Page 50 - 1st Anthology 2011

go to a sweat lodge, same thing, pray with your pipe, and after everything is over you have
a feast. The only thing is that we don’t wear clothes in the sweat. All our problems are left
in the sweat.

When we go to Catholic Church, we don’t guarantee the problems stay there, they might
come out with you. So there are disadvantages and advantages. At one time the Anglican
and Catholic Churches split the people up, just for a while. I mean when a woman was
either a Catholic or the man was Anglican, marriage and funerals, the Anglicans and the
Catholics question themselves. Where should we take them Anglican or Catholic. It
didn’t really matter, you know just going back to what I just finished saying.

When I got married my wife was Anglican and I was a Catholic. How are we going to
solve this problem? We have to satisfy both my wife and I. So what happened was, I asked
her, what are we going to do. She said I’ll go to my Reverend and you go to your Priest.
Well what I’m going to say I said, ask your priest if he can pray along with the Anglican
together as one. To bless us together.

They both came to the Catholic Church. The reason why it was held there because it was
a bigger Church and there was more room. The Reverend came up, and then my Priest
came up and they both married us. Which satisfied both of our families. They didn’t care
because both of them were raised in the city. They were raised to understand us. They
were men to kind of enlighten everybody. It was one big wedding, and I think that’s the
first time I seen an Anglican and Catholic together like that. Doing our vows and being
blessed by both sides. I mean it wasn’t like the hillbillies where you have the McCoys on
this side. It was all mixed up. Overall it was all really nice. That problem what we were
talking about, that there is only one God, it came up one time.

If I got time I’ll explain it to you and in my memory it did happen during Stampede week.
We were putting up the tipi. My wife and I we used to move in for our father-in-law
because they were getting old. So we used to move in with them. Our responsibility,
when we moved in, was to pitch up the tipi, take the tipi poles and pitch it up and make
everything comfortable.

The old people were in charge, all we did was put everything together. During that time
somebody came and I can’t think of this person. He was walking down looking around
the Indian Village and he had a camera when we pulled in that evening. We used to move
in the same time as my dad. My dad had his father-in-law’s tipi that he had to put up. So
to save gas and money, we used to travel together my dad and I would pick up my poles
and he would pick up his poles then we would all move together. He would help me pitch
up my tipi then we would go and pitch up his tipi.

There was this one guy, and I noticed him, he’s a white guy. In the distance he was just
taking pictures, and my wife says there’s just a white guy over there taking pictures. Did
you see him? I said yeah I seen him, just don’t bother him. He’s not bothering us. So we

49