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Emma Minde (nee Memnook)was born in 1907 in Saddle Lake, Alberta. In 1927 she was given by her father in an arranged marriage to Joe Minde, who lived in Hobbema, Alberta. In this recorded autobiography taped in 1988 when she was 81 years old, little is said about her parents and her life as a child other than that she spent 7 years at a Catholic-run boarding school. She begins her narrative (with text on facing pages in Cree and English) by telling about the ways of the past when her people were self-sufficient in obtaining food and clothing by hunting, fishing, making leather, gathering berries, and sewing moccasins and clothes. She points out that this relationship with the land is no longer possible and that her people have had to adapt to the white man's ways in order to live. She tells about her arranged marriage to her husband, his drinking, his hard work, his good nature, and his kindnesses to others. Throughout the book, her narratives often turn to didactic summaries of both Cree and Catholic teachings of hard work, doing good, the sanctity of marriage and the home, raising children properly, doing one's duty, charity, and following Christian teachings. Emma describes in great detail the two women who shaped her life: her mother-in-law, Mary-Jane Minde, and her husband's uncle's wife, Mary. She relates how they taught her to do beadwork, clean house, garden, cure meat, dry berries, cook, and help out with farm animals and crops. But most of all, they set an example of how to live an obedient, hard working life guided by firmly held beliefs. An introduction comments on the education of a Cree woman, the convergence of Cree and Catholic values in Emma's world view, and linguistic aspects of Emma's Cree narrative. Over a third of the book consists of a Cree-English glossary and a selective index of English equivalents to each Cree stem. (SAS)