cikâstêpayihcikêwin - 
nêhiyaw isîhcikêwin

Section Two:
Living off the Land

Cree… partridge… cree… all you needed was a short little stick and a snare wire at the end and a dog. Eh they were important cree. For hunting or… If you had a good dog that would tree a partridge, that would stay there and bark and bark and bark… cree Eh he's got a partridge, something up a tree… cree… partridge up a tree not moving. All you had to do snaring motion.

Occurences in our life when I was growing up when everything was pure, that you could eat off the land and everything like that. I remember my dad going out… to shoot rabbits, one rabbit for one meal and we shared that and everything like that was cut into fine pieces by mother and that was fresh meat for the table. Snaring rabbits was another way. When I was about 4 years old I was taught how to snare rabbits. Old enough to walk in the deep snow, you know. And if you have relatives next door, you share the good part of the meat. Never give ribs or anything like that if it's a deer. The back part along the spine that's soft fine meat there, that's what you give and in return you will have good fortune in hunting and all that.

Now lot's of times we women make fire outside and cook outside. I still bake bannok outside in the summer time, when I to eat some real good bannok. I've done a lot drying meat, I still do that.

Rawhide. You know when I was a kid, I even saw make a lariat, four stranded of rawhide, when they were making rawhide, they cut another hide in strips.

That's the way used to do, Indian people, Indian women.  That's what they use for poking in the dirt and then to do that and she found that. Pick a little bit in her hand and then do that with her hand and then put it in her bag. Used that for medicine.

Senca Root… medicine… just like a little spade Mushum used to make those. I'd go along with him and gather up for days at a time… take a tent a long or throw that tent over the wagon… sleep in there.

They had remedies for almost anything at that time. Headaches, fevers even childbirth.