Elder runs home-based business
Glen Vienneau
Northern News Services
Fort McPherson (Jan 29/01) - What happens when you have cultural skills and knowledge that have been handed down over successive generations?
Elder Jane Charlie, 70, of Fort McPherson says you continue the tradition.
"I try to teach it to my grandchildren now, but it's really hard today," said the wife of the late Johnny Charlie, a former chief.
"Because today, they're not interested in what were trying to tell them and what we're trying to do."
That doesn't discourage her from trying to teach traditions to her 32 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren when they come to visit her from other parts of the territory.
She's the mother of 12 children and three of whom were adopted.
"One time, I had 10 of them camping with me and I tried to treat them the best I could, all of them the same," she said.
She hopes to get together with them Feb. 21 when her family heads to Old Crow, Yukon, for an annual three-day snowmobile trip.
"Three times I went with them now. I know they don't want me to go; I know they worry about me, but I want to go so I'm going to try and go again."
The family will be camping on familiar ground. Charlie grew up there, living on the land before her family moved into Fort McPherson in the 1950s.
She looks forward to the trip.
"Most of the time I'm home alone, but (now) I'm busy doing sewing, cutting meat and pounding meat," said Charlie.
Her youngest child, Michel, 19, an adopted son, helps with the chores, skinning the caribou and cutting the meat.
She's usually busy sewing and selling beadwork, including duffle bags for snowmobiles, mukluks and mitts.
"You name it and we do it," she said of her home-based business which has become more lucrative than she imagined.
"Oh, I get lots of orders."
For her, it's not about the money, but a way to keep her culture alive, just as her mother did before she died at the age of 99.
Charlie is a youthful 70, with long, dark black hair.
"Lost of people, even 10 years younger than me, they're just white (hair). They all think we dye our hair," "I said 'Goodness, I have no time to do stupid things.'"
