STORIES / Okara’shòn:’a
Little pigs
We grew up on Cornwall Island, that’s where we went to school. We had a farm and on the farm we had little pigs.
Tell them not to shoot
In 1990, in the middle of August, a month after the Kanesatake resistance began, I was at work. I was a council member.
Not just a hobby
I learned to plant when I was a boy with my grandfather, so I’ve been planting a garden for the past almost 50 years now. When I was 18, I made a garden at my parents’ place. I just went out, turned the land over and planted. I didn’t ask what to do. I already knew what to do. It’s like it’s in you.
Centred around the garden
I come from a traditional background in the Longhouse. Food and the relationship to nature is one of the basic principle teachings. Part of our ways, our customs, our traditions are related to the gardens and how the food grows. How does life continue? You need the food.
Survival school
We established the school over the weekend. The students called it Survival School because it was for the survival of our language and culture.
Home wedding
My first dance was an adventure. Back then, they used to have what they call a dollar dance. The bride and the groom stand on the floor and they start playing slow music and people come up there and give the best man or maid of honour a dollar and he or she gets to dance with the bride or groom.
Broken Ankle wedding
On June 12, 1969, I broke my ankle on an ironwork job site in New York City. It was a Thursday and I was due to get married that Saturday.
White Lightning
The Lafleurs lived on my mother’s street. The father had a market in the village where the Court of Kahnawake is now, Lafleur’s Market. His name was Dave Lafleur.
Going with Tradition
There’s a festival called the medicine ceremony. You take the seeds that you’re going to plant and you bring them to the Longhouse. You pass around the medicine and you drink it through your body.
Conservation
The white man grows only one kind of food and keeps growing it on the same land, he doesn’t give the land a chance to come back.
Root cellar
There were about 25 Mohawk boys from both Caughnawaga and St. Regis at the Garnier residential school when I was there. And the older ones had our back, us younger boys.
Maple candies
If you’re gonna travel the world, maple candies are the best ambassador of Canada. I was doing the circumpolar meeting of Native languages in Tromsø, Norway.
Hide my medicine bag
When I go to Europe, I put my hair inside my hat and I hide my medicine bag. That’s so they don’t recognize me because they could be problematic sometimes.
Left handed twin
In our Creation story, the left-handed twin is the Creator’s brother. I don’t hate him. He’s still my grandfather. But Christianity says, “No, you’ve got to hate the Devil, be at war with the Devil.” All this made up stuff to confuse the hell out of humans.