaten anything. Just before that a crow was flying over-head, they heard a gunshot that they saw that crow fall down and they ate it. So right after that they were starving and they sang a song to his mom and said, "my friend is dying he's wounded and is dying. I'm going to shoot him and I'm not going to give the police the pleasure of capturing me and I'm going to kill myself too." So, they heard two shots and that was it. For days, the RCMP wouldn't go into the scene. They didn't know if they were alive or dead the police were scared but finally they went down there found them both laying there.
Anyway, that's where my mom side and my dad side was the last name Chatelaine (French). When Indian Affairs came, they were changing names and spellings and everything they made a mess of the names of people. They also changed the name from Chatelaine to Ahenakew because there's a little story. I know there are some that makes it, they swear (Cree version) the way I was told was Chatelaine was one of the best swimmers around this area amongst the Cree Indians. The Blackfoot's heard about this Ahenakew so they came and wanted to challenge him. They brought horses, blankets and everything. The Blackfoot also had a good swimmer and wanted to challenge the Cree's to a race. They all went to the banks of the North Saskatchewan River to hold this race. A canoe took both of them across the river while the rest were on this opposite side of the river. There were horses, the Cree brought some and the Blackfoot there were blankets and beads and shovels and forks and stuff that they brought whoever wins takes it all. So, they took both of them across and they shot a gun and both went into the Saskatchewan river and they came and they said Chatelaine was ahead for about ten to fifteen feet ahead of the Blackfoot and about twenty feet from the shore he had cramps. As he was struggling there with the cramps, the Blackfoot swimmer passed him and the crowd yelled, "Ahahay-nakew!' and that's where he got this name Ahenakew. That's where we got this name as explained by Simon Williams.
Those days in the 1940's life was hard. Before, there were no tractors with front end loaders and there were no bailers, no combines. Everything was done with stooks and pitch forks to feed the thrashing machines. Everything was man handled. People were always in shape. There was no welfare and my dad ran about one hundred head of cattle and had about forty to fifty head of horses. Horses were most important. We had about six to ten teams of horses and everything was done with horses, even when we're clearing the bush here on the hill side. My dad and I pulled the stumps out with the horses. Today, we got bulldozers clearing up everything, it was so hard them days. Everybody worked hard, even bachelors used to come work for my dad. He had a place here, a little house where he put up workers. They didn't want any money, they just wanted something to eat and have a place to sleep. My father kept one man, Adam Genereaux. He was a good man and he was in the army. When he came out (military life) they started working for my dad right up to almost the time he died. He was a good worker, he looked after the horses. As for us kids we worked from when we were little just about four or five years old. We were taking one or two sticks in the house, wood for cooking and stuff. Everything in the garden, we're all lined up cleaning the garden. This is the way of life in them days. Today, you can't put young people to work because they don't even know how to handle anything. It's hard to get good help.
But in them days, we used to go six or seven miles for hay from here in the winter in a hay rack. I was thirteen years old when I went over there. We had stacks here, my dad said, "we're going to run out of hay." He said, "let's try and get as much as we can from the sloughs and we will use these stacks in the spring when the calving starts."
I was thirteen (13 years old) and nobody was here. I was home alone and my oldest brother was married and on his own and my other older brother was in British Columbia working in mining over there with Hector Ahenakew and others. I was the only man at home. I was thirteen, my dad sent me early in the morning. He packed lunch for me and off I went. It was forty or fifty below and I was running behind the hay racks and when the horses would start to slow down, I would jump on and whip them a little bit so that they would trot. I was also running behind to keep warm. There were thirteen coils and there were snow two to three feet high drifts on the coils of hay. There were sixteen coils, I had to shovel. Clear the snow off so I could load up my hay rack. It was springtime, and in the springtime and the roads, the snow was packed two or three feet above the ground and then the spring the sun was starting to warm up and the sleigh would cut in (the load would spill) tipped over. I got everything up again and I filled it up again and took all the hay, put it back on. I went to put 100 feet and it cut in again. Of course, three times that happened. All that day, it was 10:00 o'clock before I got home but for my dad, Rod Genereaux and Wesley Bowman, my brother-in-law's, just came that evening. My dad said,
"you go look for Burton, he left at 9:00 o'clock this morning."
So, they hitched up another team of horses. They were standing outside and were just getting ready to come look for me. My dad was out there walking and just worried about me. All of a sudden, the cows started bellering and they started running. They met me over there at the end of this field. They heard the sleigh you know, you used to hear the sleigh coming and they came and my dad told them, he said "never mind he's coming." See the cows, he said, running and they met me at the end of the field, they were following me and they were eating and they were hungry. I only brought about not quite a half a load. I was played right out. I was only thirteen. I couldn't talk my mom would talk to me and I wanted to cry and my dad said, "don't talk to him, he doesn't feel like talking." I had tears in my eyes.
Today, we have young strong men, what are you doing? We got gangs, killing one another, getting into drugs and stuff like that. Back in those days, we didn't have time for anything like that. Everybody worked the whole family survived they worked together kids, right from small in order to live. There was no welfare. In 1969, the welfare started and that's about the time, the power came in but that's only the main area. The telephone came and there was one telephone, you turn that, you turn it like this. There was one telephone in the main area everybody would go to phone there.
Things begin to change, in 1969, the Indian Affairs sent my dad a, thirty-five dollar welfare cheque. He said, I don't need this and he sent it back and he put a note in there. I was standing right there watching him. He said, "I don't need your money, when I can't work I'll ask for it and when I can't support myself but until then. I don't need your money and sent it back." Now you have people from teenage life they're waiting for the next welfare cheque. They can't put up them to work. I need people here. I'm eighty years old I’m crippled, my shoulders and knees hurt and trying to get help. It's hard to find them. They just don't want to work. They just don't know what life was like when I was a young man.
I want to talked about my uncle Alex Ahenakew, (my father's brother). He was a smart man, he had his B.A., Ph.D and whatever, I don't know what all in university. When he came home, he didn't know what he wanted to be. So, he decided to attend the Anglican Bible School (College). He told my dad, I don't know the more I read the bible, the more it doesn't make sense to me. So, he went to marry a Dene woman from Patuanak, Saskatchewan . He was going back and forth to Ile-a-la-Crosse and he was a Hudson's Bay Company store manager. But he was a clerk over there. He got a job as a clerk with the Hudson Bay Company. HBC like him because he was a smart man and he was doing pretty good management on the store and they looked after that Hudson's Bay Company stores up in the north. Simon Williams told me he said he was the brain of the reserve. He organized a lot of things. When Alex came down from Ile-a-la-Crosse to visit, he came and asked the chief to let him go, he wanted to disenfranchise, give up his Treaty status and his band membership. He didn't need it because he was educated and he had a good job that they liked. The Chief wouldn't let him go, he said no. We can't, we need you guys we don't know how to fight for ourselves. We don't know what the deal with Indian Affairs the way they're treating us. He said, we need you. So, he went back up north and sometime later he came back. They killed a cow and they invited all the people, RCMP, Indian Affairs and the preacher named Hines. Later, on the chief got up and said. You made this feast, what is it that you what? Alex said, I want ask you could just let me go. I want to disenfranchise (Cree Version) I want to leave the reserve and I have a good job. Simon Said, the Chief got up and he cried and he said, "I hate to let you go because we need you to fight for us. You know how to speak English you're a smart man you know how to fight for your people." The Chief cried, but if that's what you want I'll sign it and he put cross (his X) on the paper. You are disenfranchised. Today, my nephews and relatives up there a lot of them want to come into the reserve. I have a nephew at my other house that wants to get his status and just can't seem to get it. Some of them have received it. But, life was hard in those days. If you didn't have an education, you have nothing and you had to find work to live.
People were working on the building homes. Everybody worked together to build a house. I was about four or five years old, the old farmhouse is right here. All of this was bush and at the end of that house, there was a spruce tree about this big. That's where, we made the farmhouse here. There was only a little trail going up there, a wagon trail. This is where my dad built his house and started this farm here. All the people would help when somebody wants to build a house, the whole community came together. You can hear the wagons coming and men they were cutting down trees. They were hauling them. Etienne Gerard , my uncle and another person, they knew how to cut the ends so they interlock. That's what they were doing and the woman over there. There's a little opening, they had blankets on the ground and they were cooking food and when dinner time comes. They would call the men and everybody would come and eat and after they eat they would go back to work. The whole community came. There was no money. Today, you'll get a pension, you get jobs, you get welfare. You get everything. In those days, there was nothing and the whole community worked together. They didn't have what we have today.
Today, people are neurotic, they're nervous, they're not happy. But them days, they were happy and healthy. They enjoyed life, they enjoyed working together. Everybody was laughing telling stories as they are working together.
"They were happy, people were so happy, those were the golden years the forties, fifties and towards the sixties. Like I said, when the power came in, the telephone came in, television started to come in and everything. Today, they have all that, and they're miserable, they're committing suicide our young people. If they could go back to the way we lived, when we were young, they would still be alive today. But, people are so miserable and they're nervous they live in fear and anxiety."
People used to talk about building these log houses. They would go get clay by Mont Nebo road. It was applied inside after mudding was complete. It was brown when it was applied. But when it dried up, it turned white like a whitewash. It was lime. I've seen that, when I first got married in 1963, I had bought a little log house on the other side of the bay from John George Starblanket had a little log house. I bought it for one hundred dollars ($100.00). I was twenty-one years old when I bought it. I moved it. There were two teams of horses on skids that dragged it. Over there on Mont Nebo road. That's where I settled down at first. We chinked it, inside and outside and after it dried up we use lime and we painted that. It was white lime. Every day my wife would be sweeping and it would fall off pieces of mud or lime. She'd sweep every day but it was home and we were happy people were basically happy.
Today, I was talking at the funeral just last week and I said, "what can we do to redeem our young people?" It's just our young people are mostly dying. It is very rare that an elderly person dies. Almost every week, young people are dying or teens go missing. Just down the road here another young person was shot. There's gangs and different things, we've never seen anything like that.
Everything was different, young people were happy. We played, "kick the can" and all kinds of little games when we visit one another. Throw a ball over a roof game was called, "anti I over" and everybody run to the other side and see who got their first. There used to be so much fun. Today, kids don't know what fun is. Young married couples they don't know what to do. They're having lots of problems, health problems, physical problems, mental health problems and they have all kinds of issues and marriage problems. Just everything, every evil you can think of and I was saying, "what can we do to redeem our young people?" Things were so different when we were young. Everybody was community minded. Today, you meet them down the highway, you don't see them wave anymore, we are strangers right in our reserve.
Education was important. There were a few people that used to live way on the north side of the reserve by Polworth. When the school was open, they moved closer to the core area. Men built a walk bridge by the river and they began to settle there. They didn't have to go that far to attend school. They had to walk to school every day.
From where we live here and to the school, it's about three kilometers. I was six years old when I started and my mother had to dress us warm. We had to run to school every day from here and then come back after school. It was forty or fifty below (minus 40 or 50 degrees celsius). It didn't matter how cold it was, they'd push us out and we'd be crying. I remember my sister Selna was just younger than me. We were screaming, we didn't want to go outside in the cold and mom, I noticed she had tears in eyes as she pushed us out the door and told the older kids to go look after these little kids. So, we'd run, there was a path in the bush to go across. Sometimes if it wasn't so windy, we would go across the lake. We went to school like that and later on Clifford Ahenakew's mother was a taxi driver. She was our bus school bus with a team of horses and with a caboose. She would come pick us up here. We would fill the caboose up her own kids and us that was our school bus.
Today, children are picked up right by the door. Life was so much easier yet they are most miserable people you can think of and us, we were happy. In the spring time, there were six or seven sleighs full of young people and we would have snowball fights. We would meet each other full gallop and towards each other, we'd be throwing snow balls. We had fun, young people got along.
I remember when I was a kid, there were dances. When a couple guys were starting to fight they were thrown them out and the music kept going and people kept dancing, until the best man wins. They would fight with use their hands and their fists to fight. Today, they put out a pull out a knife or a gun. Back then the best man won. Nobody paid attention to them and the music just continued. Freddy Sasakamoose was telling me, he had a picture of me standing on a stage. He said, you were so annoying (in Cree) they had balloons hanging on the ceiling and there were these sharp little plants that had looked like a spear. We were busting balloons at that party. Freddy said, you guys are busting up all of our balloons! People had lots of fun. There was rodeos every Sunday here with just ourselves. Every year they had rodeos here. People came from different reserves that whole area was full of tents there was pies, there was everything they were selling. It was beautiful them days. Today, it's just sad. I don't know.
Back in the day, they would make a cake and they would place of penny in the cake. Whoever had the penny in their piece of cake, that person would host the next dance. Every weekend there was a dance. Then one time, Evaline Cardinal (Māyāchun) (Nickname) they received the penny, so they had to make a dance at their house and her husband used to play the fiddle, his name was Robert Cardinal. So, they hosted the dance and it was getting late or two o'clock after midnight the dance kept going and Robert kept his eyes closed and enjoying himself as he was playing. Suddenly, Eveline chased everybody out because she wanted to go to bed. Robert kept playing and not paying attention what was going on. Then a man, we called Raggies said, "wait I'll have a talk with her." So, he went back in the house had his arms around her and held her hand and convince her to come back and continue the dance. Evaline (Māyāchan) agreed and then everybody come back in and the dance started again. But then, she really wanted to go sleep. Then suddenly, she got up again and grabbed Roberts fiddle from his hands and then threw on the floor and she stomped on it, crushed it and she broke it to pieces. Robert had to pick up the pieces of his fiddle. Then the dance was over. It was so much fun, everything happened that way. Today now, it's a different world, totally different world.
Robert (Louputch) and Evaline Cardinal. Cardinals, there was three of them Robert, Stuart Bowman's wife (not sure of her name) and Wahpihkwes. They came from south Shell Lake area. Lawrence (Wahpihkwēs) had come here during the pestilence and people were dying, south of the tower. There was a reserve there. He was a jockey and had went to Mistawasis. There was a sports day there with horse races. He rode for horse owners in different reserves. He was asked to go ride in Mistawasis and he won then onto Muskeg Lake. The following races were in Sandy Lake. Mistawasis asked Lawrence (Wāhpēkwēs) to ride for him again in Sandy Lake. That's when he met his wife here and stayed to be with her.
There was a small hamlet south east of Ahtahkakoop named Hawkeye with seven to eight houses over there. There was a little store there with a post office and an elevator. It was mostly made up of Metis people. That’s where my eldest sister met Rod Genereaux (Napew) and she married him. We used to go visit her and cut across here with a horse and wagon or sleigh. Sometimes we'd run over there. There used be fun to visit over there. There was Martin Robinson and others. Issac Genereaux had five boys and they were huge men. Whenever they drank, they would fight and made each other cry. It wasn't uncommon to see big men cry.
One of our ancestors, David Ahenakew had four boys; Baptiste, Henry, Louis and John. Our grandmothers came here from Hobemma, Alberta (Ermineskin First Nation). There were four sisters arrived and settled here and married onto Sandy Lake. One of them was my grandmother. Shem's grandmother, Norman Fraser (Minnie Fraser's mother) and my grandmother, they were sisters. One of the other sisters married onto Red Pheasant into the Baptiste family. Arlene and Mike (Maymēchitch) took me home to Red Pheasant after they got married for about a half a year. John (Maymēchitch's) son came and ask me to go cut prairie wool. We cut all of the prairie wool in all of the fields there and we baled it. He asked me to stay with him there. So, I stayed there to help him around the farm until fall. Pete Wuttnuee came looking for men and nobody wanted to work so, I said, I'll work for you" I said, "you don't have to pay me." I'll work for you for one week and then you can take me home. I want to go home. This was getting late fall, so we baled his hay. He was so surprised with my work because I already knew how. I grew up on a farm. We finished all of his fields and made square bales. He wanted to keep me and work but, I said no. I said, I want to go home. Take me home and then he agreed to bring me back home. I had met Clara Wildcat whom is a cousin from Hobemma, her grandfather was a sibling to those four sisters. She had planned to come and visit her cousins here in Ahtahkakoop, but she never had a chance to come out. So, there is a lot of connections and relatives on different reserves. All the way down to Rocky Boy, Montana, USA.
We had traditional lands trapping and hunting. Right here, when David Starblanket arrived here. He had asked people to come with him to go hunt and trap at Hawkeye southeast of the highway up on a hill. We arrived at a camp and we put up a tent and we were trapping and hunting. The farmer not far from there seen us. That evening, they brought a box of supper. His wife made supper and he brought it out, he knew that this area was Indian lands. Nobody bothered us, they knew this was Indian land where they could hunt and trap. We trapped muskrats and mink and whatever. So, I came home and I went and sold my muskrats. You know I started buying my own clothes when I was fifteen. Just shooting squirrels and trapping muskrats and selling them to buy clothes for myself. My dad told me you don't have to buy your own clothes. But I said, that's what I want. I started putting clothes on my back when I was fifteen. Today, we don't see that anymore.
My dad pulled me out of school when I was fifteen. This was about January. My dad was getting paralyzed and he used the cane and finally two of them and didn't help. So, then he had crutches and he was going down a set of stairs and the crutch threw him out of balance and he fell. Finally, he couldn't walk. While he was still on crutches, he came to the school and the principal called me out of class and said, "you were leaving us, your dad needs you to go look after his cows." He was just right at the end (of mobility) he couldn't walk anymore. He was bed ridden. Completely paralyzed waist down. I looked after his cows, I was fifteen when he pulled me out of school, I was doing my seventh grade. So, I started looking after his cows and my mom they had everything, pigs and hogs, chickens, turkeys and feeding I looked after everything. My dad looked after the reserve bulls. There were sixteen bulls including ours that I looked after. I worked like five or ten men today. I worked as a man, like I said, I was thirteen when I went to get my first load of hay. I just turned fourteen when I joined the thrashing crew and I kept on with the men. In the evenings, after supper they used to go watch a movie. Hancock used to have picture shows and me, I went straight to bed. My fingers were locking the first day. I had to try straighten out my fingers. But, the next day, I was up again at four o'clock in the morning. The men were feeding their horses and I fed mine. I worked the next day with the men and that's the way we worked. Oh boy, I tell my kids when they're lazy to do something you guys are not the man I used to be. That was the lifestyle for a few of us not very many see no what we see and you can't tell them anything. The whole family worked including kids and all pick berries, garden work, we're all lined up pulling weeds. We grew our own food.
There were no checks coming in any way shape or form you had nothing if you didn't eat. The bachelors used to come and my dad used to turn them down we couldn't have all the bachelors working there was never enough work to go around. In the morning you could see them coming. Mom used to feed them and my dad used to take them out and put them to work just to eat. Some of them would sleep outside all they wanted was a place to eat and sleep. There was community work today, there's no such thing.
I remember everybody went to church. There was three bells and you can hear the church bells from here. My dad would make us listen. When we heard the first bell, we would go in and then the second one would go off and he'd say, "let's go." By the time the third bell rang, we used to arrive there it would be church time. Everybody went to church. The church was just packed. I was going to say, after my dad got paralyzed, he pulled me out of school and that's when some Pentecostals we're having service along the lake by George Starblanket. We came out of church. I was standing with my mom we walked to church that day. She was dying, she was just skin and bone and that day she wasn't feeling too bad and she said, "I want to go to church,"(Pentecostal church) come with me, so I went with her. Emily's Starblanket told my mom, there has been services next to my place by the lake and they are having healing prayers for people. My mom said, is that true Emily's? Emily said, that's true. Send your pastor (Waterhouse), I want to see him. That was when my mom was dying, witchcraft. We found out because six specialists sent her home to die. She was skin and bone and she was like, you're looking at death. One of the specialist spoke up and he said, "we don't know how to treat you we checked you from head to toe, we can't find anything wrong with you. We don't know how to treat you. You may as well go home and be with your family." Hancock sent somebody went and told my dad that he was supposed to go pick her up. My dad had a 1951 International truck and he went to pick her up. When she got prayed for she was healed and when my dad later on became paralyzed, pulled me out of school. And my mom said oh Kane you are so proud humble yourself and ask for prayer you seen the way I was. I'm OK today, she was completely healed.
I had looked after my dad with a bed pan. I looked after his animals and I looked after him. He couldn't get up to go to the bathroom. I used to put the bed pan under him and he used the bathroom that way. I used to look after him too. These things are so entrenched into my mind. What I've seen were miracles. One day, my mom came walking in and said, "Cane, your crying what's wrong?" He said, Ida (the house was right there, pointing.) I used to love working. (He was a work-a-holic). I went up that hill a million times. All I do now is to look out the window from my bed. I can't even help myself to the bathroom." And he said," Ida, I want to see Waterhouse." My mom, went into the kitchen and motioned to me, you get on that horse and you go tell Emily's to send Waterhouse over here. So, three days after, a car came down the hill. I told mom, Waterhouse is coming. I stood behind her and she said, "Cane is ready." I didn't know what she meant. He wasn't going anywhere. Anyway, he came in and mom placed tea and cake on the table and Waterhouse stood by his bed and they started talking. My dad was a Hereford man and Waterhouse had shorthorn and they were talking about cattle and finally Waterhouse said, ah Cane, you didn't want to talk about cows. You wanted to see me. What is it? My dad didn't know nothing about Jesus or prayer or the bible, nothing. All he had was this prayer book. He had us pray every morning and evening from that book. That's all we knew on the farm. Anyway, He said, I want what Ida's got (healing prayer) it worked for my mom. She was completely healed and it was a strange sickness. If could tell you some day. But, she was completely healed from it. My dad pointed at my mom and said, I want what Ida's got. So, my dad talked to Waterhouse and he talked to my dad and they prayed and after he prayed, he said, now we will pray for the healing of your legs. Now that is impossible, scientifically and medically impossible. Waterhouse said, "you will walk again Cane." And he laid his hand on my dad's shoulder and I could barely hear him but I can hear him enough and he said short prayer and then he said, well, Cane I have to go and I have to go feed my cattle. He got up and he got to the door and he turned around and point at my dad and said to my dad, "Cane, you are going to walk again." Just like that and off he went. To make a long story short, "He walked again!" Later, we were coming down from the barn, me and my dad and my brother-in-law, Rod Genereaux, We, were coming down and I pulled my dads sleeve on his shirt and I said, "come on, race me!" you said you were a fast runner. My dad said, "ah come on, quit fooling around." And just a little-ways from the house, all of a sudden, he took off and I was chased him. He left me behind about a foot. He was paralyzed, the man that was paralyzed. I never forget these things as a young man. It's still in my mind. That was a miracle, that's how I became a minister. Since I was eighteen, I've been preaching the gospel right until last Sunday.
Our father is powerful but, we have lost faith. We have put him aside. The only time we pray is when we are in trouble. That is where we strayed in many different ways. Now, we gossip about each other, that's how person is and this is how this person is and so on. Rather than looking at the issues, never mind the bickering, only then we can get back together. We will understand one another. There is only one God that we pray to. What is good for me what is good for you, we live by experience and that’s how you begin to understand other people. Putting all of that aside and learning to get along and to love one another. We will eventually forgive one another. Those are the most important things. It has become difficult because we talk too much about one another. It creates a division in our community today. Nobody used to care too much about that. They would just go to church and kept busy trying to survive.
My mother, when she was dying, we went to Whitefish twice to the Sundance. My parents were prayed for. At the opening of the Sundance Lodge, they put my mom and dad and us kids around behind them and the man that was running the Sundance was praying to the pole there I remember he was crying and praying for my mom. He had his arms around the center pole. He cried and was shedding tears and then he came and placed his hand on my mother's head. He then shook my dad's hand. I always remember that, twice we went over there. We went to doctors all over the country. She could not get healed until Waterhouse prayed for her. She had faith and my dad had faith when he was paralyzed he believed what Waterhouse said, "Kane you are going to walk again," when he walked out of our house.
Wilson Waterhouse was a farmer from Parkside. She had purebred short horn cattle he was also a grain farmer when they were harvesting, him and his brother Jim Waterhouse the PTO grabbed his sleeve and ripped his arm right off up to his shoulder. He only had one arm then he couldn't do what he used to do, so he sold his purebred herd and just went solely into grain farming. During the winter, he had a lot of time. He was a Christian man and he came to the reserve. He went all over the country, onto reserves to Indian people and telling them about the Lord. He helped a lot of people that's how my mom and dad were miraculously healed. I told you what my mom was like it was a strange thing it would come and go. She would be perfectly normal and all of a sudden it would hit her. Light tormented her and my dad made a small room with just a bed in there. A dark room. The light would torment her, that's where she would go right away when she knew this thing would come and hit her. She would go there and she would be moaning day and night for three or four days, sometimes for a week. Then all of a sudden, she'd go quiet and the door would open. She would come out just soaking wet. Blankets were soaking wet. We put a mattress on top of her she was still freezing. She also had a foot warmer with shad irons on there. Any small light irritated my mother. If there was a very small light, she'd say there's a light above door. Then we would jam strips of clothing up there with a butter knife and we would close it. She couldn't even stand a little bit of light. As a young man, those things you never leave you. When you see a miracle. Doctors couldn't do anything. Nobody couldn't do anything. All different faiths, she would go run to that. "Go over there, go get prayed for" and she would be gone. My dad went to the states with my mom and said "I will sell all my cows, and we will find healing for you". They heard of a doctor in the states, I don't which part of the states, but they were gone for two weeks. He got a brand new truck, a 1951 truck and they took off. We had babysitters look after us. They come home sad, no answer, no healing. I watched these things as young kid.
I started working for Bill Auto, he was a Ukrainian. He lived in Hawkeye. That's his farm there right along the highway on this side. That was my second home I was fifteen. He came driving here with a team of horses here at Ukrainian. He told dad, I am looking for a couple of men, do you know of a couple of men who would like to work? My dad said, no I don't, he said go to the reserve center, you'll probably find somebody there. He said I seen some, but they don’t want to work. I sure would love to get a couple of them to come help me. He was making a fence, then my dad said, "I'll lend you Burton for the weekend". I was 15, I always remember that, so I worked there Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday he brought me home. After that, I was working. I would come and catch up with field work or whatever, haying with my dad. I was back and forth until I was 21. I told Bill, you're going to lose me, I am getting married and I need get on my own. So, I was 15 and I was looking after two farms. Those were the good old days.