Below is a transcribed interview with Katie Poundmaker from Poundmaker First Nation, a widow and sister of soldiers who fought in World War II.
Katie Poundmaker- Interview
Widow of James Poundmaker- peacetime
Father in law- Peter Poundmaker- WWII
Brother- Joseph Keeskotagon- Korean war
Brother- Thomas Star

Thomas Star passed away, and so has Joseph Keeskotagon. He went to Korean War, and my father-in-law Peter went to Second World War, but I don't know, there's always a space there because he passed away a long time ago after he came back, he died with lung disease. Most of these people that were in the war, they got lung disease from the atomic bomb or something like that, they got fumes so most of them are gone, and if they were in front lines or something like that. So my father and I came back and in the early sixty's, I believe it's sixty's, he died of lung disease. Hardly anyone survived otherwise; they have really poor health. There are a lot of men who remain, but they're in poor health. It's like either way poor health; it's like shell shock, like still they hear those bombs. When I was working in a mental hospital, we had a few white people like that. It's just that they can't, there is no cure for it. It's just what they went through, they don't hear it all the time, they dream it or they'll be doing something and it'll just come back to them.

I was brought up in Poundmaker reserve, and my parents are from Poundmaker reserve. I remember my brothers, they went to Second World War. Some men even joined from residential schools, or some would just join even fifteen years old. They just take anybody, some of them were just taken, just like the way they did with residential students. There are a lot of things like if you commit a crime, you get hanged. They would give them a choice to either go to the front lines or get hanged, instead of jail time. So it was very hard. Like the people, especially the women and the children are left behind; their husbands are in the war. Just like my brother Henry, he was married and he didn't see his child born, and the baby died. He can't come back to go to the funeral. He didn't see their baby die, he was overseas. So it's things like that, you have to do it alone. The women have to be there by themselves. Those things it's very hard, and those days there was no electricity and no power. It was just in the thirties and forties, it was the time they went in the war. As I say I was with my parents and my brothers were in the war. There was times when my father was upset, like we didn't know. Like when we had a telegram sent to us that my brother was missing in action, but he was only a prisoner of war, for a long time. When the war was over they had so many in there, they have to let them go because the war is over. So that's where he started walking with another prisoner, I don't know what nationality that other prisoner was. But they only traveled at night, when they can see the lights; they would go that way. They were lucky, they went to a Canadian camp that's how he got to come back. But he was very, very thin; he came home in July that following year. They say the war was over in November, so how many months are that to try to get home. And the other Native guys came back here and there; not all of them at once, a lot of them were lost. They say missing in action, or prisoner of war, they don't know because there is so many of them. I don't know exactly how many.

It was very difficult, those years, how are you going to get by? But the women got their army pension cheques, or something like that, they depended on them. The children didn't see their fathers. When they came back they were the same people, when they were in the war people respected them, but when they came back they were like nothing. They were just another Native person. No help at all or nothing. I don't know if Indian affairs gave them anything (veterans), but I remember they would have a team of horses and a wagon or something like that. Some people would try to farm; we just couldn't get nowhere. Nothing else, that's all they got. They were treated just as they were from the start, just any other Indian. They didn't get anything else, there was a lot promised to them but they didn't get anything. Just like they would get so much money to buy the land, but the land they have is the reserve, and as a Native person they belong on a reserve. If they were going to work on something, there was a farm instructor on the reserve who has all the equipment if somebody wants to use it. But not everybody can use it at the same time. It was very hard for them.

Then in peacetime, there were a lot of men that went back. Peacetime was in the fifties, that's when my husband joined the army. When his father came back and he came out from school. In residential school they don't let you go, I think it was when you were twenty-one years old they let you out. From there a lot of them are trying to make a living and a lot of them joined the army, because they are so used to being institutionalized. Lots of people go back into the army that's what he did. A lot of them went in the army just to see the world, there was no war but they were in peacetime. They were treated the same way as these other people. These peacetime veterans never get anything, the World War II veterans got a team of horses at least or something.
My husband used to tell me there is funding through Veterans Affairs or Indian Affairs or something like that. When he died in 1991 he was getting a little pension because he was sick, he had bad diabetes and he lost both of his legs and he was in a wheelchair. Veterans' Affairs came up to the house to see him to see the condition he was in, then they helped him. Before that, if a person was injured while they were in the army they would receive a little pension for that. My husband broke his arm and his legs and only got $100 a month. Then after he lost both of his legs he got a little more pension. But that only lasted a year before he died. It was a rough thing for a person to try to make a living with that, and myself I was working all along. I worked at different hospitals, in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The only thing I remember my brother was telling me, they were captured. They were in a big dwelling, like a big house and all around them were the enemies. There were bombs, and my brother went under the table and pretended he was dead. All the enemies were coming in and they all grabbed him, and some of them were dead or something like that and he pretended he got hit. They kept poking him and he was trying not to move. And he got poked with one of those rifles that has that pointy thing, and they poked him on the rib and then he moved. That's the time he got captured. The reason I remembered that story is because he told it to me again around in the late eighties when he had a re-occurring dream similar to the story. He had a car accident, but before the accident he had this dream. He was in the wilderness; there was bush around and a little hill with no trees on it, a little opening. These wolves are after him and there is no way out. He came to me and told me this, and we figured that something was going to happen and sure enough he had this accident, this car accident in November. They went to Hobemma on November 11th for the celebrations, but my husband was in a wheelchair so we couldn't go and they only had a truck with a camper on the back. We didn't want to go with them, my husband with his poor health. So we didn't go with them, but they said they would bring back videotape to show us when they got back. They had the camera on my sister-in-law the whole time while the celebration was on. So when they came back, on the 20th of November they got in a car accident. They were coming to visit us; they phoned and said they would come in the morning. But my husband wasn't feeling good so I took him to the hospital. When we got back there was nobody there, nobody phoned or nothing. I guess on their way back, by Asquith here, a little car passed them and it was icy. The car hit the black ice on the highway and spun around and went back and hit them head on. My sister-in-law was sitting in the center, and my sister on the left and my brother on the outside, driving. That car hit the motor on the truck and hit back and killed my sister-in-law, and my brother on the right hand side was crushed, and my sister on the left-hand side was crushed also. But those two lived and my sister-in-law was instantly killed. So that was the dream, so I didn't hear that news till late that night. I phoned home, I phoned their place, and nobody answered because everybody was here at St. Paul's hospital. That's why I remember what happened to him in the war. He woke up before those wolves got him, maybe because he was going to live. He pulled through that accident but for many months he was ill.
But what really should happen when the First World War, Second World War children they should have funding for them. Like when your spouse is gone there is a little money they give the widow and their children, but they only do it until they are eighteen. In the future they should try to put them as a member of what their fathers and grandfathers have done for their country. There are so many volunteers, Native people that were in those wars. They should credit the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren otherwise all these men that are gone; everything will be buried. You bury these men and forget them. If you really work hard to get these young ones to carry it on, lots of them will go into the army or into cadets. So that's what should be done. They don't give us much for widows, but we're still members like when they have conferences they invite us. When my husband died nobody helped me, I didn't get no funding for the funeral. I asked my band if I could bury my husband there and pay them later, and even they couldn't even get money from Veterans' Affairs because he had to be in the front lines or be in Second World War; not in peacetime. Everyday I tried to get the funding and every time a man came out, and this time I went in and asked for a lady. This young lady came out and talked to me and I told her my problem. She said "you know what there is money through Indian Affairs, I just changed jobs from Indian Affairs to Veterans' Affairs." I told her since there is money in Indian Affairs for Native veterans can we apply for that, is there a chance we can get it? Just to pay for his funeral costs and headstone, that's all I need I don't want anything from them. After I was done working I got a pension and I only got eleven hundred from that, so I took that eleven hundred and sent it to the reserve to hold it until I could get more funding. So this lady brought some forms and we filled them out together. Within a few days it went through, just like that. They sent the funding to my reserve and I got my eleven hundred back. After that all the veterans could get a headstone.