Their Example Showed Me the Way: A Cree Woman's Life Shaped by Two Cultures

Emma Minde’s portraits of the family into which she was given in marriage are touching and instructive. They show us a young woman leaving her home in Saddle Lake, Alberta, to join a household of strangers in Hobbema. In addition to the husband she has yet to meet, Emma comes to know four strong-willed people who will shape her life: her husband’s parents, Mary-Jane and Dan Minde, Dan’s younger brother, Sam, and his wife, Mary. These reminiscences, told to Freda Ahenakew, offer rare insights into a life guided by two powerful forces: the traditional world of the Plains Cree and the Catholic missions and boarding-schools of the day, designed to re-make their charges entirely. Rarely has the interplay of these two worlds—often in conflict, yet oddly in harmony—been sketched so eloquently as in this moving autobiography. Emma Minde’s stories are presented here as she told them in Cree, with a translation into English on the facing pages. With its Cree-English Glossary and an English Index to the Glossary, this award-winning book is not only a milestone of Aboriginal testimonial literature, but also an important Cree language resource. Ideal for course adoptions, Native Studies libraries and general readers alike.