The land is being sold everywhere. We are stuck in a corridor that is getting narrower. We are stuck on a land where everyone is making deals. We should occupy the land and strive to pass it on to our young people.

Dad went to the trading posts scattered all over. We lived off the land and hunted all the year round.

If food was scarce, we would share.

When I was young I was taught to learn all kind of skills like cooking Indian food, preparing food, knowing how to cut food, where to cut it, how to prepare the skin and how to prepare the animal and how to cut up the animal. We had to learn the preparation for different animals, cooking and preparation. Those are the things that a young girl would know. Then of course, I had the teachings about domestic skills, like trying to help out, making handicrafts, moccasins, gloves, clothes, even snowshoes. Learning how to do what a woman does. To accompany her man in the forest so you have to have all those skills as well. I also learned how to pray – how to read the bible and the prayer book and then learning it by heart which was important back then. All these skills, including prayer, helped me to go through my life up to today.

I guess there will be some remnants – something will remain of our culture – but as years go by no one will care much about it. But there will always be someone who knows about the traditional way of life.

You didn’t hunt immediately around your home or teepee because you wouldn’t use up all the resources around your teepee – you would go as far as possible in case you were sick so you wouldn’t have to travel far, and for the women as well, so that they could use the resources next to the teepee: so there was a strategy, for instance you won’t cut wood for your fire or use the trees next to your teepee to cut wood for your fire. You would have to go a bit of a distance so that you don’t use up all the resources next to your teepee in case you get sick, or to facilitate the work of the women as they were staying behind.