As I Step into the Circle of the Drum by Skyler Cyr

As I step into the circle of the drum, I feel a real homely feeling as right away Gordie Waste’ste busts out a wicked joke. I sit at the drum waiting to sing and the announcer with his loud voice yells for our drum group. “Elks Whistle bring in our grand entry boys!”

We start singing and I can feel the excitement of all of us boys sitting around the drum together and singing. I come to realize I am singing with a legend, Angelo Waste’ste. Feels good to sing with this guy, but during the grand entry song they pass me the second lead and my stomach fills with adrenaline as I take the lead.

After the grand entry the drum beside us sings for the Girls Fancy Shawl. As they are singing we are thinking of what song to sing for the Girls Jingle. So Gordie comes up with one of my favourite songs from the Young Bear singers, and did we sing the heck out of that song.

So as our drum and the other drum go through the categories of dance we get to the Boys Chicken and this is my category of dance. I start to sing one of my favourite tunes from Blackfoot Confederacy to Gordie and he says, “yep that’s the one.” He teaches the rest of the boys the song and the chicken dancers come out, and we give them that song. It was a great experience for me because I never really get to sing chicken songs because I’m always dancing to them, but this time it was very worth it.

My Name is Truth by Truth Halcrow

My Name is Truth
by Truth Halcrow

 

My name is Truth. I’m holding the microphone, and my friend JJ is leaning over and we are taking part in the blanket exercise. I am the narrator and JJ is one of the Europeans. The kids standing on the blankets are the aboriginal people of Canada or what we know as “Turtle Island”.  About 15 people stand on the blankets to represent how it used to look before the Europeans came over and “found” North America.

Taking part in this blanket exercise as the narrator feels really amazing. When I read through the story, as I read a terrible event it makes me think for a quick second about how life used to be. It really drains me out to think about things like that – residential schools, loss of land, and the amount of people who died from diseases –  but people need to know what really happened and how the Europeans came across North America. 

I’ve done this exercise before in class, and I’ve learned some other knowledge about my heritage. I remember this one time my mushum, Tim, was lecturing me about how life should be treated with respect, because of what we’re doing to the earth. He always mentioned this world is bound to blow up or collapse. I knew this already before he told me, but this world is all we have and there’s not another kind like it.

Just like my mushum Tim, the blanket exercise really gets on point; it’s a good learning experience for everyone. For example, some people asked what was happening at the blanket exercise. I explained, but then they said they already know about that, but really, if you were there, then you’d understand, and you’d feel everything that those children had to go through, just to get there basic education at residential schools. Picture yourself as an aboriginal mother who has a child and police come out of nowhere and take your child to put them in a residential school and there’s nothing you can do about it. This is what the blanket exercise is trying to do, help people visualize what people went through.

My name is Truth. I’m holding the microphone, I’m reading the last part for the narrator and it says, “The violence of colonization has left a lot of pain. All across Canada, the relationship between indigenous people and newcomers is often broken. We don’t need more broken promises. We need to repair the relationship and to do this, we need real change” and that’s the Truth.   

Batter Fried Walleye by Michael Cardinal

Batter Fried Walleye by Michael Cardinal

 

 

Veterans lower flags at Treaty 4 Gathering while the

Kawacatoose Boys drum group sing a flag song.

The wind flowed peacefully through the flags as the five men started drumming and singing the flag song while the other five men brought down the four flags. What was only a couple of minutes felt like much more as Mrs. Koops and I stood by and watched. As they sang the second song, a victory song, I observed the five men drum and sing while the other five walked in rhythm to the drum around the flag poles. Some of the men stepped with bursts of energy, some only a little, but that didn’t matter because you could see the passion in the way the men danced and the way the men drummed and sang.

As the song came to an end and the five men returned to stand by each of the flag poles, the five men who drummed and sang began to walk and shake each of the men’s hands. As they did Mrs. Koops signaled me to walk with her to shake their hands, so I followed.

The feeling of serenity and peace was in my heart as it all came to be done; the ten men continued on their day at the treaty four grounds as we did the same. Little did we know that one of the men who sang and drummed would come into our lives one more time to give us a treat as if witnessing the flag raising ceremonies wasn’t a treat enough.

He was standing by our orange shirt day awareness tipi because he parked his truck a couple meters away behind it. He was wearing black boots, blue jeans, a nice plaid shirt with a silver bolo tie and a hat that had the worn-out look to it. I saw him dig in the back seat and he pulled out a tray full of batter-fried walleye, and he offered all of us a piece of the golden-brown fish. As he came around giving each of us this treat my mouth watered while I waited for a piece of the walleye cooked to a golden brown. When I took the first, little bite all I could think about was savouring the moment, the flavour, and the great fullness I had in my stomach and soul.