STORIES / Okara’shòn:’a
The two sisters
My grandmother’s sister stayed just up the road from us. We stayed here on this corner lot with our grandparents, about four houses away.
How to run a powwow
We had a big problem here in Kahnawake and Kanesatake way back in 1990. After everything was over and the dust settled, we tried to reconcile with the neighbours and surrounding communities. We sent out an olive branch, figuratively.
My grandmother Elizabeth
We had a hard time continuing in education because the church was in control of the education here, the nuns. They had these special nuns from Boston. Sisters of St. Anne they call them. And they were experts at what they call proselytizing – how to change who you are.
Her escape
The girls and the boys were split up between two buildings but they were only about 150 feet apart. We were at the Garnier Residential School and the girls were at the St. Joseph Residential School.
Motherwort
Motherwort is very bitter. When a plant is bitter, it helps the blood, liver, endocrine system, and female reproductive system.
Women’s health
I like to mix my flowers, my vegetables, and my medicines together in the garden. I grow motherwort, which is a bitter herb.
Jack of all trades
Monette’s bus used to run through town here. There were about five brothers that lived in Delson and they opened a bus service. I went to trade school way out in the east end of Montreal and I used to take the bus from here.
Don’t fish in my net
Stuart Myiow’s father lived on the other side of the tunnel. His name was also Stuart. He had a gas station and a teepee that he put up.
Candy, soda and ice cream
We went to church in New York when we were kids. Every Sunday we used to go. After a while, our mother stopped going but she still used to make us go.
Nevins street
We grew up in the Bronx. We didn’t live in Brooklyn because that’s where all the Mohawks lived. All the ironworkers.
Two for one
I’ve been shot at, got a bullet right in my shoulder. I just got a piece of a Jeep windshield taken out of my face after 50 years.
Got the story
If you’ve never had a fracture, you have no idea what I’m talking about when I describe the pins and needles while I’m recuperating. It’s excruciating pain.
Keeping it cold
My grandfather’s birthday is in the summer and he loved his strawberries. He loved his strawberry juice and his strawberry shortcake so he would have that for his birthday.
The strawberries are coming
Long ago, the people lived in small villages, sometimes bigger ones depending on the sizes of the families. And they lived in longhouses. There was an extraordinarily cold winter with a lot of snow and the people suffered.
Don’t forget your language
On this whole street, the language was all that was spoken. So in the house, we only spoke the language. That was until we started Kateri Indian Day School.
Porch stories
When I was growing up, the families were much closer than they are today. They were closer because of the shared language and also because of the storytelling.
Rambunctious ones
My dad had left when I was young so my mom was raising five of us by herself. In 1949, when I was nine years old, she went to the Indian affairs office to apply for welfare or “relief” as it was called back then. Instead, they thought it would be best to send me and my older brother, Marvin, away to residential school.
Why we have so many dogs in Kahnawake
At that time, dogs were loose. They ran all over town and got into all kinds of trouble. The people in the community got tired of these dogs barking all night and doing all this mischief.
Mohawk language in the schools
The summer following my first year teaching in 1973, five of us enrolled in the Teacher Training Program offered by the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi. That fall I got a job at Kateri School teaching grades 1, 2, and 3.