Page 82 - 1st Anthology 2011

I can pray in the Catholic way but it’s a different way of praying. In the Anglican Church I
can pray in my language. I like to pray in just Anglican because it’s just Nato, but in
Catholic you pray to God, Mother Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Jesus was our brother on earth
because he was a Medicine man. He walked this earth and died for us because he was
trying to prove to the world that he was God’s son. People don’t realize these things. He
came from a different continent but if he lived today he would have crossed the ocean. He
walked on water. That’s why they crucified him. That’s what I learned in my life.

I went to school in the city up to grade eight. I was about seventeen or eighteen when I
quit school. I walked out of school and didn’t want to go back because they were
discriminatory against the natives. They called us Indians in those days and they were
discriminatory to us. We had problems in school. They tried to segregate us from doing
what we wanted to do.

I’ve read the Bible, I understand it. I’ve read it numerous times, but yet I have my own
idea of the Bible. I got nothing against Christianity. It’s just that I have my own way of
believing in the Creator. There’s nothing wrong with that. White people, the missionaries
and priests tried to brain wash us, that our way was the wrong way. We all pray to the
same Creator.

The white people didn’t realize it till they got to understand our way. They shouldn't have
tried to take our ways. The Prime Minister apologized to us for the people in the past, but
it was in English so it’s empty to me. That’s the way I look at it but yet at least he
apologized for the priest and nuns and the Anglican ministers. Today, I look at it and they
should have never tried to take our language away from us. They should have just let us
keep it. Maybe it would have been a better world too, but people are naïve.

I left the reserve when I was nineteen. I moved around with my work. I wasn’t legally
adopted. When I tried to get my social insurance number I found I was Onespot. I had to
move out of Calgary because there was hardly any work here one time. I moved to
Edmonton because I wanted to be close to my sister. When I lost her in 1984 I moved to
British Columbia and worked out there for seventeen years. That’s my experience in my
life.

When I was nineteen, I was on foot and I came to the city and got a job as a roofer. I
enjoyed working, and my cousins were working there too. When I started working I was a
laborer. One guy taught me how to run a kettle. I ran the kettle for five years. I was good
at it, the tar kettle. At that time it was kerosene and you had to pump it to build up the
pressure. Every morning I had to fill it up and make sure it’s hot and everything’s ready.
Then they all came.

I used to walk from the bottom of Edmonton Trail to the Airport for four months during
winter time. I use to be the first one there and last one to leave because I had to fill up my
kettle. I would be the first one there to fill it up again. I used to carry a pail of tar up one
level. It’s illegal now. They pull it up the next level I’ve done that all day long. I use to be
there from seven. It was still dark when I started the kettle. I would use that because

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