Alexis Education

How the Nakota Arrived Here

Francis Alexis, Descendant

Our Great, Great Grandfather, White Bear was a young man. He had a dream about a lake. It had life in abundance. There were a lot of berries and a lot of animals. But there was something about this lake that bothered him about his dream, and he went to the old people and the old people said you have to go out and search for that dream and find it.

At that time I guess our people were scared. They did not want to be kept like others who were made slaves. There were not too many of our people left and there were a lot of little kids around that were orphans. Their parents either were killed or there died in some massacre. After many years of fighting, there were not too many men.

I guess it was at this time, our grandfather had a dream and the old people told him to take these orphans. So he gathered a whole bunch of orphans together and he searched for the lake. He went to a lake north of here, went around it, but it wasn’t the lake he saw in his dream. So he went looking south. I guess they looked for three years. They camped at Lake Isle, which wasn’t it. While they were camped there, he went looking and he came upon Wabamun. He went around it: it wasn’t the lake that he dreamt about.

So on his way back, he came here and camped. Early in the morning, they say just before sunrise, a morning star came up and my grandfather heard singing. He got up and he listened and said this is one of our songs. Our people used to sing that song a long time ago. He listened, and as soon as he got his things ready, he started heading that way, As he got close, the song kept getting louder and louder. Pretty soon he came by the shore of this lake. The singing was coming from the lake. He got some logs together and he built a raft, and he went to the rock island, where the singing was coming from. There was singing but when he looked around, there was nobody. There were just a bunch of rocks.

Our grandfather looked around and something clicked, “I have seen this place before,” he said. “This is the lake a saw in my dream. This is where our people will have life.” He named it “Wakāmne,” meaning a holy lake. I guess he pulled out his pipe, they say, and he prayed. After he prayed, he came back ad put his raft on the shore and he looked towards the rock. The singing was starting to go faint and he saw a lady walking on the water. The woman spirit that represents Mother Earth, like a mother provides for us everything we need. To only for us but also the animals and the birds; all the living things. Our people still sing songs about it at sundance.

The singing disappeared after that, While he was walking around, he saw a whole bunch of berries. He looked at the ground, and he saw that the ground can produce a lot of strawberries. Also, there was an abundance of animals - ducks, beavers, and fish. Everything they needed to depend on was there. He went back ad got his people.