Page 38 - 1st Anthology 2011

back from Ponoka she still had that nightgown she died in. Where that dress went,
nobody knows. It was a nice velvet dress. So that’s as far as I know and there is more I can
tell you but my eyes are getting tired.

Pat Grasshopper, well I know that he’s related to us through my grandfather. The only
time I knew that he existed was when they had his bead work. They had four trucks filled
of his bead work. The way I understand it, my dad was supposed to get it but he never
did.

Grasshopper the name was given to him long ago when he was a young warrior. I forget
who it was, but it was the Cree’s they raided for the horses. When they stopped at the
creek coming back from watering the horses and to eat something.

Grasshopper was one of them. He sat on a log along the river, and he was going to eat.
He just sat there and out of nowhere a grasshopper jumped on him right on his chest and
he fell back. Ever since then the people that were with him started calling him Afraid of
Grasshopper.

That’s how he got his name. He had a different name but I just don’t remember right at
the moment. A grasshopper scared him and that’s how he got his name. That is as far as I
know. There’s more to it. To be honest I can’t say. Maybe if I had my friends with me we
can feed off each other’s stories and it’ll refresh our memories.

It’s not like today. We do have politicians. It’s our Chief and Council. What they really
lack is to have really good knowledge of where they are coming from, and their language,
and what they are thinking. You don’t have to have a degree or anything, as long as you
have your language, and know what you’re doing. Getting your point clearly across to the
people for what you want. You can go a long ways, it’s simple as that. Nowadays they get
to the point where it’s so mumbled up that nobody knows what people want. It gets
everybody frustrated.

Every year our land seems like it’s getting smaller, and smaller. We’re living on an island
right now. People don’t realize that we are surrounded by white men right around our
whole reserve. Our population is rising, I don’t know exactly how many Tsuut’ina there
are today. Now they are building houses.

I told my girl, I said my girl we have to smarten up, about the land that was allocated to
us. We have to try and put up our fences. One of these days we are going to have some
neighbors that you are not going to like. Maybe I won’t be here to fight for the land for
you. That’s our land that was given to us. So the land versus the people.

Building codes and membership codes that should have been kept up long time ago.
That just went to the side. That should have been kept up. We have BillC-31, with our

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