Within the rich lineage of Alberta Métis Cultural History and indigenous history overall, Vina Auger offers up her own experiences.
When asked “who are the Metis people?”, Auger said, “They’re the first peoples that live here. That have lived on this settlement.”
Events at the dancehall, ball games, and church gatherings came to mind as treasured childhood memories on the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement.
In terms of her knowledge of the earliest members moving into Paddle Prairie in 1938/ 1939, Auger stated, “Well, my parents moved here from what was called, Hay Lakes in Northern Alberta. They were nomadic and moved around a lot in those days and they had settled there in Hay Lakes. Then when the settlement opened, they moved all the way from Hay Lakes. In 1939 they were one of the first settlements, if not the first members of this Paddle Prairie settlement. Napoleon and Bella Auger. The stories of that move, which is totally awesome. They had animals. They had cows, pigs, horses, chickens, you name it. You mustn’t move and all that?”
Auger’s brother was actually born underneath a spruce tree on October 2nd,1939 while en route to Paddle Prairie.Soit was a memorable trek in several ways.
In terms of Metis cultural practices, bead work and being taught how to make moccasins is something that Auger engaged in often. Also, berry picking and gathering of medicines with her mother had cultural importance but served to establish treasured family memories too.
Alberta Métis Cultural History
These cultural traditions are important and she does her part to keep them alive. Auger quipped, “Well, I do what I can. When I get the opportunity you know to cut up moose meat… If somebody brings me a big slab of the hindquarter then I cut it up eh. So you never lose that. What you’ve learned and especially the language you know. The Cree language I spoke. Cree is my first language. I never spoke English till I went to school. I couldn’t understand a word of English when I went to school and had to learn everything.”
While the hunting experience was not as pronounced, a keen instinct for tracking was developed for Auger. She said, “Well you look for signs of the animal eh. Like what it is you’re hunting, you know. There’s a particular (laughs). They all have different scat eh… You can tell it’s a bear. That’s according to the skat what they leave behind eh; their droppings, eh? Same with a moose eh. The tracks, the trail they leave, eh. I still see that here. There’s a Beaver back here. Very annoying Beaver. He cuts down these nice little trees and I still see the little trails going back here and so I know he’s still around, eh.”
Cutting out the rawhide of an animal and utilizing every part of a hunted creature was so key. Auger also discussed ethical ecosystem practices like not hunting cows because you’d stop them from bearing children and not uprooting plants completely as two examples.
Instinctive lessons from the land exist in Paddle Prairie that cannot be explained by science. Auger explained, “Don’t overproduce. One thing that comes to mind is the moon; the way the moon is. You watch the moon. I used to listen to my mother, you know, and speak the way the moon is. In particular, she would predict the weather according to the moon. How the moon was, the new moon in particular eh. She would say it’s going to be cold.”
Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement
Auger continued, “You know it’s going to be nice out and she was right. She was always right. She said look at way the moon hangs, OK, a new moon is hanging. It’s hanging like this. It’s going to be cold. And I said why? How do you know? Because it’s going to be cold. This is the one that’s going to be warm eh. Because you can hang your coat on there.”
A demonstrable decline in the land is something that Vina Auger has noticed over the years. She quipped, “It could be the air. The air quality is not what it used to be. I’m congested a lot, like I have a weak immune system. When I spend too much time outside, I get all congested eh. Especially from around… Some of my trees here are dying. I have to cut those caraganas down because they’re all dead. The leaves are falling and they’re just…What’s causing them? Like it’s just this year that’s happened. And to me, that’s caused by.”
Auger continued, “It could be caused by the flood we had this spring. Like back here is supposed to be a little Boyer River back here and it is so polluted. It just looks greasy when there’s water there. That all flooded my whole yard right up to the road. There was the mark on the fence line about like that eh. That’s how high the water was all around my house. So I blame that on the reason for those caraganas going the way they are, you know. Just dying just like that. Like there’s been no sprays, nobody has been spraying.”
Vina Auger
Finally, when asked “is your traditional Michif language still important to you and why?”, Auger said, “Well, it is there. There’s things you can say in Cree that are not understandable. Like there’s no direct translation of some of the Michif words that we use. That was my first language. That’s really important. Like I couldn’t teach my kids to speak Cree ’cause I was married to a Munyow. And he wouldn’t allow me to teach them Cree which was a loss to my children. I still spoke Cree to them when he wasn’t around, eh.”
Auger continued, “So it’s really important for direct communication. You can’t communicate with an individual any other way than that. Can’t connect directly with an individual unless you speak the Michif language. You see what I mean? When you connect, when you speak the language, the mother tongue, you connect with that spirit. That’s what’s happening. It’s not just the word, verbal thing. It comes from here and here.”
Liberty Multimedia Inc. and Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement would like to thank Alberta Culture for its support of these interviews and dedication to preserving Alberta’s history.