Cecile explains why she chooses to sing all the time.

Cecile was a good singer and she played guitar in her day and her husband was fearful that she’d become a singer and leave him. But she kept singing and still sings today. It’s good […]

Cecile tells a story about dancing at a wedding when she was younger.

Don, Julia, and Cecile describe how many Indigenous musicians played songs by ear rather than sheet music. Their feet were the rhythm section.

Tom, Cecile and Don remember the many kinds of unconventional instruments to make music they’d heard in their youth (jews harp, spoons, bones, and washboard).

Cecile describes the importance of learning and teaching Michif before it disappears forever.

Cecile describes not knowing they were Métis/Michif as a young child starting school and children called her French and savage due to skin and hair color. Her father clarified she was Michif.

Cecile Howse describes being educated at the Lac La Biche mission which was really more going to work than going to school. She describes growing up and life on the land, helping her father and […]

Cecile describes the need to teach the children Michif but in the Metis settlements children mainly speak English. Cecile used to teach kindergarten in Michif and French.

Cecile sang when she sewed but got a needle in her finger and though others were there she took it out herself.