Page 19 - 1st Anthology 2011

They tried to make themselves look good. Even when Dr Murray came he looked up what
they were supposed to be doing with the people. I don’t know, but some papers were

floating around on the reserve and Frank was the one that was cleaning up the office. I
don’t know who he gave them to. It’ll be good to find out who has them now, just to see
what the Indian agent was saying. It’s hard to say where they disappeared.

This one time, I saw an old lady, they gave her a bed in the basement, and one room and
it was all cement. Well look who’s talking about cement floors, I have cement in my own
house because I can’t walk. I don’t want to ask Chief and Council for a new house. I’d
soon to look after my children.

I used to stay there once in awhile when the weather was bad. I used to go to school on
horseback every day. Unless the weather was bad for me to travel in, then I would stay at
the school. The matron had a bed for me. Even Dr Murray checked my bed, because he
said make sure nobody sleeps on it because it’s my bed when I need it. Our beds were
cleaned off because there were lots of lice on them.

I know Violet Starlight, Lily Starlight, Juliet, Hilda, Ruby, and I knew a lot of people that

went to school there. Most of them are gone now.

Some of the sicknesses that came to Tsuut’ina, I know some that died from the
sicknesses. They got brought in when children from other places would come to our
hospital, and our school and hospital were together. So that’s how they would catch the
sickness. A lot of residential school children stayed at the residential school, and they
caught TB. Some of them went home, and they had bandages on their necks because the
TB broke out on their necks.

I know them and some of them healed from TB and it left a scar. You can tell that person
had TB because of the scars. That’s crazy, my dad used to be against people who would
talk about them in a bad way. People used to think they still have TB just because they
have a scar on their necks.

Anyway, gradually the TB was gone and the children got healthy, so that way they can
learn faster. They were eager to learn more.

My mom said by the time Dr Murray got there, there were only two hundred and some
people left of our people. Now there are like two thousand or more Tsuut’ina people.

Nobody was interested now or then. Just lately, like Bruce. He started the language

program. Well Harley started teaching the Tsuut’ina language at the St. Stephens School,
with Violet Meguinis, she was a teacher’s aid. She was helping Harley teach the language.

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