About The Project | PROJECT TEAM

Margaret Attachie
Elder, Oral Historian, Beaver Translation Team

I was born on September 10, 1944 in a tepee in Doig somewhere. I was raised in Pine, we had a cabin there. In the winter time and summer we would have a tepee outside, and I start cooking about seven years old. I start doing things with my mom and I cook bannock... and it was flat and my mom hit me with that bannock and I had to stay the night under the bed so the next time I do it really good! And from there we go to school at Pine. From there we move up here [Doig River]. And there was a school house there [at Pine, a.k.a Petersen's Crossing]. Me, I just cleaned that school every evening; I work there sometime in the daytime. I made moose hide, do laundry stuff like that. We snare rabbits, hunting, me and my grandma. We got a house about a mile from here, they built us a house and we stay there, three houses they built. My grandma raised me. I stay with her all the time. I work for her and she teach me lots of stuff and that's why I do it today. I thank my grandma to teach me stuff that, why I do it today. They called her 'cops'. Summer time we go hunting in Sweeny Creek. Went till grade 5. We move up here so they had to shut the school down. We make camp for two nights so we just tie those horse up so we don't have to come back this way. We pick saskatoon berries. We pick berries all day. Mariah, Charlotte Acko, Grandma, Layna, four of us. When we come back, my grandma, she made moose lard and put them in saskatoon and mix them in there. My mom she used to can a lot of moose meat, deer meat and dry meat. My mom got nine kids, lost three already, four; my sister she only about eight or nine months and she died. I remember I seen that little box and I seen my dad crying and I asked him what was wrong and he said your little sister died. I grew up with Charlotte Acko, Mariah Ben, Maggie, Annie and late Emma, Emma Pouce Coupe, and Margie. Madeline, she's the oldest one and Julie Pouce Coupe we all grew up together. If Charlotte not drinking she would still be alive. Marshall [Holdstock] came in here, they teach him [Beaver language]. He had a little store here. My grandma used to camp there from Halfway... One time in spring we hitchhike with her and she was done school and she was tired so we carry her suitcase for her. She sit in the middle of the road and that guy pick her up. In the wintertime they make dry meat. Old guy drive for us all of us we went and picked berries. And he said there was a bear eating berries behind us so we took off, we stay there all day we had lunch and in the evening we come back. We danced all night in her tepee. The tepees were pretty big. We stay over night before we got to the cabin and that grizzly was following us and we didn't even know. He told her to wait there and she was thinking she might stay there and make fire in the night but then she decided not to. The dogs were barking and he said the grizzly followed them all the way there and I'm lucky I didn't camp out that night.