I asked my great-aunt what object in her personal possession sparked significant memories of her life.  She chose to include a splint ash basket she made from materials she had gathered from the land.  The splint ash basket represents respect, knowledge, and understanding of her culture and traditions, and respect for the gifts from the Creator.  She was taught the art of basketry by her mother and grandmother, and she would carry on this tradition of basket-making throughout her life and pass her knowledge on to me.

Annie Owl was born on the Spanish River Reserve (Sagamok) in 1917.  Annie is in the photograph on the left.  She is the young woman in the back row on the extreme right.  Her future husband, my great-uncle Clayton McGregor, is the young man seated with his arms resting on his knees, in the photograph on the right.  Annie is of Potawatomi ancestry, and her great-grandparents were apart of the great Potawatomi migration after the War of 1812.  Her family relocated to Canada after the Potawatomi allied themselves with the British forces to defeat the Americans.  The United States government forcibly removed the Potawatomi from their villages, and they fled upstate Michigan and settled long the northern shores of Lake Huron, from Walpole Island near Windsor to Sault Ste. Marie.  Annie remembers stories told by her grand-parents of more than five-hundred canoes traveling across the lake at one time.  Her family settled in Oak Bay on the Spanish River Reserve, before the signing of the Robinson-Huron Treaty in 1850.  Annie's family lived beside my great-grandparents home in Oak Bay.  Growing up next door to my grandmother's family, she eventually fell in love and married my great-uncle Clayton McGregor.

Annie married into the McGregor and Fournier families.  My great-grandmother Jossette Fournier had family in Quebec.  This photograph was taken when the Fournier family came to the Spanish River Reserve to visit my great-grandparents in Oak Bay, in the 1930s.  Annie and Clayton are in back row.  Clayton is second from the left and Annie is fourth from the left, peeking over the shoulder of the woman with the hat.  Clayton's mother, Jossette Fournier, is the women in the back row, second from the right.  She is holding onto the arm of her daughter Melvina McGregor.   Annie remembers these early years as difficult.  They had little money, and had to hunt, fish and grow vegetables for food.  She would make splint-ash baskets and trade them with the farmers in the area for eggs and butter.  She would also walk into the nearby town of Massey with her mother to sell baskets on the roadside to tourists and trade baskets with the locals for clothes.

Annie was fortunate.  She was never forced to attend Residential School, like her husband Clayton and sister-in-law Melvina.  As a result, she spoke her language and was proud of her cultural heritage and traditions.  She maintained her knowledge of plants, medicines and sacred teachings.  Although she carried this knowledge with her throughout her life, she was very careful and guarded about who she told.  In those days, she said you had to be careful, people were using their knowledge to hurt other people.  She call those people "Bear-Walkers".   She had seen the damage caused by the Residential School, and the damage caused by the misuse of sacred teachings.  She kept her knowledge to herself.  In the 1980s, she returned to the Residential School with her sister-in-law Melvina and niece Linda for a reunion.  It was a difficult time.  It brought back memories of the sexual abuse her husband had endured and memories of loneliness and isolation her sister-in-law had endured.

After Clayton died in the 1970s, Annie took care of herself and her adopted son James Owl.  Annie and Clayton never had any children of their own, so they adopted Annie's sister's boy.  After Clayton's death, Jim would take care of Annie, helping her around the house and to gather material for her baskets.  Annie continued to make baskets throughout her life, selling them to tourists, while Jim worked as a fishing guide for a local lodge.  Annie would also store American tourist's boats on her property to subsidize her income.  She always had big watch-dogs.  I remember Hobo, a large German Sheppard, and Puddles, a cross between a Doberman and Irish Wolf Hound.  Annie and Puddles are in the photograph above.  One time an American tourist asked her the gender of her dog.  Because her first language makes no distinction in gender between pronouns, she told him, "He's a girl!"

Annie taught me to make splint-ash baskets.  I spent many summers traveling up the Spanish River with her to gather black ash trees and sweet-grass for baskets.  We would always put an offering of tobacco down, before we cut a tree down.  After we had removed all the branches, we would haul the logs to the boat and bring them home.  We would spend the entire day pounding a single tree, to separate the year rings to get the splints we needed.  We would cut the long strips into our desired widths and dye them in various colours.  Annie always woke up around 5:30 in the morning.  I would hear her go out to the shed, and shortly after, hear the splints hit the kitchen floor.  She would put a pot of coffee on and start to fry bacon and eggs.  About a half and hour later, I would hear her call my name, "Barry, are you awake."   I would get up, and she would be sitting at the table starting a basket.  After breakfast, we would move into the living room and place the splints under damp bed sheets to keep them moist.  I loved this time.  We would work all morning, and she would tell me stories about our family and by-gone days.  It was a very special time.

We would make baskets for tourists or take them to the Serpent River Trading Post to sell.  When we weren't making baskets, we did work around the yard, or packed a picnic lunch and went fishing.  Jim and Annie knew all the best places, and we would end our day on a small island near a narrows called "Little Detroit".  In the days of the Spanish Mills Lumber Company, logs and supply boats use to pass through this busy channel, giving it the name "Little Detroit".  My great-grandfather use to drive his horse and sleigh through this very channel in the winter.  It was nice to think that our family had such a long history in this area, and the landscape I saw hadn't changed from their life and times.  Annie taught me a lot about my history, culture and traditions.  She taught me to pick medicines, make baskets, learn the language, and carry on our family history.  She taught me to respect all these things.