Like the head goose, Manie takes the lead. She marches up the four steps and grabs the doorknob. She pushes, pulls, turns, but nothing happens. The crowd is right behind her. She feels them watching. Her cheeks redden.

I take the keys and stick one in the lock. Click! The door swings open like magic and the clan sighs with relief.

A strong smell of glue prickles my throat as we follow Manie inside. Each one of us sneezes discreetly, then we all cough. Manie stands in the hall and takes in the scene — the living room on the right, a kitchen on the left, a hall at the back with doors leading to bedrooms.

There isn’t much furniture. A kitchen table with chrome feet. Four chairs covered in yellow fake leather printed with roses like the ones on the box of Carnation milk. There’s a huge maplewood easy chair with a pleated skirt.

Manie slowly walks down the hall and opens the doors one at a time. She sticks her head in but doesn’t go into the rooms. I can see in her eyes that something is cooking in her mind.

Then she gives the orders, and the men and women disappear. Manie pulls the big easy chair close to the window and sinks into the soft cushion. The chair rocks! She looks out the window and discovers that from this spot she has a clear view of the entire reserve. She can see the entrance to the new band office and the door of the new Hudson’s Bay post, now called the Northern General Store.

Manie smiles slyly. She rocks back and forth, her hands lying flat on the wide arms of the chair.

The men eventually come running back armed with axes and saws. The women and children carry the tent and the family’s pack.

Then men start to rip off the closet doors, knock down the inside walls. Everything is saved — the nails, because they are scarce and useful, the planks and timbers. The wood is sawed up, split and stacked in the corner.

But there’s a problem with Manie’s cast-iron wood stove. There’s no hole for the stove pipe. Then clever brother-in-law Zacharie knocks out a window pane with his ax and runs the pipe through. That does the trick! It’s as if the pane was made for the very purpose. They’re not so dumb, the whites.

After awhile, we have cleared a nice big, bright room. The women quickly toss in the mattresses, blankets, cushions, skins and sleeping bags. The kettles and birchbark baskets are stacked in full view.

“At least now we know where we are!” says Manie.

Outside, poles are put up and spread with canvas. The ground inside the tent is covered with a thick carpet of fir branches.

Manie rocks inside her new house, one eye on the wigwam outside.

The official and his guest are visiting each household to help the new inhabitants settle in. Manie quietly watches them from the window. She sees them coming but doesn’t say anything.