Our Grandmothers' Lives as Told in Their Own Words

Helen Holmes is Director of Communications Studies at the University of
Calgary.

Only rarely does a book appear that makes you want to celebrate and give
thanks for its very existence. This is such a book. It offers rich
rewards for scholars of Native studies, communications studies, history,
and linguistics.

With exquisite attention to detail, as well as evident love of their
subject matter and subjects, Ahenakew and Wolfart have recorded the
stories of seven Cree grandmothers as told in their own language to
someone they have known for a long time, a friend who shares their
language and cultural background. The stories are casual and intimate,
following the rhetorical patterns and devices of impromptu spoken
discourse. They are not rewritten or edited, in the usual sense, but
recorded as directly as possible in the tellers’ own words, with a
view to capturing their authenticity and spontaneity.

Each story is presented in Cree syllabics, roman orthography, and an
English translation. Sensitive to the technical difficulties and
inherent risk of corruption in such an enterprise, the authors
scrupulously note all editorial conventions, abbreviations, and
normalizations in the text with a view to establishing a critical
edition in the best tradition of humanistic scholarship.

The grandmothers who reminisce about their lives are between 60 and 90
years old; thus, the material circumstances and cultural and personal
values they describe are not those of a pre-contact golden age, but of a
time much closer to home, primarily the period between the two world
wars. Many tell of changing domestic customs—from a reliance on game,
fish, and indigenous plants to an increasing use of store-bought
food—which they see as contributing to illness. Others tell of
changing family structures that have too often led to spousal abuse and
child abandonment. Others, prompted by nostalgia for the time of their
girlhood, deal with changing social and occupational practices.

While many tellers lament the loss of the values of self-reliance,
cleanliness, and order, and express a longing for a time when life was
less oppressive (if no less poor), these are not sad stories. Some are
humorous, some are matter of fact, some are proud, some are cautionary,
and some are nostalgic in the way that grandmothers’ stories often are
in any culture and in any time.

The stories are a gift of scholarship and of heart. One can only say
“thanks” to the editors, and the grandmothers who shared their
lives: Glecia Bear, Irene Calliou, Janet Feitz, Minnie Fraser, Alpha
Lafond, Rosa Longneck, and Mary Wells.