STORIES / Okara’shòn:’a
They all boxed
We had tournaments in our basement too; chess tournaments, dart tournaments, even wrestling. We had boxing down there!
Onen’tó:kon
So, Friday night comes and at about six o'clock we all go into the cedar room to have a meeting. They said, "Earl, where is your roommate?"
The last white pine forest
I remember when people used to respect the land and followed the teachings passed down through stories. But today, we see so many people getting sick from diabetes, cancer, things we didn’t have before.
Years in Brooklyn
I was in the public school system and got to meet a lot of different people. It was a whole new system that you had to adapt to. It was a lot different from Catholic School here in Kahnawà:ke.
514 Atlantic Avenue
My mother decided one day that we’re going to live in Brooklyn, and she packed all of our belongings. In those days we didn’t have luggage, we had paper shopping bags.
Vibration travels through the earth
There were a lot of things to witness at that time, a lot of healing ceremonies that they did through sound. It was an awesome experience. They had a huge drum and when they hit the drum, it reverberates against the walls of the higher mountain peaks in the Rockies and creates a vibration.
Healing in the Indigenous world
If you have long-term issues, over time, they have a tendency to create disease within the physical body. Then those long-term issues are now unconscious because they’ve been there for so long.
Everyone remained quiet
It was June 1st, 1988 when we got raided by the RCMP. They came in with the buses and set themselves up on the mountains with their machine guns and snipers.
Booze and Spirits
This is when we all get into fights, we are robbed or killed. Any kind of thing can happen when we are in that state. These are understandings I got from the old people. “Tóhsa shnekì:ra, don’t drink.” There’s going to be trouble because you are going to be attracting it - you are now in negative mode.
Cemetery Hill
This was the story he told. Well, that man never drank again and he became an elder in the church. And he is the one that got me to start read the scriptures in the church. And I read in the church for 43 years.
Smell signals
I learned this on a shoot: smoke signals. The real code was not just smoke. The smell. We were shooting in Arizona at Window Rock, and we wanted to do an interview. So, it was all organized with the daughter. We went to the daughter’s place, the mother lived up the hill.
Head Veteran
I am proud to be a Mohawk Veteran; I take the responsibility with much pride and bring the knowledge I carry from my 21 years of service into the powwow circle for the benefit of our people.
Baie-Comeau
In 1989, I was working in Baie-Comeau, still for Dominion Bridge. But now I'm not cleaning machines, I’m doing ironwork. There’s a small Innu community there, and one day we got rained out or something, so we were off work.
A connection to the past
It’s almost like a hint to go and fire up the woodstove. We have a dryer, but I say why use the dryer? You fire up that wood stove, and it dries all of our clothes.
Mohawk name
That little girl entered this world, waving her little hands and arms. I thought to myself, “Look at her! She is already showing off her wings, our beautiful little snipe.”
Mohawk language curriculum
I used to teach Mohawk at Howard S. Billings from 1972 to 1979. Once I walked out of the school I never went back. That was in ‘79 with Bill 101 but, I had to stay and finish that year even though I had no more students because all the students came back to Kahnawà:ke.
School committee
At the time, all the schools were federally run. About 400 of our students went to Billings high school in Chateauguay and they were treated badly. We tried to implement Mohawk language classes, which got started, but then Bill 101 was passed.
I don’t get the choice
There we were with our camera, and we had Marine Corps behind us with M16s ready to shoot, and we got the KGB across with AK47s, ready to shoot.