Beatrice Lavallee on Spirits and Spirituality
Beatrice Lavallee recounts the story of the “greater gift”
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He’d come to town here to Regina from Piapot to trade uhhh wood or sell hay or pickets. I speak much of my grandma cause my grandfather Joe (*inaudible) you know passed away before I was 7 year old. So I speak much of my grandma cause she lived to be 95 year old and she never let us forget who we were and what we were. And I’d come to town to Regina and I’d see all these nice houses, picket fences and you can imagine in 1939, 38, some people had cars in this town. Little street cars that used to run on electricity and stuff. You know there’s a really long time ago. And I’d say Cocum (**phonetic) on our way home now in our wagon why can’t we have nice houses? Why can’t we have white fences like these people in town? Why? Why? Oh, she used to say it’s not for us she’d say. We weren’t given that gift. It was not a gift to us, but we were given a better gift she told me one day. And I thought, as a little girl, I thought what could be better than being rich. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to have the things that these other people had. And she said we were given a better gift. So I said to her what’s that better gift then? And she said to me, when we pray, when we light the pipe and we light the sweet grass our prayers are heard. That’s a better gift she told me. You know for a long time I couldn’t appreciate that. Today as I get older I see the meaning and I see where it is a greater gift than having material things.
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