KAREN: Your grandmother.

MRS A: My grandmother.

KAREN: Do you know in what time that would have been? When she was practicing?

MRS A: In the early 1900s. What year did she die? She died in 1949.

KAREN: We also asked other women we talked to, how should we refer to you, should we refer to you as a First Nations lady or a Cree lady, how would you like us to refer to you? We have women of Norwegian heritage, we have Ukrainian heritage, how should we refer to you? We want to get that part right.

MRS A: I’m Cree.

MARYANNE: And your grandma was Cree?

MRS A: She was Cree, but then she was partly Metis.

MARYANNE: So did she tell you stories?

MRS A: I remember that I asked her, “Have you ever lost a baby?” And she said, “No.” I said, “You were lucky.”

She said, “Well, yes, I delivered the babies, but really it wasn’t me. The one who delivered those babies was the one that was (unclear).

MARYANNE: So she had a strong spiritual belief?

MRS A: Mm-hmm. So anyway, going back, the things that I heard… There was quite a few myths. I guess you could call them myths. For instance, like, I was told, my grandmother used to say, “Don’t drink anything hot.” And I said, “Why?”
And she said,”Always remember what you’re going to take in your mouth, always remember that it (unclear). She said, “When you drink hot, hot tea or something like that,” she says, “it’s so easy for the placenta to stick against the wall of the uterus.” And also, “Don’t ever look at someone that’s, um, deformed, don’t look, always look away. And any deceased lying there, a body, never view it.” And she said, “Always be careful, don’t get angry, don’t yell and be angry with anything or anybody.”

She says, “It’s only nine months that you have to be very, very careful about things, it’s only nine months that you’re going to carry that baby.” She said, “Always remember that that baby is tied to you and whatever you see, whatever you feel, everything that you take in your mouth goes in, all, everything goes in, the feelings and everything.” She says, “It goes through that cord, umbilical cord, into that fetus.”

Science may rebut the specifics of the risks, but the wisdom of this traditional advice to pregnant women is timeless, and sound: “Be cautious, be respectful; be patient and be kind.”

MRS A: Now I’m going back to what my grandma said.

KAREN: Sure, sure.

MRS A: She said, “When a woman knew that she was with child, right away she would go and see the midwife.” So from then on the midwife would make regular visits and also talk to her to prepare her for womanhood. But, you see, some of that was taught, you see, when that child, that girl, when she reached puberty. That’s where she was to go to a separate little tent, with her grandmother. And that’s where the grandmother would teach her to, how to (unclear) motherhood, womanhood. And then she was to tell her about now you can be pregnant. You see, there was some good teaching then that was lost.

KAREN: Was there any sense of embarrassment during those teachings? We often find that women of this generation in our own culture, in our own European culture, these subjects just couldn’t be talked about.

MRS A: The grandmother was the one that was the teacher.

MARYANNE: And she would teach them all about sex as well?

MRS A: That she never did say. That’s all she said, that’s the time that they were teaching. And that girl stayed there with just the grandmother, no one went in. It’s, you see, why they were kept out. It’s not that she was “unclean” at that time of the month.

This is quite striking to me, now, as I write up this story for this website. European literature is full of pseudo-scientific accounts of how, in traditional, or more primitive societies, worldwide, menstruating girls and women are sent to a “tent” or a “hut” because they are thought to be “unclean.” As Mrs A explains it, a young woman would go into retreat with her grandmother to learn, in private, about how her body would function now that she had reached womanhood. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if colonialist, patriarchal, sexist European writers had projected their own discomfort with the topic onto people they knew nothing about, and interpreted the practice as the community banning women for being “unclean.”

KAREN: You’re talking about when she began menstruating?

MRS A: Yes.

KAREN: Every time she menstruated? She would go and stay with her grandmother?

MRS A: Oh no, just the first time.

KAREN: Just the first time, I see.

MRS A: Mm-hmm. And that’s the time that a woman’s power is the greatest, during menstruation. That’s why they weren’t allowed to go even in the Sundance Lodge or (unclear). Because of the power of them. It’s not that they’re “unclean.” That was the reason. It was that time that, I guess, a woman was really greatly respected. And she said, even now the respect is going. Going too fast.

But anyway, again I’m branching out. So anyway… So the midwives, she said, would make regular visits until, she said, “During that time the grandmother used to also talk to the father-to-be, to be easy with his wife, not to get her angry, and to be helpful with her during the nine months. Because they strongly believed that the way that the woman feels is going to be the (unclear, but sounds as though that would be how the baby would be). And, so anyway, until the time of the first movement of the baby then she’d call the midwife. Then the midwife would go and get three of the old ladies, so there are four. I guess because everything hinges on fours in our community. Like the four winds, the four seasons.

Sadly, at this abrupt point, the transcript ends. The remaining portion of the file was corrupted as it was saved to ever newer versions of Microsoft Word. The tape is still in the University of Saskatchewan’s Archives, though. I’ll go back and listen to it as soon as I can.

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