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| Angelique Merasty Levac with Judge Murray Sinclair of the Manitoba bench |
| PHOTO CREDIT Randy Dakota Growing up in the wilderness in the 1950s with Grandfather and Grandmother, Angelique Merasty Levac was always asking her Grandmother to teach her but most of the learning was about survival in the wilderness. "As I was growing up I can remember my Grandparents were in pretty good health and really active. The memory I have is my Grandmother was a very early riser and she'd get up first thing in the morning, and I was still in bed of course. "And I can hear fire going outside; she'd never start a fire in the house. She would make her tea outside first thing in the morning. I was just a little girl (Iskwsis), and I'd wake up and I'd go out and check on things. The thing I remember about waking up in the morning as a child was the sugar in the tea; also I used to go in the forest alone to pray." It was the 1950s in Northern Manitoba, and the Merasty family was living outside the margins of society, that is, even outside the Indian Act. "We hardly had anything to eat and in our tea there was sugar (sokaw), and she would soak the dry bannock in there. That was my, my breakfast. (It makes me laugh to recollect this.)" Angie's mother had married a Metis man and lost Status under the Indian Act. Angie had 13 siblings, and her Grandmother and Grandfather, who were themselves non-Status, by virtue of the same roundly debunked deprivation of Status, shared the burden of raising the growing Merasty brood. Naturally she has childlike memories of these formative years, "I was just a little girl because I remember my blanket, my rabbit blanket (wapos akohp). I remember having it when I was very young living with Grandmother (nohkom) and Grandfather (nimosô) from age two." These are her earliest memories. "My mother was telling me a story that when I was a little baby I was dropped. And I died. I'd hear my parents (ninîkihikwak) say, when I went to live with them for certain periods, well, 'She forgets (wînikiskisiw) very easily.'" "My mother said, 'She got dropped on the rock,' when I was just nine months, ten months; the ladies used to play with me like I was a little doll (awâsisîhkân)." Angie explained, "I quit breathing. But I came back to life (pimâtisiwin) when they put some bear grease on me. They stripped me and put grease. I was a baby and I came back to life." Her personal memories of a unique lifestyle are entirely positive, "I remember all the good stuff. I don't remember anything really bad. Nothing bad happened as a child. The only time it was bad is when we didn't have anything to eat." A life of devotion carried them through, "My grandparents prayed every night before they went to bed. They would pray in Cree. But remember now they were very strong Catholics. They would count the beads. They would kneel down for probably one hour at least and say their Hail Mary's and Our Father." Angie talked about moving about in this wilderness life, "From the railroad tracks we would have to walk seven miles to Pukatawagon (Indian Reserve)." And when they lived at Midnight Lake, "We would have to walk at least one whole day. We would walk with groceries on their backs to get to where we lived. We really didn't have a home. We lived all over the place." The Grandparents with Angie in tow and Uncle Philip and Auntie Mallyloose would live on the shores of Midnight Lake and other fishing areas, or at one of the train 'station stops' known by the number of miles from Flin Flon. Sometimes, "We'd go on a train (iskotêwitâpân) from Mile 122," a station where they lived during some winters, "to Pukatawagon to go grocery shopping. We'd get off the train and we would have to walk (pimohtew) seven miles because at that time they had no vehicles. Seven miles I would walk as a little girl maybe three, yes, three and four years old, on the trail." She added, "My Grandmother said I was two years old and three and I would walk. My Grandmother told me stories, she said, you walked all over with us, and she said, you were a very good walker but you would talk a lot too; you'd never shut up. (Memories like these make me laugh.)" She spent her first nine years with the Grandparents and Uncle Philip, "He was my mother's brother and Mallyloose was my auntie through marriage. Grandpa and Uncle Phil would go trap together or they would go fish together or they would go hunt together. "Philip and Mallyloose had their own camp," at whatever place they worked. "All they spoke was Cree. There was no English. I never heard English until, oh, you know," she was nine years old. "I heard English when the train would come; these men would work and live in the trains repairing the tracks. They had a caboose or train car at 122, and that's when I first heard English. We were going to pick berries (mînisiskâw) and we were kind of trying to see who lived in these trains. They were fixing the railroad. "And I remember my cousins when they came back from Residential School, they would go check these people out. They kind of sneak up to these trains and see who was there. To my knowledge I was just a little girl they were checking out these guys." It was a small amount of exposure to an overwhelming foreign language, "The first English that I ever heard was through my cousins when they came back from Residential School. My Uncle Philip's daughter went to Residential School. She went to The Pas, Manitoba." Another cousin, Mary Biggetty lived with Angie's Grandparents for a few years, and she too was eligible for Residential School under the Indian Act, "They came back once a year, they would speak English, and I would listen to them, you know, but I didn't understand (nisitohtaw) what they were saying. "I understood No and Yes. We're talking about the 1950s. In the 1950s can you imagine Native people were not allowed to vote? In the 1960s they were allowed to vote." Furthermore, "When we got on the train we were segregated. Yes. There was a white train car and a Native train car; this was getting a train at Mile 122, and we get on the train, and we would get on the white side to go to the Native side. We'd have to walk across the white train car; but I remember so clearly that this train was so much nicer than the other one that we were on. "And I remember my Grandmother carrying a bag; her bag was a Hudson's Bay blanket where she used to carry her belongings (and groceries). She would tie it up in knots and make a thing for her head to carry it on her head and she would walk across the train car in this really narrow hall. "And I'd be walking behind her and while she was carrying this blanket load it was so huge that she was literally hitting (pakamisin) people on the top of the head as she was going along this aisle. "She was accidently hitting people, and I remember walking behind her and as a little girl, oh, because people were looking at us. These white people were looking at us. And right at that point I felt ashamed, and I don't know why as a little girl because they were staring at us. And my Grandmother would turn around to yell at me to 'Hurry up' and say 'Come on,' in Cree. ("A st'uh ki'di'pa" or "Ki di pa") (Angelique Merasty Levac is a renowned Birch Bark Biting artist and owns Angelique's Native Arts in Prince George B.C. She is recently featured among the 100 Top Women Entrepreneurs of B.C. in 2008.) |
