Moose to Moccasins

The book Moose to Moccasins, The story of Ka Kita Wa Pa No Kwe by Madeline Katt Theriault is her autobiography about growing up as a First Nations person, and living a white man's way of life as a woman from Canada. This book focuses mainly on her experiences growing up on Bear Island, Lake Temigami as a First Nations person and how she went through life day by day. The most important part of the story is during one winter her grandparents, brother, and she almost starved. One day she was walking around the old storehouse and saw a forgotten animal leg hanging out from the roof from their hunting. She took a pole to get it down, cooked it, and her family was saved from starvation. Another important part is later in the book they went fishing and caught 200 fish in one day!


I can't really connect to this book myself but I can connect to it with other sources. In the book there was a lot of mention of white people disrespecting them because they were First Nation people. I have read in other books about this happening a lot too. For example, in a book I read about First Nations people much longer ago the white people took their land from them, which is also similar to the events in the book because it shows the white people didn't really have respect for the First Nations people. One thing I did notice was the First Nations people were self sufficient; they didn't go to the store, buy clothes, buy houses. They did it all themselves by using wildlife and the resources around them.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning something about what survival was like for people before you could get access to necessities easily. Also I would recommend this to anyone who likes learning of other ways of life.

Vocabulary

• First Nation People: the various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis