Page 78 - 1st Anthology 2011

I use to go to Calgary Stampede and Banff Indian Days they were special. When I went
there I use to dance. I had a friend there he was from Morley. We used to go all over the
place you know. We did what we wanted to do. Yet we had our chores. We’d do our
chores.

We used to give out buffalo meat. We’d keep the bones to ourselves, our parents let us
do that. We use to go feed the bears at the dump. The bears got to know us. The cubs
would come up to us and we would feed them. Today if you got in between the bear and
mother you’re in trouble. In those days they were friendly. I don’t know about today. We
use to feed them. We would come back late. They would ask us where we were and we’d
tell them we were feeding the bears. We got heck but they understood us, they let us save
our bones.

I use to dance like pow wow dance. I enjoyed that. We’d go there for about seven days by
train, I remember that and hauling our stuff across the track. Then eventually we got a
vehicle and we’d haul everything in the car, then we’d pitch up and I use to help with
wood and everything. After that we did what we wanted.
We used to visit each other. We all used to play whatever we wanted to play. My cousin
Bruce and I used to like riding these billy goats. We got heck for it later. One time we got
a saddle and we were riding. One time the saddle, I got thrown over the fence or he did.
We used to get a kick out of it. They use to butt us over the fence. We found out they
weren’t ours. We got heck but we were mischievous, Bruce and I. We had fun.

We used to play hockey on open ice. There was a field by where I live. We had an old way
of cleaning the snow and playing hockey. We made our own pads with cardboard boxes.
We learned to play hockey, baseball, football all kinds of sports, horse riding and rodeo. I
enjoyed all that. We had fun but yet we had to go to school. We had our chores.

We used to hate going back to school because we were so into summer and enjoying our
freedom. Everybody said, oh no, it’s almost school time. We didn’t want to go back. We
were having too much fun.

My foster dad taught me how to work, to this day I enjoy that. At home I do things, you
know trying to make sure it looks good. I’m going to put up a fence eventually. It’s just a
matter of time though. He taught me how to fence. How to build corrals and how to plant
trees. All those things. I learned those things because he taught me how to do things. We
worked on farms, you know feeding horses or whatever, cattle.

Yet we still had our chores. Number one you do you work first then you play later. That’s
like today, you always make sure everything’s done then we go somewhere. That’s why we
keep the house clean and tidy things like that.

There was agriculture like farming and stuff like that. My uncle and my dad got jobs
working for farms. As I grew older he got me working with him. Like when we were
cutting rails. We got orders and we had to go to Bragg Creek to cut these rails and posts.

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