Their Example Showed Me the Way: A Cree Woman's Life Shaped by Two Cultures

Michael Payne is head of the Research and Publications Program at the
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development, and
the co-author of A Narrative History of Fort Dunvegan.

This book was recently named Alberta’s scholarly book of the year,
primarily because of its value as a resource for Cree language studies.
The text consists of Emma Minde’s personal reminiscences in Cree with
a parallel translation in English. The book also includes an extensive
Cree–English glossary, as well as a very useful English index to the
glossary. The other major component of the volume is a lengthy editorial
introduction that puts Emma Minde’s reminiscences into a historical
and cultural context while exploring some of the linguistic implications
of the Cree text.

In addition to its value as a study of linguistics, this book also has
value as history. Emma Minde was born in 1907 at Saddle Lake on the
North Saskatchewan River. She was educated in a Roman Catholic mission
boarding school, as well as at home by her mother and other women, who
taught her a range of traditional skills from making moccasins to
preparing food. Although it is now common to portray Christianity and
traditional Plains Cree culture as antithetical, Emma Minde seems to
have made some personal accommodation between them. In fact, she comes
across in her reminiscences as a very thoughtful and self-possessed
person: a grandmother or ohkom anyone would like to have. In 1927 she
married Joe Minde from Hobbema, a man she had never met from a community
over a hundred kilometres away. Such arranged marriages were not
uncommon among the Plains Cree at the time. Although she says that she
cried as she left Saddle Lake, the marriage was a successful
partnership. Joe Minde became a prominent member of the Hobbema
community and together with Emma built up one of the most successful
farm operations in the area. Overall Emma Minde’s reminiscences offer
valuable insights into the social history of one of Alberta’s largest
and most significant reserve communities. Hers is the kind of story that
is easily left out of the historical record, but when preserved,
illuminates history as a lived experience.