Welcome To Lark's Chapleau Cree First Nation Pages
This site is 'unofficial' but in spirit, Chapleau Cree. Maintained by Lark Ritchie
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2004 CCFN ELECTION INFORMATION Your SPRING Newsletter's HERE!!! Review Winter 2002 Newsletter's
 Table
Of Contents
Obituaries 7/12/99: Who's Native and Who's Not
What Does Self Government Mean?
Listen! Native Radio! Revised Chapleau Cree Directory
Things To Know as a Band Member...
Chapleau Cree Stories
History &
Roots
Canada Heirloom Series St.
John's Indian Residential School built 1920
Chapleau
Cree Pages. (CreeTech).
Useful
Reference Links for First Nations
Current Events Current Events - Local The Chapleau Express
Canadian Laws: Challenging Online Hate
On The Net Since 03/30/98 16:56:07
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The animals call to
one another to find each other and to regroup, and to live and grow.
As with them, we have a call. The following is a call from one band member
to another.
The Remains of a FireThere is a hill somewhere with the remains of a fire.Embers once red and hot lie there cold and black Evidence that we were part of a tribal people. In the cold, we sat and ate and talked. The elements were a part of us and we a part of them. The smoke once rose from that fire
In the now cold embers
This call composed by Lark Ritchie #275 What Is This Little Poem About?It is about us; about you and me, and our people. What is it that we are? What is it that makes us a people? For me, it is what we do, the memories of, and the meanings behind what we do. Those doings, those memories, and those meanings have been handed down to us from our mothers and our fathers in such quiet ways that sometimes we forget that they are in us, and how we learned them. When we forget, we lose ourselves, and we lose our sense of a people. We lose our meaning. The thing many people call "identities". You and I are much the same. We have much of the same backgrounds. Let me try to explain.I am a hunter. My father was a hunter, and his father was a hunter. Their relatives and neighbours and friends were hunters. Guys like Doc Potts, and Alec and Johnny Bain, and Jim and Lornie McWatch, Jimmy, George and Billy McCauley, Jimmy Cachagee, Amon Saylors, and many others. I know each had their reputations, but underneath, they were something special. They were more than hunters. They were guides. They were Chapleau Cree. They were and are, and we are, descendants of the people of Moosenee and Moose Factory, and the areas around James Bay; of men and women and children who paddled to Chapleau to continue their lives near the shores of the river that brought them here; where the water linked them to their original homes. Because my father was a hunting guide and tourist outfitter, my brothers and I were most fortunate to be introduced to many of these men in the roles that gave them the respect they earned and deserved. Some of them we knew only a brief time, many we sat with at night, around a campfire, outside a tent, either hunting, white fishing, or guiding American hunters. We lived together for weeks at a time. From them, I learnt about things so important, so quiet, and so strong. What they taught me, I would like to remember to you at some other time. One of the most important things I learned from them was to remember. Not to remember names and places, and events, although some I do, but to remember the meanings of those things they taught me. Those I was told to remember well. I tried to do that. For them. Who am I? What am I? I am a bear hunter. I am a moose hunter, I am a guide, I am a being of nature, I am a Cree. I am a Chapleau Cree. And in this poem I ask you to remember who you are, and who and where you are from. So that we do not lose our selves and ourselves. Lark Ritchie #275
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