Mary Thomas
You know there are many things that we did as children with our Grandmother. And I think the most important thing about it was the love we got from her, there was always attention. We ate good solid food. We didn't have what our children eat today, the junk food. And I guess we grew up really healthy. But there came a time when our whole life system changed. I can remember my Grandmother always, you know when I think back, our family units were like a big circle. Just the way we were treated as children. Through the mothers and fathers, the aunts, the uncles, the grandparents, the cousins, were all on the outside of that circle and in the middle was the little ones. And each one of them had a responsibility to help those little ones become a part of the outer circle. And that's built the families really strong and, like you take a young mother when she was pregnant, even before she got pregnant. The grandparents, the mothers, the aunts would tell her that your body is the giver of life, you have to be proud of your body. There are things you have to do, and things you're not supposed to do. And when she was pregnant they gave her the best of treatment, she was never ever exposed to anything that was not pleasant. When there was a corpse lying in the house, she wasn't allowed near where there was a dead person, that was taboo. And her food was given to her, the best of food. She was made to drink, certain kinds of tea, lots of broth, because the old people believed whatever condition the young mother was in had an effect on the unborn child. And when the baby was born, right away the baby was given to the mother and she massaged her baby all over, and that's building that bond between mother and child and then the baby was cleaned and put into a little birch bark basket and was laced down. And what you're doing to that child is your giving it a valuable gift of self-discipline.