William and Margaret Noskey Life as it once was

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His hands are big, strong and gnarled from years spent outdoors. He speaks with authority and humor and his face is youthful and seems o be carved with a smile that never gives up. William Noskey, 62, is speaking in Cree, his hands gesturing, his eyes bright. He's talking of the old days and how things just aren't the same anymore.

He lives at Loon Lake, a small community five kilometers south of Red Earth on Highway 88. It was settled about 50 years ago when the $5 treaty payment was a lot of money, when Native people drank the mint tea found in the bush, when trappers traveled by dog team and when the Indians were given bacon and gun powder.

"We made our own bullets," said Noskey through translator Carol Letendre, a community support worker.

In the background his wife Margaret putters around the kitchen and the living room. He occasionally asks her to back up his explanations.

The people who now make up the Lubicon Band settled Loon Lake when a school opened there. There was no job economy and no welfare, said Noskey. People just trapped and hunted. Moccasins were sold to traders for $1.50 a pair while moose hides fetched $12.

"There was no welfare back then," he said. "If you didn't kill a moose you went hungry."

Some families would live together on the trapline and share their moose kills and food. There was much more freedom as well. Nowadays oil development has severely restricted trapping areas and scared off many of the animals.

A trapper himself, Noskey blames oil developments in the area for the scrawny and stingy catches. Coyotes used to be bigger before oil development, he said, adding he believes they are smaller because they live in fear. The coyotes' hunting grounds have also been restricted. They would rather starve than cross areas where there are pumpjacks or roads frequented by roaring gravel trucks.

Coyote pelt prices have been poor for the last few years anyway, he said. They're so low a trapper could survive on the income only if he lived alone.

Trappers with families would be in trouble, said Noskey, who adds to his trapping income by driving a school bus - a horse-drawn carriage - one of four the Loon Lake School uses. He was the first bus driver and has driven the horses for 27 years. He's driven bus so long now he drives the daughter of one of the girls he used to bus to school. When he started there were no roads at all in Loon Lake.

The school did use a regular yellow school bus at one time but it got stuck a lot - even the carriages still get stuck in the deep spring mud. Now if the school decided to get another bus, three men would lose their jobs, a tragedy in a community already ravaged by unemployment.

Noskey also recalled how sacred powwows had been and said modern dances are not the same and don't have any real power or meaning.

"Years ago the old people were the ones who did the singing," he said. "And if you were invited to a powwow, you had to go no mater how far it was."

He said there were only two powwows, one in the spring and another in the fall. People would be allowed to hunt geese and ducks until the spring powwow and then were not allowed to harvest them again until the fall dance. In the meantime they would hunt moose and gather other foods for the powwow feasts.

Drunk people at powwows were ushered away.

"Years ago they (aboriginal people) believed in powwow," he said.

It was a religious ceremony, an event of worship.

Now people have lost their respect for the event, he said. Now liquor shows up at powwows.

"Because of the booze nothing is right," he said sadly. "Everything is out of order."

For that reason he refuses to participate in powwows, a sad thing for a former singer. Native dancers usually belong to some other religious denomination like the Pentecostal faith so they do not think of powwow as sacred, said Noskey.

Noskey and his wife are among the few remaining people of their kind in Loon Lake.

"There are not very many elders here. Mostof them are gone," said Letendre.

But Loon Lake is growing fast. Most young people are upgrading their education locally with the Alberta Vocational Center and a few are employed as oilfield workers in Red Earth.

William thinks today's generation is "crazy" and pursues money too much. Nevertheless, he still would rather live in today's modern world rather than in the old days. Many people went hungry then, he said.

"We're living like millionaires compared to then."