Page 77 - 1st Anthology 2011

reserve his name is Roy Otter. He still lives there, but you see I respect him. She married
in the city and I didn’t know my real mom for about nine years. They finally told me.

I met my mother and I had a feeling of I don’t know. When I met her they were drinking.
I didn’t know anything about booze those days. I saw people drinking and I’ve seen what
it’s done to them. I seen it as a young man, you know a young boy I was six or seven and I
asked my mom, what they doing? Are they drunk? What’s drinking, and I asked these
questions.

In our language they got drunk. She said that means they are drinking and acting silly
and acting crazy. I told her not me, and yet I went through that and I didn’t like that.
When I found out she was my mom. I would rather be with my foster mom because she
was teaching the right things about life.

I didn’t like the city life at that time because she lived in the city. She lived in Forest Lawn
I didn’t really like the city at the time. I was about nine. I really didn’t care for the city. I
rather be on the reserve. In the city it seems more restricted. Like you couldn’t be free.

In life to come I have to meet my mom and I drank with her and I listened to her stories.
When we met she was kind of restrained because of her husband. He didn’t understand
who I was. He didn’t know who I was. Today I have a sister that’s crippled for life, her
names April. She’s half colored, she married a colored man from Nova Scotia.
He drank but he never said anything at the time. I got to know him and he was a
miserable old man. Well that’s the way I looked at it. When he drank he was obnoxious
and I didn’t like the person when he was drunk. When I went there when I was sixteen or
seventeen. I went there and drank with them and I got drunk. He kicked me out I had to
walk all the way home, from Forest Lawn to the reserve. He got my younger brother
drunk. That’s not my doing but he blamed me. He had to blame somebody. But yet he
made us drink. Then he kicked me out in the middle of the night. I said I’m never going
there again and I never did.

On the reserve it’s a wide open space to do whatever you want. The reserve is starting to
be like the city. Here on the reserve you have to respect the other person. On the reserve
you have your own space. You got to respect your neighbors regardless and that’s what I
found out. I like living on the reserve. When I lived in the city I had to pay rent. At that
time I paid sixty five dollars for two bedrooms.

I still feel like I’m fifteen. I went back to my reserve and said I’m not going to leave home.
I had my own room I had my privacy and I found out my parents gave me that space. My
foster parents gave me my space. I enjoyed that and I gave my sister her own space. It’s
like there’s a divider between a man and a woman. You have to give them respect and
respect their space. They will respect your space. That’s the way I look at with my
grandsons and granddaughters. I give them their space and they can do whatever they
want. I’m there as an advisor.

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