 Margaret Cody? What First Nation are you from? Cody First Nation. Thank you. Margaret, did you tell us how people lived a long time ago before a treaty? How they governed and how the leaders were picked? Just a general overview of that. As well, if you're comfortable to speak in your language, it's okay to speak it or any language if you want. In that area, what little I know is what I heard from oral history, things my father and grandfather talked about. Back then, it was a hereditary chief. A person was raised to be a leader because they were going to become a chief. The one that was a chief would raise one of their sons to take over being a chief. So they had specific training, which I'm not knowledgeable about. Did the elders, the elder women, or did the women have a role in picking the leaders? There again, from what I heard, the women had a very important role in not only training the person, the people that were going to be leaders. They had set up what the older women would see was law. The young people had to follow what the guidance was given to them by these older ladies. How did the women have a role in training the leaders? How did they do it? Counseling them, giving them advice, telling them stories. A lot of our morals and values were taught through story form. Through the legends, there was a moral, a value, or a belief that was taught through legends and stories, or the atsokaonan. Atsokaonan, I usually like to refer to them as ancestor stories instead of legends, ancestor stories, because atsokaonak are spirits, ancestor spirits. Atsokaonak, ancestor spirits, so their stories, atsokaonan, ancestor stories. Nowadays, the English terms, myths, and legends, to me, it's like they're not true. Even if they're not, they teach a truth, especially when it deals with our main legendary hero that I don't want to mention the name because it's summertime. But stories that have that character, even though a lot of those stories are extreme, spiritual and supernatural things happen in those stories. But the main thing is they teach a truth, or a value, or some kind of lesson. What kind of qualities did a leader have to have? They had to be there for the entire community, not just for himself or his family. He had to be a leader for the entire community. He had to do what was best for everyone. There again, I'm not really that knowledgeable in that part of our history. A lot of the values that were taught were, I'm going to be talking about that later, about obedience, honesty, sharing, etc. All those main values. How do you think that these traditions and these values would help the leadership today? I think if our leadership went back to those values we wouldn't have so many problems that we have in our communities. Do you see traditional governance in communities today? No. I think it would be nice if we can go back to practicing more of those traditional values in this day and age. Too many of the communities are following the non-native way of governing. Our communities, because of the election system, it just turns communities upside down every two, three years. If good people do get elected in, they just start to do good in their election time again. What are the changes that occurred with treaty signing? There's been a change in all three components of our culture, mainly the survival, how people obtain their food, their shelter. That has gone through a lot of changes. Another component is the social less, where a lot of change has occurred, especially with the way the members of the community communicate through language ceremonies. At the time of the signing of the treaties, our language was in full use. Everyone in the community used it. And now, maybe only people that are over 50, and it's not that way with every community, people over 50 are the only ones that understand and speak the language in. And in some of the communities, not even that. So the language loss has been great, and with the loss of the language, there's also the loss of the religious and spiritual beliefs, because those were all conducted in the language, and the songs, the dances. That area has also gone through a lot of change, and the way a community covered themselves, like with the loss of the language, and the loss of the stories and the ceremonies, that's where right and wrong were taught to the young people through in these ceremonies and in the stories and the legends. The morals, the values, the difference between right and wrong that was all taught through the language, and the loss of the language, there's the loss of all that. And the residential school had a great impact on the loss of the language. Since the time of the signing of the treaties, there's been, in my family anyway, there's eight generations. I'm the fifth generation. When I talk about from the time of the signing of the treaties, my great-grandfather, Gabriel Cody, was the first generation, and in his generation, there was 100% use of the language, the ceremonies and all that. And then my grandfather, Frank Cody, was generation two. No, his, my great-grandfather, Gabriel Joe, my grandfather, Frank, my dad, John, so I'm the fifth generation. And I have children, my children are the sixth, my grandchildren are the seventh, and I have two great-grandchildren, so that's eight generations. And my generation, my children are in their 30s and early, 41, 32 to 41, and they can understand some, can understand quite a bit of the language, but their generation hasn't used it, they haven't been using it, and so they haven't passed it on to my grandchildren. So maybe there's not even 5% usage. Words that seem to survive are slang and swear words, to tell you the truth, in those generations, the sixth and seventh, no one uses the language anymore to communicate, and if nothing is done now in this generation, unfortunately our languages are going to be lost, they'll become extinct, which a lot of languages have already become extinct. There's no speakers left. I guess that's one of the reasons why I've stuck with my work of teaching the language for 28 years. Leadership and governance change after treaties. When people were put on the reserve, everyone had to follow the laws of the rest of society. They had to be governed by the laws, they had to follow those by the police. That's one area I never really did any studying about governance and law. All I know is just a little bit I've been told, and that's not very much. Women change after treaties. I think the way, the leadership that the women had before the signing of the treaty was the chief and council ended up having all the control or all the say about the communities. They no longer seek the advice of elders, both male and female elders. There again, it has to do with loss of language. If you look at my community, I don't think there is anyone on our chief and council that even speaks our language anymore. How are they going to seek advice of elders if they are the elderly or the older people, the knowledgeable people, if they can't speak it? I think that's happening all over in a lot of communities. Most of the leadership nowadays don't understand or speak their native language, First Nations language. Off the land, hunting, fishing, trapping, up until my dad used to hunt and trap in the north every winter. We used to go live up there all winter. We used to live in a teepee and a tent all winter up until I was about seven years old until I had to start school. When I started school, that's when my trips up north came to an end. I told, I was telling my grandchildren, I said, we used to live in a teepee and a tent. Grandma, I don't get worse. Nobody can live like that in the winter. I dug through my archives and I found pictures. We had all black and white pictures of that teepee and that tent and there's snow all around. Then I showed them pictures of our transportation with horses and wagons, wagon in the summertime, a sleigh in the wintertime. Of course grandma has to have picture proof. Without the pictures, they might have thought I was just exaggerating. That's the way the young people are today. When you try to tell them things about the past, they think you're stretching it or telling lies. You can't imagine life without technology or electricity. We didn't have electricity until I was about 12, 13 years old and that was just the lights, no TV or anything like that. What is the understanding about the treaty promise for education? I've always thought that education is our treaty right. The elders talk about the little red school house being one of the promises in the treaties and to me the way I interpret that now is all the schools, all the colleges, the universities, that's the little red school house. It goes all the way, it represents all levels of education. Treaty promise for health. The same with the health. They promise the medicine chest and there again the medicine chest represents all forms of healthcare. Teachings will help elders, leaders today. The teachings of the traditional values, they can be brought into today's leadership. They could apply that to their leadership, all the traditional values and beliefs. I think that would be a big help. I think they should be taught. Go right to the band office now Miss Kitty. I think the young people can be taught more about the treaties and more about these things in the schools, in the First Nations schools and in our other educational institutions like SIIT in the First Nations University. Part of that is part of it already but if that could be brought more to the community level I think it would be a big help. In 2001 I went and taught an off-campus class in my community. It was a humanities class. It has to deal with stories and legends. I was amazed. Out of the 17 students I had there were only three people that even heard about our main legendary character. Three out of the 17 students. That's why we developed that one class that deals specifically with that. We have one class that deals with that. We always teach it in the wintertime and it's conducted in English. Then in our degree program we have other classes that deal with the oral tradition, stories and legends in the native language, in Soto and Cree. To me it always comes back to language loss because I know myself when I'm spoken to or being taught, being advised is a better word. Being spoken to or advised by an elder if they speak to me in Soto it has a way greater impact than if they try to tell me the same thing in English. The way our language is, you probably know that. Going back to the livelihood before treaties you mentioned those hunting and trapping, did people trade with other tribes or with other people? Yeah, there was a lot of trading. Besides that, hunting, fishing, trapping, they used to pick berries and make their own maple sugar and they picked their own medicines and they used to trade. My dad used to tell me about when he was a little boy, if my dad was living now he would have been 97. He passed away 10 years ago. But he told me some stories about when he was a little boy they used to take 3-4 days to travel from Kamsa to Fort Capel and my grandfather Frank Cody used to trade medicines with Tony Sear up here. They'd come and spend a week or two up here and trade medicines and I don't know what else, furs maybe? That's one story my dad talked about. It used to take that many days to come over here with a team of horses in a wagon. And how did they make their livelihood? The same, they made all their clothes from the animals. Are you talking about before before the fur traders and all that had to be came? Well, all I know is the stories they tell that everything, everything, every form of livelihood came from the land. All the food, the shelter, the clothing was all done by the women. They did all the work to provide for their families. The treaty signed how did they make their livelihood? Well, from some of the stories I heard a lot of them went into fur trading and then also some of them went into farming. They were given plows and oxen and a lot of them went into farming on the reserves. I wanted to say something to the young people that will be listening to your words for this interview. What is it that you would like to say to them that will carry them into the future for the generations to come in terms of leadership? Back to the traditional values and beliefs. Try to learn as much as you can about whatever language background you come from, whether it's Cree, Soto, Makota, Dakota, Dene or whatever your ancestral language is. Try to go back and learn as much as you can because that's where I believe to really be strong First Nations people we have to go back to our language and our belief system. Some people say, oh you can't go back to living in TPs and all that. That's not the component of the culture. Our survival, that way the physical, the food, shelter, clothing, all that has changed forever. But the social and the spiritual can all be brought back and practiced in this day and age. Because along with that comes our traditional values and beliefs and kinships. It's probably because I'm a language teacher and I think we have to go back to the language to get back to I don't think we'll ever totally get back to the way things were but I think it would be a big help if we had more people, more younger people learning to speak more languages. What do you think kinship is important when it comes to the language? When we were, when I was little, we were not allowed to address someone by name. We had to say auntie, uncle, like you know grandfather, grandmother, my cousin we had to use the kinship. You wouldn't go up to if your uncle's your uncle's name was Bill, you wouldn't go up to him and say Bill you'd have to say uncle. And I think there's more respect when you use kinship terms to address people or even this, my friend and we had this kinship with all of creation and when you have that kinship with things from the land and there's more respect we refer to the son as our grandfather the moon as our grandmother the earth as our mother and everything in creation the grandfather trees the grandfather rocks when you have a kinship with the land then there's more respect you take care of it more better. I guess that's it. kinship terms are very important even in leadership. Yes, with the leaders too if they would have that kinship their fellow with everyone, not just their the people they work with What is the solo word for chief? Ogema Khan there's a bit of history there prior to the signing of the treaty our leaders were called Ogema Ogema was a leader, a boss and after the election system I often wondered why did they add that Khan on there Ogema Khan that Khan has a it means something fake not real like for example a bear is Makwa a little bear is Makons but a teddy bear is Makons Khan a fake little bear or a clock is the time by the sun so a clock is a fake son so what does that tell you about Ogema Khan they haven't because of the election system I think our people saw that they didn't have the same leadership or authority that the old chiefs who were called Ogema had when they were elected they were Ogema Khan fake chiefs and a lot of the chiefs are not going to like that term but it's there it exists and it has that history of why it changed you have the same term in CREATE that means that suffix or that ending that means fake there's a difference in the hereditary and the election so that does affect leadership I've often wondered why that ending was added to the word for chief that alone says a lot