Maria Thomas, Born in Fort Severn, wants to use her first picture with Kenneth and Darlene, Maria has been in fort Severn her whole life. She has seen three whole streets erode as the river Severn grows steadily bigger each year. The erosion is constant and accepted, it happens every year and every year the community moves back from the bank a little further. It has become something of a time gauge for the residents. When she was growing up, the main way that her family got fed was through fishing and hunting. She moved away from Fort Severn to go to a residential school at one point in her life. After that she started to work away from her First Nation. During one holiday she came home and "walked right into a trap, I haven't left since," she jokes. The trap she is referring to in this case is marriage. She got married to Kenneth Thomas and hasn't looked back since. She has tried to teach her children to hunt, fish and clean all sorts of animals like fish, geese, caribou and others. Most of what she does during the day are things like chores, just to keep the family fed and healthy. They heat their house with a wood stove so there is also a large amount of wood splitting to be done around the house. She also holds down a job at the nursing station, needless to say she is a very busy woman. Her kids are now in high school, some have already graduated. One of her kids is now a teacher in the community of Sandy Lake. And others are planning their lives so that they can succeed in today's job market. There have been substantial changes in Fort Severn since she was born. One big one is that there are no longer any dog teams in the community, they've been gone for about eight or nine years now she says. Planes too, used to be very rare and would cause a whole lot of excitement in the area. Everyone would gather by the Severn river to find out who was coming and what they were coming for. Now, there is a plane every weekday and a few flights on the weekend too, planes don't cause nearly as much excitement as they used to. The first time that she say a helicopter, she almost ran it terror. She thought at the time that it was a gigantic dragonfly coming to land in the community. When it got closer she found that she could see inside the "eyes" of the "dragonfly", there she saw people (the pilots). At this point she was starting to understand what the helicopter was and so she managed to calm down. Another time she saw Santa Claus for the first time in her life. Santa was new to the culture and was just being introduced to the reserve for the first time. She willingly admits that she was absolutely terrified of this fat bearded man in the red suit. Just another example of how times are changing. She feels that it is very important to work together and help each other, something that the elders of the community have always stressed. Some of the people in the community still do this, just like they were taught went they were little kids. However, Maria feels that this attitude is starting to disappear from the community. This is something that she would like to change.