I never quite realized how hard life was when I was growing up in Attawapiskat in the 1980s, even though our Elders were seeing the community start to modernize and become more comfortable than the life they had known.
We had a routine on summer mornings when there was no school. My dad Marius would wake with the dawn just as he always did when he grew up on the land. My mom Susan would do the same and in the blue light of the early morning we’d hear them in the kitchen brewing a batch of strong orange pekoe tea.
We had a three-bedroom home for nine children and our two parents. Mom and dad had their room, my two sisters had theirs and the rest of us seven boys packed into one room with bunks and a twin bed all squeezed in together with barely enough room to walk.
We never wanted to rise as early as our parents, so we lay in bed as long as possible. As soon as we heard the tinkling of them stirring their porcelain teacups after adding canned milk and sugar, we knew that a large pot of oatmeal was on the way. Dad would eat toast or leftovers before heading out to work.
It was at that point that they both started calling into our bedrooms for us to rise out of bed, “Oo-nish-kah Eh-koh! (Wake up! Now!).
Morning was busy. There was no running water so going to the bathroom meant using a honey bucket. The number of people in the house meant that the five-gallon bucket quickly filled up. When it was full, mom would task one of the older boys or girls to take it to the outhouse behind our home to empty. Remember, this was the late 1980s and we still had no indoor plumbing or running water.
Mom heated water for us so we could wash our hands and faces in a large basin. We all rushed to the bathroom as we knew that being the last would mean having to wash up in grey, soapy liquid. The last person was also tasked with having to empty the grey water into a waste bucket and to dump it in a drainage ditch next to our home.
We all sat down to eat thick porridge and drink a cup of tea. Our aim was to fill our cups and bowls with milk and sugar, but mom always rationed us just enough as no one was allowed to eat in excess. We weren’t starving for food, but our parents were not wealthy and had to budget wisely.
I am the third youngest in my family, so my two younger brothers and I were often exempt from the chores mom assigned to the older children. Someone was tasked with the honey bucket, someone for the grey bathroom water and another to help her with a huge metal bucket of water to heat on the stove for the daily laundry. Someone else heated more water to wash the breakfast dishes.
After breakfast, we would leave the house to go about our day. Mom stayed behind to start the monumental task of doing laundry for all 11 of us. When the water was hot enough, she put the first load in her wringer washing machine. The hot water was poured into the wringer washer and then manually drained at the end of the cycle into buckets to be carried to the ditch. Mom took the wet clothing from the water then rinsed each item through the wringer.
If one of us happened to still be around once the first load was done, she would ask us to help her carry the wet clothes outside to hang on the line. After an hour or two in the summer sun she would take the dry clothes down from the line. She did this every day all year, even when it was -30.
This was a chore that she would repeat multiple times daily as the laundry hamper never emptied. As she washed, more dirty clothes kept appearing. Dad often wasn’t around in the mornings as he was already working outside with my older brothers. They were busy restocking our supply of firewood for the coming winter, cleaning the yard, maintaining hunting equipment and the 24-foot freighter canoe, or servicing a snow machine so it would last the winter.
They also worked on an outboard motor, chainsaw and the run-down truck used to move things around the community. There was no option to hire mechanics, visit a service station or run to a hardware store. Every hunter and trapper like dad had to figure out how to maintain everything with what was available.
In 1990, Attawapiskat finally was equipped with running water and a drainage system thanks to the Liberal and then New Democratic Party governments of the time. It meant a world of difference for housewives like mom as her daily workload was lightened.
There was still plenty of work to be done, but at the very least we were done complaining about who had to empty the honey bucket.