Page 62 - 1st Anthology 2011

cook stuff like pies and all that. So I thought that was exciting. Going to Christmas
service, get to understand what it’s all about. I get excited about that too.

James Starlight, Bruce’s dad. David had just stepped down, I mean he got voted out I
suppose. You know how elections go. So David Crowchild just finished, Gordon and
Victoria’s dad. He just finished and James Starlight got elected. He was Chief for a long
time. I think it was over ten years. Fourteen years I think, a long time.

At that time, when I came, there were just two councilors, late George Runner and
Edward Onespot. There was a meeting. There use to be a school by the old health centre.
No maybe a little bit north. There used to be a school there, that’s where Muriel used to

teach, Muriel Manywounds was a teacher. She use to be one of the teachers there. They
used to have the band meeting there. At that time there wasn’t that many people to come
to the meeting.

The buildings are not there anymore, like the old health centre. You know the round one.
No I’m not talking about the one at the village. No, no you know the round one health
centre. Ellery Starlight’s office the Peacemaker’s Building. I think it was just a little bit
north of there. I can’t remember exactly. That’s where the school used to be, the day

school. That’s where the band meetings used to be held, in the school. They used to have
band meetings regularly. I think just about every month, they use to talk about
communications. Now we barely have a meeting, but I hope we have meetings with the
five new councilors. So anyhow, that’s when things weren’t that bad.

The people at that time, there were not many adults. So the people that were interested
attended. At the day school in a room the size of the room that Deanna uses. Maybe
double that size is where they had band meetings. It used to be full. Then we use to have

the meetings here, up stairs, in the old Council Chambers.

The Chief at that time he used to tell us how much money was in the budget. We use to
have money, they called it Capital Funds. It is in Ottawa. He always used to let the people
know if he was going to use the money out of Capital. He always asked the people if it’s
okay. We were going to do this and take money out of Capital and the people would
agree. We would vote yes if we supported it. It’s recorded into minutes and from there the
Indian Agent would process the papers and get money for us to use for the band. That’s

the way it worked. Now they don’t even tell us if we are in a deficit. I just learned that
where I’m originally from their twenty five or twenty nine million dollars in the hole.
That’s a lot of money, I’m thinking to myself.

I don’t know too much about the relationship between Calgary and Tsuut’ina. I think I
just mind my own, the community. When we have to shop, we go to Calgary. Didn’t really

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