Those Who Know: Profiles of Alberta's Native Elders

Kathy Lea is Head of Learning Resources in the Buchanan Resource Centre
at Lethbridge Community College.

The title of this book refers to the most respected Native elders (born
in the early 1900s and picked by their peers on the reserve), whose
stories reveal a common spiritual meaning in life. The 31 people
here—all from Alberta reserves—seem an even mix of males and
females. For each, we get a photograph, a current placement, and a slow
unwinding of his or her life story, followed by self-reported hopes and
dreams as well as disappointments. The author, with a unique Native
perspective, succeeds in conveying her feelings without distorting the
profiled person’s message. Attention to detail is an excellent feature
that makes the reader perceive the book as well done. For example, there
is a map of Alberta with all the reserves discussed located on it, an
exacting table of contents, a synoptic introduction that manages to be
both evocative and informative, and complete footnotes to scholarly
references. The purpose of this book was to record what these wise,
elderly people had learned from the era of the 1800s from their own
grandfathers and grandmothers before they died. The book ends with the
last interview; the introduction contains all summary remarks on the
author’s part, including her personal motivation and life history to
enrich the tapestry. Such simplicity bespeaks the honesty,
straightforwardness, and paring down to bare essentials that are other
seductions of this book.

Even the photographs have a mystical ability to draw one in and back
through time, evoking a sense of a proud people who were happy and in
harmony with their world.