Description
They Knew Both Sides of Medicine: Cree Tales of Curing and Cursing/Ah-ayitaw isi e-ki-kiskeyihtahkik maskihkiy is one of the titles in the Publications of the Algonquian Text Society series. Alice Ahenakew, born in 1912, recounts traditional Plains Cree narratives about her life in this collection edited and translated by Freda Ahenakew and H. C. Wolfart. Her oral history tells of the 1928 influenza epidemic, her childhood, courtship and later marriage to Andrew Ahenakew, and her encounter with a windigo. Andrew Ahenakew came from a prominent Cree family and he later became an Anglican minister. Despite his Christian faith, Alice describes her husband's healing medicines and the bear vision that made the healing possible. The bilingual book contains a Cree-English and an English-Cree Glossary.