We learned how to skate and slide down the hill

Ms. James talks about her childhood.

Audio Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

DL: Tell me your earliest memories as a little girl.

MJ: Well my earliest was I must be two years old, my grandpa and my dad worked on a farm out at High Bluff and he used to live along the river and he used to work for farmers around there. As long as I could remember that we lived there for quite a while. My grandparents they lived along the… Then in the summer time they go to Flee Island to visit some people there and they used to trap muskrats and different animals for hides. And then we stayed there… We used to come back along the river there where it’s called the High Bluff. That’s where we were for a long, long time until they bought a piece of land in lot 99. We’d still go to the old High Bluff. There we had a log house. I was born. Like I lived with my grandpa and grandma and they used to go back and forth to lot 99 along the Assiniboine River there. They used to cut wood and all that stuff for farmers and work for farmers around town. All the women used to go scrubbing floors and you know, do their own thing every day.

At home my grandmother and I used to go all over collecting medicine like in sap trees for syrup and we used to go hunting for rabbits on our way. Where we lived, my grandpa used to say… They lived there for quite a while because there’s cemeteries you know, around there. He used to show us in the bush where these cemeteries. People long ago they came along there and they all had cholera and yellow fever or something and a lot of people died around that area. We used to have the river close by so we used to go skating with those little Bob Skates.

DL: Oh cute!

MJ: [Laughter] Yeah, so we learned how to skate and slide down the hill. They had made a dyke.

DL: Alright, so you played outside as well?

MJ: Yeah, and hunt rabbits, you know. Each of us had different directions to go and snare rabbits.

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Marina James. "We learned how to skate and slide down the hill." https://www3.mnhs.org/usdakotawar/stories/contributors/marina-james/1496
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Oral History- Interview | Narrator Marina James Interviewer Deborah Locke in Dakota Tipi First Nation Manitoba, Canada | Wednesday, January 18, 2012
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Citation: Minnesota Historical Society. U.S. - Dakota War of 1862. We learned how to skate and slide down the hill. June 03, 2025.