I've been living here since I was a little boy. This river behind me is what I wanna talk about now.
I used to travel with my grandpa here and we used to stop here. I remember I seen my grandpa having a smoke here and I seen these drawings on a rock. I asked my grandpa what are these drawings? My grandpa said, oh you bother me when I am smoking, you are supposed to leave me alone when you see me smoking because I am praying. That was the first time I ever saw anyone praying.
My grandpa explained to me that the first drawing explained that this is a big lake and to always stay close to shore and not to try to go towards the middle of it. The other drawing he explained that there would be a big vessel of some sort and that I would live to see it but my grandpa wouldn’t be alive to see it. He just told me that it would come from the sky and it would be loud and that people would ride in it. The first time I saw a jet airplane, I thought maybe that this was the one my grandpa used to talk about. My grandpa used to explain these drawing used to tell the future.
The white man said they were the ones that wrote these but it wasn’t it was these strange people called mehmehkiss ihwuk. A long time ago they used to hear them while they were banging on the rocks and if you ever hear them knocking on rocks you have to leave a gift for them, like maybe some tobacco or whatever you have on hand. You have to give them a gift even if you have a pocket knife you have to leave it as a gift. These markings on the rock are (holy or sacred) to be respected.
This is what I was taught as I was growing up. Like today's young people that go to school, that's how I went to school with these writings on the rock. There is another rock there with writing and there's a picture of a deer in the middle and I asked my grandpa what it means.
My grandpa told me that in the future nothing would be free that we would have to start paying to hunt and trap or for owning guns, whatever you need to support yourself or to survive, it will come with a price. And sure enough this is the truth, all of a sudden I have to pay 10 dollars for a trapping license.
My grandpa never had to pay anything a long time ago. Even a fishing license, I have to pay for it. Even I have to put a number on my nets so they can be identified as mine. True as my grandpa said, these things he told me as a little boy, they came true. He knew how to read those writings on the rocks.
I want the young people today to know what I learned when I was their age. My grandpa was very old. He told me this lake is very large and now today there are a lot of weeds. They used to use dogs only to travel and this is the place we used to stop to fry fish and eat.
My hope is that someone else can come to interpret these drawings and writings on this wall. There are still a lot of drawings that can be interpreted. One time the eagle left us but it came back and even I was told that our way of life would do a complete turnaround and we would lose our way of life. I see it today, that we are losing our way of life.
But I still like to eat like the way we used to eat like eating fish all the time. I don’t like eating stuff from a can, I would rather eat food from the lake like fish. Still like eating moose.
We used to eat a lot of potatoes too because we would have gardens.
The trees and the plants, they're not here for nothing. They are to be respected because they are medicine and people used to use them to get healed because they knew exactly how to use them. Our elders used to know how to use these medicines.
One time there were 3 men on a fishing trip and one of the men bothered the rock and he was talking to it. Making fun of it, asking the rock, tell us how are we going to do with fishing this winter. Are we going to have a good season? And yet these young men were often told not to bother the rocks. And the man in the back told the one in the middle for him to ask the rock about how they gonna do this winter. When the men got back on land, the man in the back that was making fun of the rock, fell dead. Just as they finished putting the boat away, the young man fell down and he was dead.
Our Elders always told us to respect the land. If you want to ask for a good winter fishing season then you leave tobacco or something in respect so your hope will be granted. You just have to pray and leave an offering of whatever you have. Not many people do that today, but it should still be practiced today because our grandparent lived life that way.
I used to ride this river all the time as a passenger. I am so happy the day I was able to afford a boat to fish on my own. Sometimes we have to get out and walk because the water was shallow in some parts.
There are many, still a lot. Some young people should try and learn how to read these things, but they have to be highly respected. We tried to take this area as a reserve to try to preserve these drawings but it didn’t happen.
26 окт 2019
