This blog is about a plot of land and a building, one domestic space in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada that was owned and sold by a dozen families over the last 115 years.
Because the property is part of traditional Indigenous lands that are the subject of the Qu’Appelle Treaty (Number 4), the first acknowledgement must be to the Cree, Salteaux, Assiniboine and Métis peoples, Indigenous Nations who traveled, hunted, and found shelter in the areas now populated by the city of Moose Jaw and the farms and villages in the vicinity. Before the first plows were brought into the area, according to Leith Knight, Moose Jaw historian and archivist, the first wooden dwellings were the wintering cabins of Metis buffalo hunters who preferred to stay on the plains after the fall hunt. The peoples who moved and told their stories all around this place for hundreds of years did not consider themselves “land owners” or “settlers”. Yet they surely must be acknowledged as the rightful storytellers about Beginnings. And if we are wise, we will acknowledge and listen to their powerful narratives, listen and learn.