[White:] My name is Kwulasulwut, which means "many stars." My dad's name was "..."from a little island just off of Kuper Island. My grandparents were from Kuper Island. That's "...", my Grandmother, there. Her mother was from Capilano, and she had two children, "..." and "..." from Salt Spring Island, and they had a brother Tommy. Tommy "..." they called him "...". When they say Capilano, that name came from "...". A lot of these, when they couldn't say native words, those are always connected, the roots. Where you are from, there is always somebody with a similar name. Why is it like that, and they said it's cause you are from that area. So her mother was from there, which she brought the mask "..." mask to Kuper Island, and her husband, Grandfather was always a man who worked with other people - he was like the governor I guess. So any problem, or anything going on, he would be called, the Grandfather. We trained a lot. When my brother and sister went to Kuper Island School, Grandpa Tommy was only allowed to have four, because he didn't have any children. So my brother Russ, my sister Eva, and two other cousins to go to Kuper Island. So there I was, and there were how many of us kids, and I was next to my brother, and my dad wasn't well, so he trained me to hunt with him, and to do a lot of the other things. And Grandpa started training me to do other things, like be longhouse speaker, and Granny was a mid-wife, who delivered hundreds of babies. We were reminiscing the other day about when we asked if there were 14 of us being trained to be midwives and medicine people and there are only two of us left this day - my Cousin Ernie Rice who lives in Malahat, and myself. And I still phone him when I'm having problems - what am I going to do with this? - can I say this or say that in a meeting? - and I'll phone him. Like when we just um, with humanities students, law students from UVic and from UBC, and I had to phone him. Are we allowed to do what we used to do, bring them to the water, and invite the water to look after these people? And he said, "What are they filling their brains with?" And I said, "Law. They're law students." And he said, "They qualify, they qualify."

You know if we are being asked, what are they being taught? What are they filling their brains with? And it was just the way the old people said it. So we are trained to be midwives, medicine people, all this other stuff, communicating with the dead and stuff, and the water, stuff like that. All this then I think comes to be, "Where are we from? How are we trained?" When Granny said, "The school don't want you people," there were about four of us, younger ones, "so you'll go to school my way," she said. Yeah, so we start to train then their way. I was already 11 when we finally got together with Green Island kids, and then the government found out we were not going to school, so they come find us, and sent us a teacher. We went to school in a little boathouse. And we already know our math I guess, and history and all this other things, we know the alphabet and that, as brother and sister kept bringing us work. I remember us sitting outside, when Sister Mary "..." was teaching the Indian students, and we sat on a fire escape, and she allowed us to, telling us the window was open, and we'd be copying out there, and the priest found out. I remember having bruises on my ankles, when he started hitting us, telling us to get away from there.

Anyways, we know how to play, how to play soccer and baseball, and how to hunt and build houses, and fish, and all this stuff. And we played with some people from Chemainus, baseball - I was the pitcher. And the somebody said, "Go into Nanaimo, and there is lacrosse. All the Indians play lacrosse." So we came to Nanaimo, and we just loved lacrosse, and that is where I met my husband. So I must have been about 14 years of age. 16-17, I came to Nanaimo to work and we were married when I was just about 20. So we were married over 60 years, 63 years, and he died last year. It was our 60th anniversary that one, and that one, the one on the right is his grandfather, Chief Paul White of Nanaimo. He was the chief for over 60 years. His father was from the north. He looked just like his grandfather.

[Interviewers:] So you hired the belly dancer for the anniversary?

[White:] Yeah, she was a friend of my daughter. They had this restaurant where they always used to go to do their belly dancing, and my husband just loved them. It's nice. So with all this then, I was in Nanaimo for many years, I even worked with the city. That is what this guy was congratulating - reminding me of all the things I worked for the city for. Me and my husband barbequed for the Lions club, raising money for children for many years. And he belonged to some organization, I can't even remember the name now, some organization in Nanaimo, and I still worked for our village. And there were two of us that belonged to that belonged to a local council for women, that comprised for all the women that work, and I belonged to a Provincial and National council, and the BC safety council, because I was an Indian, and they couldn't get close to the Indian people, fishermen, villages. So it was where I was used. I got a lot of flak from a lot of people - Why are you doing this? You're whitey now, stuff like that. It still goes today, if you are working both sides. But I've been working, but maybe because I didn't have that particular kind of education, I just studied and studied.

Princess Royal, down here by the beach, all this was called Bohonk road. What does Bohonk mean to you girls?

[Interviewers:] It's a racial slur.

[White:] Yeah, yeah. Yugoslavs and Italians, and all this, became friends of the Indians. They've all moved along this next street, Irvin Street. So one of the children died crossing. Haliburton Street was the only road from Campbell River to Victoria. And you can see all the truck drivers and loggers going through - no lights up here. And one child was hit by one of the trucks. The school was way up here - our little school was down here. So we said, "We need one school where the Indian children and the other children can go." So we blockaded - this was the beginning of our blockading work we did. All the Yugoslav ladies, they were all big women - we had all big women blockading the road, then they put the lights up here on Haliburton Road. And then the Yugoslav people gave part of their land for that school, which is Health Unit now, Princess Royal School.

My children, Carol, the one who just left, were some of the first Indian students to go there from here, which I became part of that school. I worked for that school for the longest time, telling stories, and cooking, and weaving. I was a member of the organization there. A lot of these I think was then. What was it you wanted to ask?

[Interviewers:] We were going to ask you about the role of stories and story telling in the community. Maybe you could say a little about that, the importance of stories in education.

[White:] When we first started, some of the people didn't like what we were doing, that we were telling stories. The stories were always protocol, something that the child would be trained. And many of the stories we had told, including the story that no matter what nationality you are, you were still a human being, just like the other ones are. So there were a lot of people there, even oriental students came there first. We were doing the language in a funny way, we were writing it with letters, ok? The importance of the stories were to build the child before it was even born. I had a paper that I used at the school - the five similarities and the five journeys of our lives. So what are they? Before you were born, and to care for prenatal care, like for the mother. When the child is born you are separated. It is called severing, cutting, removing from where it was nine months, imagine to heal it for the next one, so that it will be healthy, to join it into the space. Puberty rights come next, disconnect it from that space, and join it into that space. The other one was through marriage, separate it from one space and join it to another. Also we included in there where the other five came in, Indian dancing. Because the word shows up there again, right there again. Separation "...". You disconnect it from this one, and you bless this road it is going to be on. So why is that so similar, the disconnect and the severing. Well I'll finish this first. So the last one is death. Marriage was two mountains coming together into little river, little streams coming together to make big river. All the animals, the salmon and everything that is in the water became the witnesses, you see, of these two coming together, joining into one. So they leave where they were when they were just one, and now they are two coming together into one to bring forth others that are going to be coming behind them. And I've done quite a few marriages as my grandparents used to do it, so we just do it, and it is the blessing of the two, big ceremonies to do.

And of course, the last one is death. Why do we have to separate that one then? So death then comes in the separation from here, severed from this life and joined the ancestors that come and claimed this one. So I'd say, "Ask any questions," and some of the students would say, "Why was it so important then?" We are not just walking the way we are. Every human being and animal have these energies surrounding our bodies, ok? The elders call this "..." - the breath of the body. So we studied that when I was in Victoria, going to University. What is the breath of the body, why is this so important? And if there is energy of the body, the white man calls it an aura. Further on to that, I still wanted to find out, because I do healing, and smell ghost seeking, smelling the people who can smell the Grandfather and the Grandmother along the way. Same smell, why is it there? Why are the old people so important? Ok, the findings were deemed DNA. Ok, so it is the same, what we were trained, that is why we have to look after our bodies, so that this "...", the water of the perimeter. So the teaching was very sacred and all that, so when they died, then they go to the other side. So if you didn't separate them, they would carry that aroma, and they would be right to the other side. Are they going to be burnt or buried, rotting there like that? And does it happen to drag you in there like that or what?

So it was why it is so important from square one, from that little seed that was in there, that you would ask granny when she was delivering all different nationalities, how do they look when they are born? We had this funny idea when we were small, 10 or 11 years old, and she said, "They get in there the same way, and they come out the same way." I still remember her saying that. And she always goes, "Don't you people forget it too." So it was something very special for them, to train and teach the children to love one another. Love yourself first. They always used to say to me, "Don't love yourself, and you will not learn to love others. If you don't respect yourself, you'll not respect others." If you don't respect water, the different kinds of water - fresh water, salt water, angry salt water, lakes, where don't bathe in a lake unless we've been training for ten years, because they are strong, they are dormant, so we go to the running water so "..." in the not pure stuff that you are carrying. So some of these, we teach the young people, through work, like when they make the paddles, those little paddles way up there. People say you will not get anywhere without those things. Your canoe, your paddle, because it was the first that they worried about, were their canoes and their paddles. And they looked after them like they looked after children. One old lady said they looked after canoes, covered them up when storms come, looked after the paddles, looked after the dogs better than some children. It wasn't so, but it was just the way she said it. So we asked her why, when we were a little bit older, and she says, "Children, you have them, you watch them everyday when they are very small and they grow up, and you make sure they grow up well, and trained." Not only trained in how to live, survival, how to work, how to connect to one another, how to appreciate animals and all this.

There were so many words then that we used to connect us to the elements. So when we are talking, and one of the students says, "Auntie Ellen, you say you can't tell us those words." No, you can't be told those words unless you have been trained for something like five, ten years. Then the words will come into connect you to the dead, or the energies of the water, or the other. What if you were just to use it, because Grandpa always used the word "...". You could be the cause of problems to yourself, or to others. Your bad thoughts, the bad energy, or maybe retaliation of energy from another source. Then you can believe that we are not just here by ourselves, and we all know that - there is energy up there. In some of the stories, you know that you go way up, and you reach the dead world. So we always ask, "When you say dead world, do the dead go off?" No, there is no air up there - they already knew it. We were already here when the first flight to the moon. The story were, when they were going up, they get to the dead world, no air, they were in the space here, and they were getting close and they go, and they shake and they just think they are going to fall apart. And if they are packing ornaments or anything, they just fall off, and then they get into this dead world, and they just float. Only the trained ones were sent there. Not the whole body of course, only the soul went up there.

That book I just wrote has a lot of these in there - that is why we said it isn't for children. My great-grandsons, one is 12, on is 9 said we won't show it to other kids, they always call me Big Mama, said, "Big Mama, we won't read it ourselves." I like that I said, "What if the other children read it and think of crotches and the differences and like that?" Because the story tells a lot of being not being aware of sexuality and how to protect the body and like that. I had like the marriage of the seagull and the crow for instance - and they always ask, "Why did you use animals for these stories?" Ok, because animals and birds are very strong. They said, "Use us, because when you use us, we don't collect the bad words - woosh, it's gone." People collect bad words. If you say something and hurt them, or mention them in a derogatory way, it would be like a big blob of something got onto them, and then it festers. Yeah, maybe it festers so much. Do you know how to eat any derogatory words that might get to somebody? So no one knows how to eat. And old people always used to hate how it sounds, and think, "No, I don't think so," but when you hear it you go [gasp]. It's really something.

[Interviewers:] Why did you decide to write the stories down?

[White:] Granny always used to say - I'm reading this book, Chris Arnett from New Zealand is writing, and taking all the stories from the archives in Victoria and compiling this, and he wanted me to read it through, to see if I can remember some of the stories. And by god, I read it and thought, "It must have been Granny who told us this; I thought it was somebody else." Some of the stories are a little bit different - I wonder if it was because Beryll Cryer didn't understand what Granny was saying, because there were sometimes when she didn't speak too well English. So they always say, "Never let the stories die - even if you all become like white people, you learn, you got to school, you live in houses and your kids go to school, think about the roots. Where are your roots? Your roots die, and you are going to die." I was talking about it with this guy, who is going to be 90 in March, and I'm invited there, "..." Henry, and he said, "You talked about," - he calls me Auntie Ellen too, but he's older - he said, "You talked about the roots, and here I was telling Meryl", no what's her name, Donna, his wife "ask her if she remembers the roots. Where you're from, there is a root, never forget it. If you keep feeding that root, by what you are learning, and stay retaining, containing, you're filling up little pockets in your body, remember to pass it on. That root isn't going to die, it is going to grow all over the place, and it is going to have little ones to grow beside it."

The metaphors were always used, to make you see what it is going to be like, and how it is going to be like, and how you are going to do it, to whom you are going to do it. Somebody said to me one day, "My children, my children you don't have to say anything to them." I just reminded him, Granny always said if you seen someone doing something wrong, you should say something. Don't say, "What the hell are you doing?" You call them, and you show them what they can do to rectify something that they thought was not right.

[Interviewers:] How is telling stories or teaching children different than telling stories or teaching adults?

[White:] The stories, the children stories, the first book, are very calm, very nice. Then when we rewrite it again to adults, it starts to build up to be more advanced things. Sexuality comes in, the differences in bodies come in, things like that. So there are lots. We still use that, even today at the college, because so many of the students are adult students from all over. We don't just take First Nations students, because it is the way we wanted it. We wanted everybody. We've had Kenyan students, we've had Japanese, we've had other area students from all over the place. Some of them said they had registered for Anthropology and the teacher, somebody said, "Why don't you take for a couple of years, First Nations/Indian Studies?" Because of how we teach them. We talk about Indian history, cultural, not religious part, but the connection with everything - the importance of lands, and where they came from. How did we come to be on a reserve? Where is our home? Why do we call this from Departure Bay up to Mount Benson and down there, the islands, ours? The Nanaimos. Because it was just sections, all the ways. When people first came, the first white men came, and said, "There are no houses there, so you don't own that." But what's in them is what we need, for their medicines, for their plants. Because they ate the roots of plants, the medicines came there. Somebody asked me, "Why are you keeping all those containers out there?" It is the only way I can keep the herbs alive. If you put them in little sacks, they are going to evaporate - the medicinal properties will go away, so we keep them in there. So we still make medicines for a lot of different ailments.

[Interviewers:] Have you passed along the tradition of midwifery to a younger generation?

[White:] Yes we have. We do that, but we always say if you see anything wrong, you should go to the doctor. If you feel anything wrong. I've talked in classes, bigger classes. Next week I'll be teaching child and youth care at the college. Because I go there every year, and additional students come in. That is going to be child and youth care workers or nurses, and they go there first before going nursing. And they want to learn about midwifery. I had this many years ago, I was taken to Victoria, and they had this women's group who belonged to Provincial government, and they wanted to know about midwifery. Some of these were nurses, and there was a man nurse there, a young man. And I think everything I said there was sort of "Are you certain? Are you sure?" I had so much fun with him, because I am sort of like Granny and Grandpa. They said if you make things lighter, it becomes easier. If you avoid answering, it becomes more difficult. So he asked me about the soul. Four weeks, you don't feel nothing. Six weeks, and you might start to feel something, connect with it. Because we are trained to connect with what is inside there. And he went on and on. And he said every sperm would have a soul. I couldn't help laughing. I said, "Ok, in one ejaculation, how many sperms?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "You haven't read anything about it? You should son, so you'll have some idea of what you are saying. I'm not sure but I think there are over a hundred or a thousand sperms that come out of there. Imagine the creator giving everyone of them souls. He's going to run out of souls. Only the ones that advance and get in there, there is only one." And he was, to me I thought he was very angry, and he said I was making fun of him or something. And I said, "I'm just saying this so it's easy for us to talk." We have to finish this, so we did. He said he was going to study how many sperm there were in one ejaculation. "I said there must be millions and billions of people ejaculating at the same time." The ladies were just about killing themselves. Anyways, we were trained to be easy to talk to, we were trained to be easy to say it, and to say it in a good way. Because it is just human. It's human then, and anything that is supposed to be human then is good to talk about.

[Interviewers:] I was just wondering, are you still Elder in residence at Malaspina?

[White:] Yes, I am.

The role, is I go there, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. So I leave the house at 8:00 in the morning. We start the class at 8:30 - there are always about 50 students there. We start with a drum, I carry my drum. I'll say a prayer, lecture a little bit about health, we do a lot about health, and supporting oneself, pounding the face and bringing in more energy to oneself if they are not feeling well, and it really helps. Also Japanese, is it the Japanese or the Chinese that are saying you are building your immune system? And the old people are saying you are bringing in the energy. Isn't that the same? So you are awaking the energy that has been sleeping. So we talk about medicines, about what they are going to be working. Then the professors take over to whatever projects they have. Lot of times, it will be about other nations, how they came to be there, why they are like that, and then come this way northern. We study the northern people. I journeyed for about ten years and it was the provincial government that helped me do this, from Mexico to Oklahoma, right up to the Arctic. Shattered my ankle up there, and the Pacific Islands. Because there were so many similarities in the teachings, in the ways we believe, how did they learn, where did they learn it from in the beginning? Who told them, and stuff like that. The similarities were so great, rather it's spiritual, rather it's cultural, like they have masks. What are the masks for? How did they bring in names from the old ways and deposit it on the younger generations? And the spiritual ways they cleanse the young people, and the names before they deposit on that person. Where did it come from, and how is it done? There are two of us Elders, and I work only mostly in "...", because it is the beginning of their work. We use a lot of, let's say, root system work, where they came from, how they got here, how all the other people got their places, and how they lived, if they had spiritual aspects, whatever they had. We studied the northern and ways like that, their masks, and their totem poles and all that. We don't talk about the fighting, the wars between. We leave that alone, and it is mentioned now and again, but we say it is better to just leave it alone. Does that answer your question?

[Interviewers:] So mostly a teaching role

[White:] Yeah, a teaching role. I go to others, I will be invited to others, like nurses, like anthropology, to religion, and I'll be called in to lecture on these. Why we have First Nations dancing and such, and the difference of. So a lot of these things, I'll go lecture on.

[Interviewers] That's a lot of work

[White:] Yeah, but because of my work, they always wonder why I belong as an Elder in my community and in other communities. We always work. I still work with the city of Nanaimo, I suggest this. And the justice in Nanaimo is a branch of mental health. We have our justice here, "...", so we sort of watch what goes on.

[Interviewers] How do your teachings change when you use them in other languages than Hal'q'umin'um'? Do they change when you teach them in English?

It does change a lot. There are a lot of things that are a little bit different. Sometimes you have to bring in a word that is not in the First Nations dialect. Something to make it a little more understandable in English, but we try to keep it as much as we can, close to that. We always have problems with editors. That's why I used in my last book, Xeel's the Creator, my daughter Vicki did most of the editing