STORIES / Okara’shòn:’a
Hunting in Brasher
I hunted in Brasher, New York, since 1982. A friend told me about it, because he used to go up there. Before that we would go all the way to Lake Placid to hunt deer, because there were not many deer here.
Where the river curves
I didn’t have a boat back then, so I had to borrow one and I had to bring it back at a certain time. This one man, old man Buckshot, that man had nets in the water. I brought the boat back the next day, and he was kind of mad; we went out on his boat and checked his net.
Tioweró:ton
In the fall, we would go up to hunt. At night, the hunters would come down and tell us they got a moose, and the men would head up to help. It was a lot of work. We would cut the moose into pieces so that each man can carry a piece of the moose out of the bush. I was always excited to go because those who helped would get moose meat and have a party or celebration after we were done.
Fishing trip
My husband would go fishing all the time. I went with him once and told him, “Don’t ever ask me to go with you again.” Because it didn’t work out when we went, we got stuck.
Scraping every last bit
When I was at Spanish residential school, they didn’t feed us enough. I was always hungry.
We had mush for breakfast - I guess it was some kind of oatmeal. For lunch and supper, we’d have soup, beans and two-day old plain rolls with no butter. And for snack, they gave us a slice of raw turnip and tea.
Lost caribou
I was the tech on a film shoot way up in Nunavik and we had the president of the Quebec Ministere des Forets, de la Faune et des Parcs with us.
When he shows up there, he’s got this $3,000 rifle, with a scope and the whole thing. The guy’s a lawyer, he doesn’t know this shit.
