I have always been grateful for the big Thanksgiving dinners I shared with my family as a boy living in the bush of northern Alberta. Those were the good times, before my younger siblings and I were scooped up and sent to a residential school when I was nine years old.

We did not have much money but my parents worked hard to make Thanksgiving a nice time for our large family. We had a few big treats, such as a ham bought at the store in town. Most of our feast came from the land: vegetables from my mother’s garden, game from my father’s hunts, water from the river and firewood from the bush.

The land always provided more than enough for us and anyone who dropped in. No one was ever turned away from our table.

My family saw Thanksgiving Day as an autumn festival, a time to meet and share

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