Saddle Lake woman to share history at Folklife Festival

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When Margaret Cardinal was a little girl living on the Saddle Lake reserve, she had never heard of an automobile. She was learning plenty from her mother about food preparation, clothes making, bead work and other interesting things. But with no television, no telephone, no books and no nearby roads, she had very little knowledge of the world outside of her community.

"I used to hear these noises and see lights on the trees at night," said Cardinal, an instructor in the Northern Lakes College Aboriginal Arts and Design program at Grouard. "It scared me."

When her mother found out what was frightening her daughter, she took Margaret by the hand and walked her to the nearest road, about a mile-and-a-half away.

"We had to wait a long time for a car to come by," Cardinal said. "There were only about six cars on the reserve at that time."

Last summer Cardinal shared that story, and others of growing up in a Woodland Cree community, with Nancy Groce of the Smithsonian Institution. Groce was impressed enough to invite Cardinal to participate in the Smithsonian's 40th annual Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. this summer. The two women spent a day together, driving from Edmonton to Grouard, where Cardinal showed the professional folklorist around the college campus and its Native Cultural Arts Museum.

"I have to say I was very impressed with both Margaret and the museum," said Groce. "Margaret is not only a wonderful craftsperson and artist in her own right, she has the real ability to teach others and offer insights into her art and culture."

In other words, just the kind of person Groce was looking for to spend 10 days in July explaining aspects of Alberta Native culture to a million curious visitors.

The Folklife Festival is just one of many programs of the Smithsonian, a world-famous institution that defies easy categorization. Briefly, it calls itself the world's largest museum complex (17 in all) and research organization. Researching, recording and showcasing the world's cultures is part of the Smithsonian mandate, and the annual Folklife Festival is one of the ways it does that.

This summer it will fix its eye on Alberta. Why? Groce says it was high time the festival featured a Canadian province, and "Alberta seemed a great choice."

This year's festival also features the Native basketry of North America and Hawaii, and 'Nuestra Musica,' a showcase of the Latino music of Chicago.

Cardinal is one of 120 Albertans Groce invited to the Folklife Festival. They're from communities all across the province and represent a broad spectrum of cultures, including farming, ranching, food, music, resource industries, literature, history and people representing a variety of ethnic groups.

Alberta's rich Aboriginal culture will have a strong presence. Cardinal won't be its only representative, but she might be the only one with a laptop computer and modern furniture inside a tipi.

"I want to use IKEA furniture," she said with a mischievous grin, and goes on to explain the "past, present and future" theme she envisions.

Margaret Cardinal is making the tipi and also a trapper's-style tent for the festival display in her Northern Lakes College classroom. She plans to stock the tent with toys, miniatures and games visitors can play. "The games we used to play as kids."

Those games might not be familiar to many: they include Cree hand games, counting games and one called stick and pole.

Cardinal also expects to be sharing stories about her life. One of them might be about her introduction to literature. There was a Ukrainian family, she said, homesteading about five miles away, with whom the Cardinal family did a fair amount of bartering. One of the services Margaret performed was to sew shirts in the Ukrainian style, a skill the Ukrainians taught her. In exchange for that and other services, "they gave us lots of vegetables. But that wasn't all.

"One time they brought a box of comicbooks. They were a blessing. That's how I discovered the outside world."

One of the comics had a story that took place in Washington, D.C. Margaret said she was impressed with the depiction of the place.

"I said, 'One day I'm going to Washington, D.C.'"

It took about 45 years, but she finally is.

"I'm just so happy," she said.

"The fact that Margaret Cardinal was picked is very exciting for her and for the college," said Rick Neidig, president of Northern Lakes College.

Neidig acknowledges that the Smithsonian invites individuals, not institutions, to the Folklife Festival, but given Cardinal's long association with the college, it is an important part of her life story. And there may be an opportunity for her to demonstrate some of the distance education technology the college uses so effectively to reach its far-flung students.

"She's hoping to connect back to Alberta using some of the same technology, to demonstrate it to visitors," Neidig said.

The Alberta at the Smithsonian program runs from June 30 to July 11 in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. For more information on the Folklife Festival visit www.folklife.si.edu/festival/2006 .