Lark's Chapleau Cree First Nation Pages

Welcome To Lark's Chapleau Cree First Nation Pages

"We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we do not do." Jean-Baptiste Molière


This site is 'unofficial' but in spirit, Chapleau Cree. Maintained by Lark Ritchie


2004 CCFN ELECTION INFORMATION

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Table Of Contents

Obituaries

7/12/99: Who's Native and Who's Not
(Listen... Requires in RealAudio..)

Discussion Forum

What Does Self Government Mean?

CCFN Constitution Debate

Sign Guestbook
View Guestbook

Listen! Native Radio!

Revised Chapleau Cree Directory

Things To Know as a Band Member...
Things y'Don't Wanna Know (Humour)

A Gift For NAN's Anita...

Chat Room Here...

Chapleau Cree Stories
Chapleau Cree Culture, Arts & Stories

History & Roots
Fragments of Memories
Our Roots - Moosonee - Moose Factory
CCFN History - W. Cachagee
Devolution of our Governmental System

Canada Heirloom Series
Canada's Native Peoples

St. John's Indian Residential School built 1920
Wartime Contribution of Canada's First Peoples

Chapleau Cree Pages. (CreeTech).
Wabimeguil Art Studio - White Feather
CreeTech's Canadian First Nation Directory.

Useful Reference Links for First Nations
Aboriginal Youth Network

Current Events
Self Government (AFN)

Current Events - Local

The Chapleau Express
CBC Sudbury - Morning North

Canadian Laws: Challenging Online Hate

Native News Stories

Lark Ritchie's Personal Pages

On The Net Since 03/30/98 16:56:07




















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 Fire

There 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
into the heavens giving back the heat
that came from the sky.
Time and years come together at the fire.
Where young and old,
past and future
lived together as if all were now.

In the now cold embers
a voice says remember me when I'm dead.
Part of a people who are no more
Part of a life that is no more
Unless each of us remembers a fire.

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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