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is really not that steep, and not that far. It’s more of a ceremonial final walkway at funerals, from the road to the grave-sites, but it’s a chore now for Roseanna. She waits to talk as her breathing steadies, for there is much to tell Angela, and not much time to do it. Not much time until Roseanna herself will be carried up this path.
    “At Thomas’s funeral, there was no new band hall, like there is now, but still we held wake to honour his spirit. Always that has been done, no matter how poor our people. Yet even after all these years, can his spirit journey ever be over until something is done to those murderers? The Elders said that revenge would only slow his journey to the spirit world. But some say now that lawyers paid those Elders to say nothing.”
    “Has Glen done anything?”
    “Glen is too busy with the land claims.”
    “He knows what happened with Uncle Thomas?”
    “I don’t know what Kokum told him. I haven’t told him. Our people carry so much shame, as if we are somehow to blame for Thomas’s death.” Roseanna pushes down on the handles of her walker and rises to her feet. “I want to see his grave.”
    First they find Kokum Anne-Marie’s grave. Angela deposits shreds of tobacco near the marker, and she chants a prayer in Cree. She does the same at the new marker for Thomas.
    “They taught you this at the university?” Roseanna asks.
    “An Elder came to our class. He showed us many of our traditions.”
    “I just want to sit here, Angela. You probably know more than I do. Remember Kokum’s funeral?”
    “Yes,” Angela says.
    People came from many reserves, and from Regina. For two days after Christmas people kept arriving for the wake. In the new Three Crows Band Hall, Glen sat the first night with Kokum’s body. Glen was more like Kokum’s own son than he was Roseanna’s.
    By the time Angela started school, Glen was already an adult. He married a white woman, Charlotte. They met at the Regina Agribition Rodeo. He was a bull rider and she was a barrel racer. Glen became a band councillor at Three Crows, and Charlotte a school teacher. They have a son and daughter, Tommy and River.
    The next day of the wake, Glen battled a snowstorm on the way to Regina, and it was evening by the time he got back with Roseanna and Angela. Outside the hall, little Tommy was helping the older boys feed a bonfire. Inside the hall, children were dashing about, and the adults sat in a large circle of chairs. In the centre was the coffin with Kokum’s body. People were still arriving the second day, coming into the hall, then going out to somebody’s house, and then back again to the circle of chairs.
    “Where you been? How was it driving through the snow? Did Santa Claus come to your house?” They shared memories. Could there ever be an Elder as worthy as Kokum?
    Chairs were rearranged around tables. Ben Star stood by the coffin. He flicked a lighter and lit a braid of sweetgrass, chanted a prayer in Cree, and then he spoke in both Cree and English.
    “She was Kokum. Always she had an Oh Henry! chocolate bar for me. She taught us children what was good, and what was bad. That was a long time ago….”
    Ben Star waved his arms in the sweetgrass smoke, chanted another prayer and spoke some more. Several others spoke; younger people who had known Kokum Anne-Marie only in her eighties and nineties. They smudged in the sweetgrass smoke, then said their good things: “She never complained of her stiff and bent-over back. She told the old stories. She made the best hamburger soup.” Some older people nodded, and others smiled and quietly laughed.
    A drum beat on and on. Stella, who leaned on a cane, made her way to the coffin. She looked down awhile at Kokum Anne-Marie, and then set a silk scarf alongside the body. Roseanna followed with Angela, whispering to her. “Do you have something? From both of us? Maybe your earrings? They look so nice. Silver eagles.”
    “Glen just gave them to me for