Tag Archives: woodland

Thank you for reading my stories

Since November of 2018, views and visitors have gone way up for my website. It all started with stories about nimosōm – my grandfather.

Please visit us on Facebook –

Opens Facebook page in new window

Trees in Woodland Cree

These are the local trees we have in the La Ronge and Hall Lake areas. I am sure there are many more types that I have left out.

mistik – tree

mistikwak – trees

 

balsam fir – napakāsiht
birch – waskway
black popular – māthimītos
black spruce – itināhtik
jack pine – oskāhtak
red willow – mithkwāpīmak
tamarack – wākinākan
white popular – mītos
white spruce – minahik
willow – nīpisiy

Thank you for visiting, if you see a mistake, please let me know and I will do what I can to fix it.

I took most of the pictures myself over the years, birch and tamarack were downloaded from Pixabay

cv

 

māsihkīwin – Wrestling, Wahoo McDaniel

I remember as a boy watching wrestling with my parents, along with nisīmisak – my younger siblings. There was this Hawaiian wrestler named Dean Ho and his buddy Moondog Moretti. Dean was an old man by that time, but he was the main good guy. I must have been 5 years old at the time, it is mostly a blur but the times he won his matches were exciting because we were all cheering for the good guy.

There was another wrestler, but I cannot remember his name. He was an “Indian” wrestler, an Indian or First nations. He would get the beat down but then a drum would start beating in the background and it would give him “power” to get out of the hold. Great times to be a wrestling fan. This was all on a channel from British Columbia called All-Star Wrestling.

As I got older, I noticed another Native wrestler, his name was Wahoo McDaniel. He had a spectacular presence and a “tomahawk chop” that almost broke the sternum of any hapless man to get in the way. In 1986, he had this memorable feud with a Russian wrestler named Nikita Koloff. The feud was called the “tomahawk” vs. the “sickle,” which was a reference to the Russian sickle on the flag. I searched for this match online to no avail, so sad.

They both had their titles on the line, the National Champion, Wahoo and the United States Champion, Nikita. The winner would then amalgamate the titles into one because the company thought there were too many belts on TV, WTBS channel. I personally thought Wahoo should have kept the title because it was cool to have an “Indian” as champion. I could not find a free image of Wahoo, but at the bottom of this blog, there is an embed video of Wahoo vs Ric Flair in a “chop” battle.

I had such high hopes for a Wahoo win, but he was beaten. Wahoo was in the twilight of his long successful career and the so-called, Russian Nightmare, Nikita Koloff, was hotter that a firecracker on the fourth of July. He was being groomed for bigger things and Wahoo was used as a steppingstone, which I am sure he gladly did because even he knew that he had to job to the raising young star.

He wrestled 10 more years until his retirement in 1996. Unfortunately, he died of kidney failure “on April 18, 2002 at the age of 63” (https://wrestlerdeaths.com/wahoo-mcdaniel-death/). He left a great legacy for other Native American wrestlers such as Tatanka, who went on to became one of the most recognizable wrestlers in the 90s.

māsihkīwin – wrestling

omāsihkīw – wrestler

māsihkī – (you) wrestle, as in a command.

 

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahoo_McDaniel

http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2014/12/05/art-of-gimmickry-the-native-american-wrestler/

 

First Fall of Snow – instam kāmispok

Today we had the first major snowfall in Hall Lake. I woke up to the world covered in snow. I almost posted a picture for my FB friends who do not have a window but that is a joke I overused already, and I don’t want to get banned from Facebook.

I took a few pictures that I will show here, on my website because I love showing my pictures on my website as opposed to just uploading them to FB. It gives me more control over my own content. I like my intellectual property to stay mine, but I have given up many pictures to Facebook. I just need to keep my tech skills sharp in case they are needed again to make a living.

I remember as a boy looking out at the landscape at the trapline and watching the first fall of snow, I would always get a lonely feeling from it. It reminded me of the old Hank Williams song that my uncle Abel used to sing, “At the First Fall of Snow.” I can still hear him singing and walking along the trail to nimosōm’s cabin. My uncle is still alive today and he lives just down the road. I still see him walking from time to time, but he doesn’t sing anymore.

This reminds me that I have some stories I wanted to share about my uncle, but I will have to ask him first. Maybe he has some ideas too about what I can write, thank you for visiting.

Ikosi,

mistāpiw namīhtāw – Bigfoot has left tracks

Going through my Facebook feed this morning, I noticed a shared post by Jarome Stpierre and it showed a picture and a video of somebody leaving huge tracks. I was intrigued and decided to share with you what his father has taken footage of.

Seeing tracks like this must be awesome. I can only imagine what the feeling was like to see something like that. After hearing stories about wihtikō (wendigo from other bands) from nimosōm – my grandfather, I would always be on the lookout for strange tracks or any anomaly whatsoever. Unfortunately, I have never seen anything remotely resembling a mystery such as the tracks posted above.

I have seen bears that looked like a humanoid of some kind and realized that it was a bear upon closer inspection. I have even seen a bear from afar on the side of the road and told my son, “Charles, look, that’s a bear over there.” Only for the bear to fly up to the trees because it was a raven. He had a good laugh, as I laughed with a red face (I didn’t tell him I was embarrassed).

My eyes may not be the best proof of anything. I would like to find something as tangible as the tracks from Jerome’s father. Maybe I will go for a walk today and look for something.

mistāpiw namīhtāw – Bigfoot has left tracks

wihtikō

nimosōm

 

1500 – kihci-mitāhatomitanaw mīna niyānan mitāhatomitanaw

The First Nation Stories Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/firstnationstories/)  recently reached over 1500 likes. It has been a long time coming. I appreciate all the followers from the beginning and to the new ones the page gets each week.

I hope I said and wrote it right.

From the words of Cree Teacher, Simon Bird – kinanāskomitin = I thank you/I am thankful for you/I am grateful for you (#CreeSimonSays).

kihci-mitāhatomitanaw mīna niyānan mitāhatomitanaw – 1500

mīna kihtwām – until next time

 

nitīm – my dog

nimosōm – my grandfather Charlie Ross

I remember when I was about 10 or 11 years old and nimosōm – my grandfather told me that he used to have a dog team. It was fascinating to hear about the places he travelled with his team. It was places nearby but hearing it as a young boy, it sounded so much more glamorous and seemed to be in faraway places.

It was all well and good when he told me about what he used to do, but he started telling me that he was planning on getting a NEW dog team. I remember being very excited about it and thought I’d be able to see it happen and maybe try it myself the next winter.

He was able to get a big male and a female husky. We were in Pesiw Lake that summer when he acquired the dogs and we moved them to Hall Lake in the early fall. By the next spring, there was pups, many with big feet that nimosōm said, meant that the dogs were going to be big.

I picked out a puppy myself and it turns out nimosōm picked the same one. piyakwan awa kōtinahk, kitīminow awa – we picked the same one, this is our dog. I honestly didn’t know how that was going to work, but nimosōm seemed happy about it and I didn’t ask how it would work if he had to go back to the trapline.

It might have been a week or two later that the situation did not matter. I went for a walk with my friends and near a culvert lay a dead puppy. I was not sure at the time, but it kind of looked like mine. I was upset; however, I hid my feelings from my friends and just went home. I’m glad they didn’t ask why I had to go home, back then; we hid our feelings from each other because only we thought only little kids cried.

Later that evening, it turned out that my puppy had gone missing. A man we called mahkistikwān – big head, had killed and ditched it near the culvert where my friends and I saw it. It was very disheartening for me. I have never had a dog since, not because it was so heartbreaking, but because I decided that maybe it’s too much responsibility.

nimosōm – my grandfather

mahkistikwān – big head

atim – dog

achimosis – puppy (little dog)

nitīm – my dog

kitīm – your dog

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Poll Results – Cree First or English First

The results of the Facebook poll show that a little more than three quarters are in favour of using Cree first in all my bi-lingual posts and pages. I think I will try to keep Cree first for translations in poetry or narratives (kāwitha macīthihta – Do not have bad thoughts) and dialogue in my stories that have Cree translations available (The Eagle Flies into the Past – mikisiw kayās isi pimithāw).

I wish I could do entire translations in Cree for my stories, however, that would entail a great deal of my time, time I do not have as a teacher.

I appreciate the response from all my followers. I hope you all continue to check out the website. I hope to update at least once a week.

ninanāskimon kā ayimihtāyin nitācathohkīwina. Thank you for reading my stories.

All comments are welcome.

Old Tree behind my Parents House

My parents house

Around 1982, when my parents moved us from La Ronge to Hall Lake, our house and area was a new place to explore for this 8-year-old at the time. There were many trees near and around the house and nipāpā – my father spend days cutting trees down and digging out the tree stumps. I was too small to help with that, but I did haul what scraps I could. I wish I had pictures I could show.

Actual picture of tree before it fell, tāpwī.

There was a mistik – tree, that caught my eye earlier on because it stood out among the mītosak – popular trees behind the house, it was an ithināhtik – black spruce. I immediately noticed the tree had long branches at the bottom and made a natural umbrella, my sisters and I ran to this tree to get away from the rain many times.

Actual picture of tree before it fell, tāpwī.

During the winter of the year, nipāpā had trapped and skinned either a nikik – otter or ocīk – fisher. My memory is a bit fuzzy but anyway, he had thrown the skeleton of the animal on the branches of the ithināhtik, maybe about 3 metres high. Over the years, the bones got higher and higher until I completely forgot about them. When I did remember many years later, I could not make it out. Not a trace. I wondered if it was dragged away by ravens and crows or by the squirrel that made the tree it’s home.

Actual tree after it fell, tāpwī

In late July of this year, 2019, the tree finally fell after a storm. Right away I went to the tree when I found out and looked for the bones that were thrown onto the branches. I did not find the skeleton. I was kind of disappointed but considering its been 37 years, there was little chance it would still be there. I just thought it would be a good story to tell my children as I held up the skeleton, but that is not to be. Like the readers of this blog, it can only be imagined.

 

nipāpā – my father (this is how we say it in our “colonized” reserves).

mistik – tree

mītos – popular tree

ithināhtik – black spruce

nikik – otter

ocīk – fisher