 I guess I could start with how I was brought up and stuff. When we were kids, we used to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. We learned how to garden, cut wood, chop wood, it was a good life. We learned how to work hard every day and things like that, but alongside those days, we learned the value of working hard, which is something a lot of our people value. As somebody that's hard working and things like that, years ago, that was a big thing of families were getting together. Some of the main things you want to know of one another is whether or not your grandsons or your nephews or your nieces were hard working people. So that was a big thing back in the day. The other thing that I remember well from back then was the camaraderie that all our people used to have. There's always that same story that never escapes me. My grandma and I were walking to Wiki one day to go get some groceries and there was a guy on the other side of the road and my grandma stopped and he says, are you cold? And that guy says, yeah, I'm feeling cold. And my grandma said to him, well, Tine's not home right now. But if you wanted to stop by the house and stuck up the fire and have something to eat, there's homemade bread on the table, there's fruit there, and there's wood in the closet. You can warm up and sleep if you want to. We'll be back up in a little while. We're just walking to the store and coming back. And I just thought to myself, sometimes I think about that now. If you were to do that now to tell people something like that, you might come home to a house that's been totally ransacked. There's no TV, there's no nothing. But I mean, when we got home, the guy had actually cooked a supper. He had made us supper and left the supper at the kitchen table. He put what he called those, there was just cloth over the, like a washcloth over the food. So nothing would touch it and maybe keep the heat. But he had done everything. He had washed the dishes, everything like that, and had the supper ready. And he had already left by the time we came back. So my grandma's generosity was returned with his generosity by cooking for us. So I thought that was really neat and that's something you don't see too often in our people anymore. I think it's something that's greatly missed by our people. I remember when my grandma passed away that old man came and he talked about that time as well and how great that felt to have somebody look after him that way. So that's something I just absolutely missed that kind of stuff. Or somebody just comes by to come and visit you again and just visit, not to come here and talk harshly about somebody or come and ask you for something. They're just coming there to visit you about whatever it was, right? I remember that growing up as a kid. A lot of people stopped by my grandparents place and just come and visit. It was really nice. Sometimes they'd only say a few words and sit in the living room, drink tea, smoke cigarettes, and not even say anything. They would just sit there and enjoy each other's company, I guess. I don't know what it was. My grandma would be sitting in the kitchen making birch bark canoes and tepees. I'd be over there squishing the sweetgrass to get all the water out so that she can start wrapping them around her things. Then after that we would go get water or bring wood or something like that. Those are the kinds of things that we used to do when we were kids. My brother Nathan and I, we just recently started talking about this. My brother Nathan and I, when we were kids in nursery school, when we went to school, I'm 40 years old now, and when we went to our nursery school, when we were kids, we still spoke our language. I believe it was Manian, Rosemary, each other, that were our teachers because we spoke the Nishnabe. It was hard for us when we were growing up, even at that age. Even when we got to kindergarten, we were still speaking Nishnabe and we kind of lucked out because Noreen Mantawabi was our teacher. And then after that, I went to grade one and Miss McLeod was my teacher. But Miss McLeod passed away. So Miss McLeod used to teach me in our language plus in English because she'd always tell me, you have to learn it this way because that's just the way things are becoming now. And I was like, well, okay. So she would say, bejik to me, you know, which is one. So then she would teach me how to say one and then Nish, you know, so on and so forth with a whole bunch of different things. But like I said, Miss McLeod passed away and we got a new teacher. Her name was Sheila Lumley and she was, you know, she was white and it became really hard for me to be in school because I didn't really speak English. It was really hard. Most of the class spoke our language. So we'd be out on the playground speaking our language and we'd have to come inside and just be frustrated because we couldn't really speak English all that well, right? So that was the beginning of my education, I guess. And as years went on, you know, you start learning English and so on and so forth and, you know, all that stuff's gone now. The majority of my friends, they can speak some Nishnabem way but can understand it well but can't speak it all that well anymore because when you speak our language, it involves your tongue to move a different way, right? So when you speak English, it involves your tongue to move a different way as well. So learning how to do that all over again is quite hard. And I guess that's where they call that, where people have that Indian accent, you know? When you speak English, you sound like you have this really strange accent, right? And that's some of the stuff that people go through, like nowadays, right? Language is a huge thing. What that means is, like, your life, there's a life inside your language. So our language is totally descriptive, right? So it's much more when you say it in our language. Even the jokes that people tell are funny stories you hear. They're much funnier in our language, but you switch them to English. It's just really, it's kind of bland, eh? But when you hear it in Nishnabem, oh my God, it's so hilarious. And then the way the story is told, it's almost like you're right there. The person telling the story might point and you're looking over there thinking, oh my God, you know, it's almost like you're there. So when people are growing, nowadays, sure, education is the key to everything and all that sort of stuff, but if you don't have the education of your own people, then, you know, you really don't have too much of anything. You just have the education of everybody else, right? You're just, in that sense, you just have the same education as everybody else. You're no different from them in that sense. But when you have the education of your own people, that's a huge thing. You know, when you can speak and understand your language, that's a huge thing to have that because your mind is different even, right? Our language teaches us to respect the earth and to understand the earth and all the things that are here on earth, right? So there's so many cool things to see just even in your language. I heard an old guy one time, an elder say one time, he said, imagine if you learned one word a day for the calendar days, which is 365, he says. That's 365 words. So it would take you one year to be pretty darn fluent in your language, he said, which made total sense, right? So that's what I do for myself sometimes when people come here, when they come to visit Phyllis Williams, Doreen Shreddo, Dorothy Fox, and, you know, when these ladies come by to come and visit or we're getting ready to do justice circles and one of them speaks English, I always go, hey, you can't speak like that in here. And they just smile, oh, they'll say, hey, I'm sorry, whoops. You know, so they'll just speak Nishnabemun when they're here until our client shows up or whatever is going on that day. So, you know, educating yourself and being who you are is a real, is something that you should be proud of, your identity is a huge thing. You can always, that should come first and foremost before any PhD or KFC or just kidding or anything like that. You know, it should be you. You should be able to say, me mumpy, this is where I come from. This is who I come from. I come from people that were hardworking people, people that made gardens because that's what they had to do, people that used to have to haul their water from the bay or from a well and so on and so forth. That's where I come from. That's who I am. That's the life I had before I was here now. That's where I come from. And for our people to celebrate our people, our elders, these people are people that came from just a, you know, a beautiful life if you look at it that way, where it was simple, you were hardworking you. You did things to sustain your life every day. You hunted, you fished, you chopped wood, you planted potatoes and so on and so forth. That was your life basically. But all these things are now called teachings. If somebody makes a garden, we'll teach you how to make the, you know, when years ago, that was something you were born into, right? That's how you come to be, right? So that's something I'm really proud of. I'm very proud of where I come from and where my people have come from and the things they do. I'm proud of where my family on both sides has come from. So in my lifetime, I wanted to be a nurse, but it never really played out that way. I always wanted to be a nurse. I had no ambition to be a doctor or anything like that. I just wanted to be a nurse just to be able to meet people all the time and all that sort of stuff, but my life didn't go that way. You know, things happened where I ended up learning a lot of traditional things like medicine and stuff like that. So I guess in a sense, I still am a nurse because I do meet a lot of people and I do give them medicine and so on and so forth. You know, it's medicine that my grandmother taught me. And the history of that even was just, you know, that was just a whole part of a day to learn different plants that my grandma would talk to me about, right? And how you had to talk to those plants, how that plant should look before you pick it, what height that plant should be, and so on and so forth. There's a lot of different things that go into just that, right? Aside from having to chop wood and so on and so forth. So there's a whole bunch of things that we enjoyed doing. My brother Nathan really enjoyed just being a farmer. I liked doing that. That was his thing, big trucks and digging up the dirt and all that kind of stuff. That was him. My brother had no time to be listening to, this is how the tallest plant should be and so on and so forth. But, so, you know, if you're going to get yourself involved in stuff like this, you know, when it can us the tonmanda mazuin, as you can call it, you really need to understand this life if you're going to do something like that. You understand that for what it is. You're a human being. You make mistakes because you hold knowledge you're no better than anybody else in the world. Nobody. If people put you on a pedestal, it's those people that do that. Don't you ever do that for yourself or you put yourself up there because you got to remember you're just as much as a human being as everybody else is. That's what that means to when it can us the tonmanda mazuin. That's what that means is to really understand your life, right, and where you come from. So, passing something on for me is like, when I was a kid, it took my grandma a long time to find somebody to pass the medicine on to, right, like the medicine I know. And I have a lot of nephews. I have two nieces. So, in making medicine and stuff like that, there's, in this time, in this day and age, people are very wary of different things and stuff like that. And I always tell my nieces and nephews, sometimes they'll say, there's something wrong with me, you know, or, you know, at one time my nephew broke his arm. And I said, come on, let's go in the bush. We'll take a walk, I said to him. And then he goes, how come I have to come with you, Shoshan? I said, well, you know what? I said, at some point in life, I'm going to become a really old man and I might not be able to come out in the bush here and all that kind of stuff. So, if I show you this, then you'll always have it. You'll always be able to say, hey, I know what you can use for that and I know where it is and I know what it looks like and so on and so forth. And he goes, oh, okay, so we walked into the bush and he had a broken arm, right? So I took him to look at this tree, it's a plant and we call it the rubber tree. My family calls it that, eh? It's like a really bendy tree. You can bend it every which way and it just doesn't break, right? But what's really interesting about that tree itself is that when you cut it, the bark slides on and off of it. So it has, it's like being able to break your, or I don't know, make an incision around your elbow and around your wrist and slide the skin off and fix the bone kind of thing. That's the way I had to explain it to him at that time but the inside piece of that tree was like the bone marrow or the bone itself. So I told him, we're going to chop it up so that you can drink it and it'll heal your bone faster and it won't make your arm shorter than the other one. Your arm will just grow the way it was naturally supposed to grow so that it's not shorter because you broke it. I said, oh, okay. But I told him, I said, listen, this is what it looks like. And then I told him, but before you pick this stuff, this is what you need to do. So I told him what we had to talk about and talk to the tree about and things like that before we picked it. I told him to tell the story of how he broke his arm. I told him, now you need to ask this tree to help you because you want to fix it and that you know you have to take its life in order for it to help you. So that was the conversation he had with that tree by himself and he put tobacco, he put samba there. And then he goes, hey, uncle, just wait. So he jumps up and he takes off running to the house and he comes back and he has a little car that he absolutely loved, one of his Hot Wheels cars. And he says, can I give this to the tree? And I said, yeah, that'd be great. So in exchange for the medicine that that tree had, he exchanged it with the tobacco in that little car he had. And you know, his bone healed quite quickly after that. It healed really fast, you know. And he was just amazed by that. And he goes, oh my, I get to play hockey again, uncle. I can play hockey now. It was summertime, but they were still playing road hockey and stuff, right? So he was able to do more stuff and they gave him a long period of time where it was going to heal, but it healed way faster than that. And I asked him and sometimes he'll talk to me about that. He just, I remember that time we went over there and stuff like that. So those are things I do with my nephews and anybody really that wants to listen or wants to see something or whatever, right? Or somebody comes here and asks me questions about, you know, our culture or some of our traditional things that we do. I try to show them like hands-on so that they have it forever. I'm not stingy with that, right? Even the songs that we sing, the ceremony songs we sing, or somebody comes and asks me like, how do you remember you composed the song umpteen years ago? What are the words to that song? And I'll tell them, oh, you know what? This is how I got that song, you know? I made a song when I was 12 years old. I was in my mom's basement and it talks about the Nishnaba Mazuin, right? That's what that song is. And people ask me for that song sometimes. They ask me, can I sing it in a sweat lodge and stuff like that and I go, sure if you want to. And then they said, what did you make it for? And I said, I just, I made the song because I thought it was a good way of talking to people, dancers, maybe the people in the crowd about our life, hey? Nishnaba Mazuin. So that's why, or that's how that, that's how that song was born. So a lot of people use that song in a sweat lodge when, I guess maybe it was just a powwow song or whatever, but I mean it was a song to try to teach you about life and stuff, right? So that's how I try to pass on any bit of knowledge I have to somebody is to just show them, show them how it's done, whether it's smoking pipe or, you know, offering tobacco and cloth to other elders for prayers and things like that or one of my nieces asked me one time, Jishen, do you know how to can something? And I said, yeah, I know how to can something. And only because, you know, we spent a lot of time with my grandma, we knew how to can stuff, right? And then she says, Jishen, do you know how to quilt? Jishen knows how to quilt. I know how to sew. I know how to knit. I know how to crochet. Because I spent so much time with my grandma. We know how to do that stuff, right? My nieces to me, Jishen, I don't think you're an uncle. I think you're an auntie. Or she says to me and started laughing. But, you know, my nieces learned how to sew from me. And I taught them how to sew. Because that's something we picked up, right? When we were kids. That was a part of life, too. If you were, you know, if I was a single man and I needed something, so I could sew it myself. You know, because I paid attention to those kinds of things. In this day and age, you have to really you have to really do something that's going to keep the attention of the youth nowadays. Because, you know, there's cell phones and PS4s and X-boxes and so on and so forth, right? So, that's how things are right now. So when we teach something we make sure it's really hands on. When we go out in the bush or something like that, we always tell each other even me, my nephews and my nieces tell me, leave your cell phone in the truck, Jishen. Okay. So we leave it all in there and we just go out in the bush and stuff. You know, staring and stuff. All my nephews know how to hunt. Even my nieces do. Everything I've ever taught somebody since I was young till now has always been hands on. Because that's the way I learned how to do stuff as well. There's things that you just cannot learn from books or watching a YouTube video or anything like that. If you learn stuff like that that's fine. That's great. But you're missing the connection there. Once you learn that connection and then it's your way. Right? But that your way has always been born from what was behind you. And who's taught you and where that's come from. So my grandma's hands and the things that my grandma's hands did in her lifetime my nieces and my nephews' hands can do those same things. And I always remind them of that. To always take the time to understand that that's how you know how to do that. Now because Kokomis and Mishomis taught us how to do those things all those years ago. So now you can do them here in this time. If the power goes out this is what you can do. That's how you can live. Even when we go through the bush they always ask me, can you eat that? No, you can't eat that. So on and so forth. Again, so there's a lot of things that my nephews and nieces and people that are with me that just understand about the bush and things like that. I have no problem teaching anybody that wants to learn that kind of stuff and understand it. But I will say this though is that when it comes to teaching something to somebody my people come first. Nishnabek, right? Nishnabek or Su people, Mohawks or In-Yuz or whatever it may be as long as it's our people they will come first. That's just how I see that because if you want to talk about tradition that's how the tradition in my family was was to teach your people first that belongs to your people, right? If somebody else wants to learn that that's fine but to hear is right? So that's one thing I've always been really solid about so no offense to the rest of the world but that's just how it is for me. Hunting too like hunting, same thing. In our in our background in my background as a hunter my grandparents taught us to hunt to eat not hunt for sport or to be able to say ah look what I got, you know you hunted to eat and that's all it was there was no hokeyness to it there was nothing like that to it it was always about you hunt to eat and that's it it does not matter how you go and get that animal if your family is hungry you feed that to your family, that's your job that's your life, that's what you need to do mi mande ezece get nene that's what the man does so you know there are things that in our rites of passage when I learned how to hunt the first time with the 22 my grandpa let me have the 22 one day for the first time it was amazing I hunted with a BB gun that I had paid for by winning that bingo that I played bingo with my grandma at $195 I went to Mastin's in Manta Juan and I bought a BB gun, first gun ever oh my god I was just just so excited about this and one of my grandma's thoughts were he's gonna shoot the windows out of something and I'm like no I'm not I'm gonna shoot something to eat it so I remember I shot lots of partridge, lots of rabbits I hunted all because I had a BB gun in my hand I thought it was whatever and that's what I did and then one day my grandpa says ezece to me no ezece, come here my grandson so I went in the thing and he's sitting there with the 22 in his hands and you know what's going on grandpa umbe he says let's go outside and I said ok so we went outside and my grandpa took a bullet and put it in the 22 and pulled the hammer back and I remember looking and I'm going like what's he shooting I was thinking I was really looking around and he gives me that gun and it's loaded and I was you know and I put my hands on this gun and my grandpa says you see the dirt he says take a shot ok I said so I took the gun and shot that 22 for the first time and I watched the dirt just lift like that you see the power that has and he says yeah I said yeah to him says your BB gun doesn't have that power and I said no it doesn't he goes from today he says I don't ever want you to point that at another person even if it's not loaded you've seen the power that this gun has understand that power he said to me ok ok grandpa and he goes Mia he says to me like that's it and I was like really and I looked at him again grandpa do I get the hunt with this and he goes yep oh my god so I was a static man I was so friggin happy I hired this lady wiki because nobody else would drive me my grandpa had to be here my grandma had to be there that morning my mom had to go there my dad was out in North Bay at school and wasn't going to be back till that following morning so I hired a lady in wiki she came up to my mom and I was looking at her and I go hey I have 30 bucks can you drive me to the borderline in the morning and my mom is looking at me and I go what do you mean oh so that lady looks at me and then looks at my mommy and then my mom goes gestures to her and the lady goes sure where should I be and I said can you be here at 5 36 o'clock you'll be up and I said yeah I'll be up so she says no how so she had this big big old boat of a car it just had this huge trunk in it so she dropped me off at the borderline I got the gun I got all set and I walked up the hill and it's you know there's fresh falling snow on the ground and this lady says I'll just sleep here till you get back and I said oh okay cool so I walked up the hill and I was walking I was so excited and you know even if I didn't see a deer I was just so happy I must have the biggest smile in the world that morning and then I got up to the hill and then the bush started getting darker and I was just like I had never really been there before I was just following the trail I remember how dark the bush was and I was just thinking and then I got scared for a second and then I thought what the hell am I scared of I got a gun in my hands so what the hell was that so then I took a few more steps and then I heard this noise and I thought so I stopped and it's listening and I looked to where the noise was and I couldn't see it and as the more light came from the morning there's a deer looking at me chewing on an apple and I was like YES YES so I put the bullet in the gun and I loaded it and I cocked the hammer and I put the gun up and I couldn't see the iron sights so I pointed in the sky and I could see the iron sights and I remembered where they did it and I shot and this big deer just dropped on the ground oh my god I was so excited but after I shot I was going to scream and then I heard it again so I took the bullet out and I loaded another bullet and there's another deer looking right at me after I shot this one so I took the 22 and shot it again and it dropped and I was like oh my god I just shot two deer so I was so happy I pulled this rope out of my bag and put the harness on my body and I tied these two deer up by the neck because I didn't know how to skin a deer I had seen my grandpa do it so many times but I didn't want to mess it up I just didn't want to own my grandpa to show me so I harnessed these deer up and it was easy to pull them because of the snow so anyways I was going down the hill and I'm noticing that the snow is melting so anyways I get down the hill and I bang on the window and that lady she got scared because she was sleeping and I go nish washkeshuk nish and I said nish like two doze so she helps me put these deer in her trunk and we drive these deer to my grandparents place and she drives them all my grandpa says drive them all the way down to the end of the field so we drove down there and we got down there and my grandpa brings down the quad I think it was at time so my grandpa says you got to clean those out and I go yeah and then he's looking at me well get to it so I'm looking at him going what do I do first and he goes you know how to do that you've seen me do it and I said okay dear my grandpa so I cut the deer up and gutted it out and then my grandpa says beka and here's where a life lesson came he says beka so he cut the heart out and he pulled it out and he cut a sliver of that heart out and he goes and I was just like and then I was just like I don't eat that grandpa it's not cooked my grandpa says eat it so I eat it and he goes there now you'll always be apart like you'll always have a connection with these washkas shakis and I said okay and he goes don't wait you're not done yet take the hearts and the liver and go there's a big rock over there he goes go and put them there but this is what you tell tell them your grandpa before me your great great grandpa your great grandma your great aunties come and eat this is my first time I killed something I've become a man today this is what you tell them and you feed them you feed all of them tell them to come and eat the liver and the heart come and eat it with you so that's what I did and while I was doing that my grandpa fires up the my grandpa fires up the tractor and he takes off on me I was like what the heck you're over there hang them up or whatever so I'm looking at him real long half an hour goes by and I said ah tell what this is and I just dragged these over there so I started to drag them back up the hill because I thought in my mind I'm not waiting for them to come back so I dragged them back up the hill by this time it's warm outside the snow has melted so they're heavier anyways I get there and my grandpa goes back me so he says to me that's awesome he goes now you have a real respect for that animal you you've seen the work it takes to get this animal back home here hang them up and skin them and everything now you know that that's why you didn't help you take that that's your job to do that okay so alright so we get to eat them grandpa and my grandpa goes no you don't what I said and he says yeah I said clean them up now cut it all up everything like that package it up he says you'll feed the people now you go and give all that deer meat away what I said I was so I was like in disbelief but my grandpa said that's what you do that's the first time you killed something you shared with the people okay I said so I cut up this deer all day two deer I cut them all up it showed me how to make nice cuts and all this stuff and then we got on my mom's van my mom drove me down to wiki stopped at my anti-victory as I gave her some meat went all the way down to Flumons and I dropped some meat off there went up to Reckles gave them some meat went up to Babamquas gave them some meat went across the Bay to Triddles gave them some meat and then we got home and then somebody oh we went to Rosie and Big Joe Scabas is but their place and I gave them the rest of what I had left and Rosie came out of the came out of the bedroom and she was holding a what do you call it a gun case and she says that's your first deer here's your gun case and I was like oh wow so she gave me a gun case for that 22 and Big Joe gave me a strap and I was like here here here it is so all these places I went to all these people gave me something in exchange for that deer meat so I guess when people talk about bundles and stuff like that that's where my bundle started the knife I had used that day to clean those deer my grandpa had given me that knife you know the rope I had had there my grandma gave me that rope the clothes I had on the socks my grandma gave me those things so those things were a part of my bundle the beginning of my bundle right so so that's where I learned to be a man that's where I became a man that was my rights of passage that made me a man or what they would call Ogichita doesn't just it means a warrior a warrior's job is to take care of the people and that's the thing I learned that day right there is to be one of those individuals and that's what my grandma and grandpa gave me that time so when I got home I was kind of sad almost then my grandma just looks at me she says she used to call me don't be like that she says to me only that she said grandma and she goes what she just did today she said she goes all those people you gave all that deer meat to all those people not any of those people don't have hunters in their family we know them that's why we told you go to those people because nobody hunts for their families anymore if they get deer meat it's because somebody gives it to them nobody hunts there no more that's a beautiful thing you did then that really made me smile so over the years up till this time in my life for every year I've ever hunted those same families I dropped meat off to every year or those same families come and see me every year for deer meat I have no problem sharing things like that so that was one of my biggest life lessons was that that you always share with somebody what you have whether it's medicine whether it's food whether it's knowledge of something you share that with people you don't need to make it a teaching or a life's lesson it's just sharing sometimes that will last a lifetime so that's what to me that's what that means to me that's our life