The Raindancers

© 2017 Enole Bellegarde. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  03/28/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1814-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1815-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1816-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017918149

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Nokum

Kay-Ta-Way-Tee-Mat

Raindancer

The Carrot Sisters

The Grey Eyes Family

Equay

The Blackstone Family

Horses First Nation

The Journey Home

Thanks

INTRODUCTION

All names in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of our family and community.

I started writing this book in October 2003, but for some reason, the two copies that I had were lost. I just had to start over. I followed the stories on a CD that my grandmother and I recorded. Sometimes I would have to listen to the CD over and over until I got the story right. It wouldn’t do any justice to the book if I just wrote down what she told me word for word. I also had to come up with a creative way to intertwine the teachings into the stories. The lessons came from her father, who passed them down to her when she was young. I took some time off from writing after Equay died in 2009; it was too painful for me to hear her voice. I picked it up again in 2014 and once more in 2016, 2017, and now.

This story is about my kokum (pronounced cook-um, meaning grandmother). Her name was Equay (pronounced E-quay or E-gway), and she was born on the land of North America. Equay is one of her many spiritual names given to us by our Creator and our ancestors and one that her father used to call her when she was a little girl. Equay is a Cree word meaning little girl. Equay’s blood lines, tribal ties, background, and history are from three tribes in Canada known as Saulteaux and Cree, but she had children from another tribe, known as the Assiniboine tribe, on a reservation close to the southern border of Saskatchewan. That is why I am part of the Saulteaux and Cree tribes (Raindancer First Nation) from my mother and part of an Assiniboine tribe (Horses First Nation) from my birth father.

From the beginning of time, my family was taught by Creator through our ancestors about the important things. The four seasons – winter, spring, summer and fall, the four parts of our body-emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental. Some western religions practice Christmas time, Easter, and Lent. This is similar to the way our family did things. The ceremonies, traditions, daily practices, and family beliefs are based on that important number four.

We use the number four for the four different times of the day. First is when the sun goes down at night, secondly when the sun comes up in the morning, the third is when the sun is at the highest in the middle of the day, and lastly, just before the evening comes, similar to other religions. Some families pray four times a day but in our family we did it only two times per day. It is my belief that a religion was given to all of us all over the world, meaning the four colors of different people (black, brown, yellow, and white). We each follow a religion in our own special way, which was given to us by our Creator.

For this book, and for our family only, we use the word Creator. We use the word because my family was taught by Him, our ancestors, my kokum Equay, and her father, Raindancer, who was the foundation for this book. He was the leader, teacher, father, medicine man, and rain dance lodge holder. I was taught to believe the Creator is the one who made all of me and my family, the other side (the Kingdom of Heaven as I have heard some people around me call that place), Mother Earth, the place between the other side and Mother Earth, and the dark side or hell, as it is known in some religions. My family also believes that our life on Earth is only one out of four parts of our journey. These four parts, or rites of passage, are my birth – when I came to Earth, my early years – as a baby and a young girl being taught how to live in this world, my learning years – adult years, and my teaching years preparing to leave Mother Earth to go back to heaven. The latter is where I believe I am at right now.

In the year 2003, I went to visit Equay in a smaller city close to the border that separates Canada and the United States of America. For two months in the season of spring, we sat down every day for two to four hours each day with no other people around. By audio recording, we recorded the stories of her life, including the stories that her mother and father gave to her. For that time, I had to let my heart separate from the feelings inside me and the stories she was telling me. At times, it was hard for me to sit there and see the pain that she felt while telling me these stories. She cried a few times during the stories because the pain was still there. For example, the death of her father. When Raindancer died, it left a big empty spot in her heart and she cried many times. She told me about his teachings and his way of life, but this was the first time I saw her cry at the loss of him. I wasn’t sure how to feel, because I waned to separate my heart and my head from the pain that I knew that she would go through, but I also knew I could have a look at myself and my feelings later. Little did I know that it would take me ten years.

Some of the stories that we talked about addressed questions that I’d had in my mind for years and years but did not have the courage to ask anyone in the family. Our family was close but rarely talked about the issues that impacted us (i.e., our infant and childhood years and how they shaped our thoughts and our hearts, in good ways and bad). We had a hard time showing each other that we loved and cared about each other, but when we were angry, look out! Everyone knew who was mad at who, and who had started the trouble, but we all tried not to take the side of one person in the family because we all loved each other. Those of us in the family who were still not well in the four parts of our body got pulled into the fight and took sides. At that time, we, as a family, did not know that this only caused more problems.

News spreads quickly throughout our family. We have many family members. Equay had eight children and her only sibling, Chickendancer, had eight children, and from them came many, many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, not including the people who married into our families. The family grew so large from Equay and her brother, Chickendancer, they were the only two who survived from the Raindancer family. I am also sorry to write that as of this writing, Chickendancer has also passed away. He died in the summer of 2004 due to complications with cancer. Millions of people have overcome cancer by living healthy again and believing in their Creator, ancestors, families, and medicines, including western medicines. We now have our seventh generation born into our family, from the blood lines from Raindancer. My oldest grandson’s name is Heart, and all Heart’s brothers, sisters, and cousins make up the seventh generation. In our family, we believe that sometimes our family members die to show the other family members that we need to change the way we live, eat, drink, and clean our homes. Their death may help us believe in our Creator again.

This book is a collection of the stories that Equay shared with me. These are stories of love, grief, loss, family, belief, ceremony, culture, custom, and tradition. These are stories that helped shape our family into who we are today.

Equay’s father, Raindancer, was a strong influence on Equay, providing inner strength and a strong belief in the Creator and our ancestors. Raindancer was very powerful, meaning he had a strong, close connection to the Creator and our ancestors, and he was taught by his stepmother about the medicines grown on Mother Earth for different types of sicknesses. He was a medicine man first, who helped the surrounding tribes, but he was also one of the few people in our tribe who was a keeper and messenger of the knowledge in our family beliefs, ceremonies, culture, customs, and traditions. His name was Raindancer because he was born on to Mother Earth with those gifts to teach our family, and he was given the special gift of a ceremony held every summer season, called a rain dance. It is somewhat similar to the Lent ceremony in some western religions, where you sacrifice or give up certain things that you put in your body for a period of time, and in return you receive a stronger connection to God. He hosted the rain dances every summer for his home community, which I will call the Raindancer First Nation tribe for these stories. He was visited by many people in our family, community, and close surrounding tribes for his knowledge and gifts, but he was also regarded poorly and called bad names by other people in our tribes. This was because he had all these powerful gifts that other people did not have, which made them upset and angry, even though our tribes were taught to help each other, not hurt each other. In the minds of our tribes’ males, they believed in fighting for honor. (i.e., demonstrating the strength and truth of their love, or their beliefs in their marriage, families, tribes, or gifts given to them by the Creator). Sometimes they would hurt each other to make their honor clear to others.

Raindancer died around the year 1940 at a fairly young age (when Equay was seventeen years old) as he was killed by another medicine man in our community. Keep in mind that males traditionally were the ones bestowed with the gifts of hosting ceremonies and saying certain prayers; women were given different roles and gifts, for the families and surrounding tribes. I will go into more detail about this in the book as it needs to be explained.

Many people may not believe some of the stories that Equay told me, which were passed down orally from generation to generation and are specific to the Raindancer family. We were taught not to judge or put down other families and tribes for their beliefs, ceremonies, culture, customs, and traditions. As well, we were taught not to judge or put down other races, religions, and prayers.

It was Equay’s hope that people will read this book and use our traditional beliefs, ceremonies, cultural teachings, stories, and knowledge to find their way back to their home with the Creator and our ancestors. Equay believes that many people from our family, tribe, and surrounding communities are lost and broken and need some of this knowledge, which would have been passed down if we had not lost many people before they had the chance to share their own stories with their own families. Equay believed in helping her family and community in any way she could. She was a gifted storyteller and dreamer, and she was a respected old woman in our family, tribe, and close surrounding tribal communities. She was also a champion traditional dancer and she won countless trophies for her dancing. She shared these stories in the hope that this book will help others who are struggling with who they are as First Nations people. She wants people to be proud of who they are and all the gifts that they were born with, so they might share them with their families, tribes, and communities.

NOKUM

Equay’s grandmother’s name was Willow. Willow was in a relationship with a man who died at a young age. She had two babies from this first man, both girls, and she named them Nokum and Bella. Nokum, which means my grandmother in the Cree language, was the older of the two girls. Nokum barely remembered her biological father, who died when she was just a young girl, but Nokum said that most of the memories she had of him were good ones. He died when Nokum was three years old. She remembers during his death that she had his head on her lap and she was looking for any dirt or leaves that may have gotten stuck in his hair. She didn’t even know that he was no longer alive, so she kept picking through his hair. Nokum was Equay’s mother, and she told these stories to Equay many times over the years. Nokum lived to be approximately one hundred years old and died in 1969 on the Assiniboine reservation, which I call Horses First Nation. It was also the tribe that Equay married into. This is the same reservation where my biological father and other family members were born. Although my family originally came from Raindancer First Nation, we were able to live on Horses First Nation because of the marriage between Equay and her second husband, Standing Watch by the Lake.

When Nokum was around four years old and Bella was about two, Willow was involved with a man named One Heart. One Heart was very mean to the two girls, often hitting them, yelling at them, and doing other cruel things to them every day when he thought that Willow was not around or not looking out for the girls. Willow did little to stop him from hurting the girls, but it is unclear why she chose not to stand up to this man. Perhaps he was mean to her as well, but Equay said that Nokum did not tell her many stories in which Willow was hit or yelled at by One Heart. Most of his anger was directed toward the two young girls, with Willow sometimes complicit in the abuse by pretending to be busy cooking or cleaning. She would come to help the girls only after One Heart had left, allowing them some fun activities, such as playing outside when he was gone hunting or feeding them the food he did not allow the girls to eat while he was at home in their teepee.

When Willow cooked meals, she would throw the girls’ food at them while they were sitting on the floor of the teepee. Nokum said they felt like dogs, being thrown leftover food to stay alive, and it hurt the girls’ feelings that their own mother would treat them this way in front of One Heart. Yet she treated them well when he was away. It confused them, and they were not sure whether it would be good Mother or bad Mother each day. If One Heart