took to look after the Indians, it declared our ancestors to be “wards
of the state,” needing the patronage of the federal government. In
1876, to carry out the fiduciary duties it had assumed, the Canadian
government consolidated several acts that had been passed years ear-
lier for the benefit of Indians into one statute known as the Indian
Act. It conferred considerable power and authority upon the minis-
ter of the department responsible for Indians at that particular time.
At various times, Indians came under the Department of the Interior,
the Department of Mines and Resources, Citizenship and Immi-
gration, and currently Northern and Indian Affairs. The Great White
Father didn’t know where to put Indians, like orphans shunted from
one foster home to another, unwanted. No wonder decisions were so
long in being made.

But before I could start to write, I needed to know more about
David and Grandmother, and the history of the community. For one
thing, I knew little of what went on at home while I was in residen-
tial school. Other than “this is to let you know that we are fine and
hope you are the same. So-and-so got a baby and so-and-so died,” 1
knew nothing else. Nor did I know what went on in my community;
or what happened to David from 1947 to 1954 while I was going to
school. A good thing for me that my other uncles, Walter, John, and
Stanley; my mother, Mary; my sisters Ernestine and Janet; and my
cousins Berdina, Rose, and Ray, lived on the reserve during those
years, knew Uncle David intimately, were familiar with the goings-
on, and were able to fill me in on what I didn’t know.

What I knew of the past history of Cape Croker came in frag-
ments, in disjointed bits and pieces from C.K. Jones, Sr., Peter
Nadjiwon, Oliver Johnston, and other people of my grandmother’s
generation whom I had the good fortune to know. '

There were many events and incidents that took place in the mid-
1930s through the late 1950s during Uncle David’s lifetime of which
[ was not aware. Fred Jones, George Keeshig, and Edwin and Isabel
Akiwenzie told me what they knew.

I knew most of the people on the reserve in the late 1930s and the
mid-1940s. I saw them at fall fairs, dances, weddings, and funerals; I
fished and lunched with fishermen. I visited them, listened to their
stories. As a penniless spectator watching billiards, I not only kept

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