 time ago our people believed that we didn't have uligans so our people used to make a trip up to Kitimat to make the Greece until more recently the uligans have come to Bellicula. The song was is sung in Kitimat or Kittlub. It tells or it was sung to welcome the uligans. The dancer used to where a cedar bark cape and dance along the river along the bank of the river to welcome the first run of uligans. Lots of guys to come with us in the punt some guys to go on the other boat and put rocks on the boat and start chasing fissure. The other crew would be getting ready with the same net take it off and put it back on the right way and have more or less some guys up the top end of the river scaring first down and as soon as you get them where you want them then you'll have good anchor guys like Bob here you leave them on one end and then you're you have a few guys down the other end to take the other end in and start pulling it's it's a lot quicker you get to work done faster than the trap net you can probably fill up your bin in one day and then be done with it but if you're not too successful in saining and you have to go back again or keep trying it's not as easy it sounds hey I guess you guys were aware that we caught some snakes up there and you just fish wherever you think it there isn't any and if you get a snake then you lose you first then have to try again it usually gets harder after you first try because the fish are more wary of it and don't bother coming into the smoother waters and they stay open a swift end takes a little bit more to try and get them the second time and remember where your snakes are and from there you if you can get your load then you just pull it in if you're lucky you get it in one day if you're not then you go back for the next two days took us three days to fill our bin up fish we teamed up with three different families there was myself Bob and Godfrey who came up so we divided it up between ourselves you know it's just doesn't go to one person who takes the majority whether it's in his cooking box or his prompter or anything like that it's just a shared between even the between each of us everybody does their work and takes the responsibilities as you might know the guys have to go out there's no way I think one person can probably do it in that length of time it would be too exhausted for that bin for the oolikens and that's grass from the tight flats the lawn grass and they're dead in the spring and they pick that up I've seen this done in Ketlopos a little girl but here in Balakula we use the sheet of bows so they won't get too dirty this is why and the other thing is my way of thinking if I'm right or on you know on the little bows little bigger things like our fingers sticks on it that makes a crevice for the for the blood to drain too sometimes it takes just one day to get the bins full sometimes a week two weeks depends how much the piss is takes a long time and in the meantime the boys will be getting the tape the box is made out of wood for the sides and the front and everything all that's metal is just the bottom so you have to put the clay on so that the fire doesn't escape out and burn your box and you put reinforcing bars on the bottom about three or four of them depending how big your box is so that that's what the clay is for maybe one of the mans will really clean that pop up have to use a chore girl to clean whatever rust that's in that container then they have to really wash it good to get everything out even the steel wool stuff has to be off then in the meantime too they get wood like cedar or outer anything like that they saw it up and they pile it besides that because it needs a lot of wood in the meantime the olikens will lay for about a week like if Margaret's time time for cooking well we pitch in we get the wood we get the fire going everybody do their bit and somebody pits camp get ready for the long hours and in turn we get the summer for which we call a grease we use it a lot in our food like dry fish the lawn what you call it fillets when it's fully dry you dip it in olikens grease and eat it that way and eat it with potatoes and that's your meal and if you have parents spawn you put olikens grease with the parents spawn and eat it that way with seaweed and a potato but if you have just plain seaweed you put olikens grease in with the seaweed and water that's your meal again with every fruit that they ate the Indians let's say raspberries squeezed raspberries squeezed blackberries blueberries anything even the stinkberries that they get my dad used to make that cut up those oranges and apples yes and I was big pots yes filling up with water and put grease in there and mix it with it yeah you just eat it even as everybody got up on a middle of the table to eat that if you seem to have tuberculosis or whatever you think you have been by coughing all the time they take one teaspoon every morning and one go to bed like two teaspoons a day after you put that that plier board on top of the olikens after they put it in and then they already have water on their sides in big containers or tails or whatever they have already besides the box and then they keep opening this to see if any any spot really boils if any spot really boils they pour a pail of water to that then let it simmer if you boil the olikens you don't get any olikens grease out of it it's just like any other oil that you boil it and you pour it poured it in water you just get bubbles that's how to go it gets very delicate at that stage so you have to keep watching it if you just you know you just can't go and grab a cup of coffee somebody's got to be always there and watching it keeping the fire just right you can't have too big of a flames or too low of a flame otherwise you're cooking with the school this keeps up for a good three hours to four hours like what I said look after it tell you think it's time to shake it up you put more water into it again before you shake it up the longer you cook olikens grease in a pot I mean in this big pot the better the grease it is if you if you cook it too quick like four hours the grease is not cooked right that's why it gets a different taste to it quick it seems to be a raw taste after they shake it up they cover it again let the grease form up and that's about an hour to two again isn't it to let it form up like that I don't know what's doctor came here he said don't you give him your kids olikens grease and he said yeah we have it just for every day even for breakfast they said oh if you're doing that then you don't need to give them cod liver oil that's just as good as cod liver in fact it's just like cod liver oil and so they're further than my dad says okay he says come on come here he says that and he opened a cook stove took the what what was left in the cod liver oil poured it into the fire and the fire went you know look they said oh we don't have to take that any more he says no as long as you have lots of grease we said sure but that dad was one of you know I thought that was the best thing I liked about olikens grease that he got rid of cod liver oil my granny used to use it and just about everything she put it in her cakes and her bread you know it's good for bread you could taste it and just about anything so you know after after the bread was cooked she just rub it on like some people who rub butter on local bread and that's what it's used to do and you could taste it in her cakes any homemade cakes used to make use olikens grease instead of anything else my mom used it in her when she baked bread puts it right in mixes with the dough and when cooked and when after it's cooked it stays soft the whole thing stays soft whereas some homemade breads are crumpled after sitting for about two three hours when tending this out and makes it keep longer the answer that you use olikens grease is with my great-grand-uncle Jack King George he used to make spoons wooden spoons when he's through making that wooden spoon after he used that you know to make it smooth sandpaper then he says it's good now then he'd be heating it let's say something like a cup of grease or less in a dipper he really makes it hot and goes the spoon the hole then then he rubs it rubs it rubs it that's good now he says that that's good why do you do that I said that to him there's a child long ago said so so nothing can go through it more in that he said and they make ice cream out of it too in the old days they use a canoe one of those canoes a new one and if somebody had a feast a feast a potluck feast or whatever the feast they asked and they'd get a man that knows how to pound now they put the good snow into this canoe pound it up pound it up after they pound it they pour the grease on top of it they pound it more more snow they pound it again more grease that's kept up till it's full the whole length of the canoe then they cut it up into one pounds just like a butter that and it's solid it's like as if it's solid frozen they give it to each person that's sitting down the widows you know that couldn't get any grease they know about this that they're gonna have this ice cream you know then they take a little pail or whatever container they have in the old days you know and then they put what they get with their children they put it in when it melts the grease is there