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Honouring AncestorsClick for PDF version of this story for downloading Lorraine Billy loves to share stories, traditions and legends related to the Shuswap Nation and the Bonaparte Reserve – her home since birth. So when the other Elders asked if anyone would be interested in showing visitors round the winter and summer houses they had created at Historic Hat Creek Ranch, which skirts the Reserve, she leapt at the chance. She was a ‘cinch’! She spoke Shuswap; she could cook, sew, weave, sing, drum and tell stories; and she felt happy and honoured not only to teach her ancestors’ ways, but also to learn the ways of others. Nine years later, she is still a favourite at the Native Site at Historic Hat Creek Ranch, just north of Cache Creek on Highway 97, en route to Barkerville. Because the original roadhouse, built on the property to service miners travelling to the goldfields, still stood to tell its story of the Cariboo Waggon* Road and the Wild MacLeans, it was deemed an historic site in the 1990s. That was when the Bonaparte Elders augmented the site with a First Nations interpretation area. As soon as she walked across the bridge that spans Hat Creek, Lorraine started planning. She built a sweat lodge on the frame that had been laid, and gathered lava rocks and wood to build a fire pit inside. She created a drying rack for meat, salmon and herbs. She fashioned traps for fishing. The Shuswap fished for trout (pisell = Rainbow Trout and sewell = all the rest). They built a trough, wide where the fish entered, tapering to narrow so they could be easily trapped. She showed how the Nation built weirs to catch salmon (sqelten). “We don’t catch any sqelten on site. We’d be in big trouble if we did!” she laughs. Lorraine laughs a lot. When her eyes crinkle and she throws her head back and laughs, no one can resist laughing with her. Then, she might stop suddenly and stoop to pick up a small rock … a lava rock, to share. She chooses lava because she says the holes in it absorb negative feelings. She says this is why lava rocks are used in the sweat lodge – so everyone can emerge lighter, cleansed of any negativity that they might have taken in with them. She becomes serious. “Rocks are very sacred,” she croons quietly, “My mother taught me to always carry a rock as an anchor.” Lorraine is the second youngest of seventeen children. The first thirteen died before the last four were born. When her father was drowned soon after her little sister’s birth, her mother and her four surviving children were looked after by the community on the Reserve. If a hunter brought home a deer or a moose, there was no question that her family would have full bellies along with the others. “And when our bellies weren’t too full of food, our mother would fill them with love,” smiles Lorraine. It was her mother who taught her how to make baskets from birch bark, with pine sap to seal the outside, and how to cook berries in the water they held, using those same heated lava rocks. When one rock cooled, it was replaced by another hot one. It was Lorraine’s mother who taught her how to build a fire with sticks first laid criss-cross and then straight, making pockets to cradle the lava rocks as they were heated by the fire that was started with flint. Her mother and elders taught her how to build a cache pit to store fruit and vegetables; how to build an underground oven; how to soak cottonwood and cat tail (or bulrush) mats so they would create steam to cook by in the underground oven; how to make a bowl out of moose hide for soups and beverages; how to scrape, stretch and tan the hide; how to make needles out of bones; how no part of an animal should be wasted; and, most importantly, how there was a reason behind each Native tradition. When she’s taking visitors around the site, she’s often asked for more of those reasons behind the traditions. She’s not afraid to share if there is genuine interest. “We are here on Mother Earth to learn from each other. Every day we learn something new. I was brought up to look at everybody as one. We are all here as brothers and sisters, regardless of the colour of our skins, the language we speak and the traditions we follow. I want to be equal with everyone and everyone to be equal with me, living in harmony with Mother Earth.” In her private life, Lorraine lives in harmony with her husband, Richard, who has also lived on the Bonaparte Reserve all his life. They met in their teens at a dance, fell in love, and have been together ever since, although Lorraine might take time out to work south of the Border, following the harvest and making new friends. She loves to work outside and make new friends. She calls it, ‘making her own family.’ Richard and Lorraine speak the same language, both literally and metaphorically, so if she asks – in Shuswap - if he’d build a sweat lodge at the second kukuli (winter house) that is offered to guests who’d like to stay overnight at the ranch, he is only too happy to oblige. They have two children, have adopted two more and have taken in many others. When asked who will carry on after her, she points to Charlene and Sandra who currently work with and learn from her on site. Then she grins broadly and tells how her thirteen-year-old niece already knows most of what she’s teaching, sweats with them and sings their songs. Lorraine often sings to the visitors, particularly when she plays the traditional game, LaHal. And she drums as she teaches them the Friendship Round Dance. She has noticed that many visitors on bus tours don’t get to speak with each other much while they’re driving, but after they’ve danced together in a circle, laughed, learned and been offered sage bags to wish them good health and a safe journey, they also feel like family. It is a First Nation tradition to give a present when someone leaves. Lorraine Billy’s present is a warmth that feels as sacred as the lava stone in her pocket, the green earth beneath her moccasined feet, the yellow sun burning in the Cariboo sky and the blue water that chuckles through the cottonwoods at Hat Creek Ranch, as she waves “Putuc!” which means “Goodbye!” in Shuswap. * ‘Waggon’ was spelt with two g’s in the 1860s |
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