The pass is dated June 3, 1896, a Wednesday. It gives permission for my great-great-grandfather, Joe Seesequasis, to visit his children, Jean, a girl, and John, who were hundreds of miles away in Regina attending the Indian Industrial Boarding School. I can barely fathom the...

...time and planning that went into the trip, which today can be driven in five hours but back then would have taken days with horse and wagon. Then there was the food and water for the horses and for Joe. Needless to say, there was little money to spare....

... I have no idea whether R. Suck was a kind or authoritative Indian agent, but the family must have been anxious about whether the pass to see their son and daughter would be granted. Joe’s life was one of stunning transitions. He would have been old enough to remember the...

...bison days before the signing of Treaty 6 in 1876 and the days before there was a “reserve.” Perhaps he remembered as a young boy seeing the last bison herds before they disappeared in the 1860s from the northern plains. He was witness to so much change...

...little positive, and as a ‘hostile band’, no Chief or recognized band council until 1934. Literally, the Indian Agent on Beardy’s ran everything. Still people, despite the Pass System, snuck out; there were back roads to get in and out: there were powwows and jigs and...

...Sundances: It is our nature, as humans, to resist confinement and disobey rules and we did: The fluidity of human interaction and trade, burnt into generational memories, along waterways and over land, prevails over stagnant borders and boundaries of oppression. Always.