OSEU One: Delores Taken Alive– Working Together for Our Food

Working Together or our Food - Delores Taken Alive - OSEU 1 And there's a lot of things that we do as a family. We have big gardens, and I used to plow the land with my dad. I used to drive the horses and heeling onto the floor. And we do have big gardens, and they taught us how to garden. And even if it's away from maybe a stream or a little creek, or we hold our water to give water to our plants, whatever was planted. And that's how we… We were very busy in the summertime. We also go look for the always say, well, the wild cherries, the wild fruits are ready now… so go see where you can find them. But don't eat them. Come right home first right away when you find them. My father used to say. But we used to, you know… and my brother and I… we always ride bareback, you know… nobody knew what saddles were at that time. And I said, “Hey, look over there.” And we all of course, we speak our language. “So, look, there's a lot of cherries over there, lot of plums over there.” So, we'd be eating first before we go home and tell our parents where we found them. And there's something that I noticed that is not growing anymore is… they call it sand cherries. They grow a little bit. The plants are short, and they grow on certain hills. And so, you have to go and look for them too. But they're black cherries; they're really sweet. And then we used to find wild strawberries too. But as soon as you put them in your mouth, they are just so sweet. They just melt away and things like that. And then we used to go out digging for turnips, and then they taught us how to put the plants back into the hole so it'll grow again. And we… and then too… They taught us not to be breaking branches off the small fruit trees. So, we'll have a lot of fruits all the time and they'll be growing all the time. So that's how we grew up. And of course, my mother is a very industrious person. So, you know, we know how to dry all those wild fruits… even like those turnips and mushrooms that grow on trees. We dry all of them, so we have plenty of food. And then where we lived way out in the country was… we had our root cellar… and two families out there… our family and my grandparent’s family… and we all shared that root cellar… and we store all those… whatever was dry for winter or, you know, like potatoes and corn like that, then things that are canned whole fruits. So those are the things that we grew up with and how to care for horses, how to care for chickens. And my grandparents always have... they always have turkeys… and they're kind of very hard to grow those little birds… you really have to take care of them. So then if our gardens need water, then we used to haul water by pails and water the garden. Everybody was busy during the summer. If it isn't gardening, sometimes we go to… they call it Wacipi… powwows, Wacipi And so sometimes we go to those… and of course everybody breaks camp and goes home… Right away, everybody goes to their garden to see how their garden is. But we used to fight with raccoons too because they like our gardens. So that's how our family is very togetherness, very respectful in our homes. We really respect our parents and our grandparents, and everybody works hard.