Blackfeet Rhetoric

In Japan right now there is a craze for the child’s game called “scissors, paper, rock.” The players stand together and simultaneously make hand signals for the three things (fingers scissoring, flat hand, fist). Scissors cut paper, paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors. The person who makes dominant hand sign wins. In Japan everybody’s doing it.

Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation ... of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art collection, worth more than $20 million, at ... auctions in New York. ... so he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world... "As both companies were equally good and I just could not choose one, I asked them to please decide between themselves and suggested to use ... rock, paper, scissors."

So they did. Nicholas Maclean, the international director of Christie's Impressionist and modern art department had to make the decision, so he sought consultants: his 11-year-old twins, Flora and Alice... They play the game at school, Alice said, "practically every day." "Everybody knows you always start with scissors," she added. "Rock is way too obvious, and scissors beats paper." Flora piped in. "Since they were beginners, scissors was definitely the safest," she said, adding that if the other side were also to choose scissors and another round was required, the correct play would be to stick to scissors - because, as Alice explained, "Everybody expects you to choose rock."

American mainstream legal rhetoric is supposed to be based on facts, logic and precedents that add up to a conclusion. This strategy is based on years of European culture and must be learned but is not necessarily even valued by other cultures, much less taught. When I was in grad school at the University of Chicago, there was a lawyer who made his living by teaching the Euro method to women, people of color, and other non-Euro people who wished to succeed in law school He said it took two weeks to get them to see what logical, fact-based rhetoric was -- then they could spend the rest of their lives getting good at it. Without this enlightenment, they often flunked out. I had to learn it myself in order to pass theology classes, which are not about spirituality but, again, about logic and precedent.

What I call “Blackfeet rhetoric” is neither fact-based nor logical, but it is a mistake to underestimate this tradition, consider it childish, or to deny that it is there. Rather it would be wise to consider its power. In the pre-Euro days, the Nitsitahpi lived in small family-based groups who circulated around the prairie according to the seasons. Some decisions had to be made quickly -- often decided with emotional persuasion. Like “rock, paper, scissors,” some arguments were more powerful than others, but which were more powerful might be different on different occasions, depending on who was there.

The most persuasive speaker might use any of these arguments:
1. We are related. Our great-grandmothers were the same. We attend the same ceremonies.
2. The past is powerful. We have always done this. Remember those occasions when we prevailed.
3. You owe me. Remember when I fed you? Remember when we took in your whole family when they lost their lodge?
4. The gods smile on me: they have given me a dream and I am inspired. My gods are powerful and make me powerful. (Or, in modern times, “I’ve got good connections in Washington, D.C.”)
5. You know I am prosperous. I will teach you how I do it. We will have more than any of the others.
6. Don’t trust those other people. They are treacherous and steal from you, but I am conscientious and will restore order.

These rhetorical approaches might not win a debate team points at a speech meet, but they are often in letters to the reservation newspaper. As far as that goes, check out politicians of every culture -- though modern politicians feel obliged to add statistics like the unemployment rate or the gross national product -- not for logic, but for emotional effect.

When oldtime Blackfeet had time to move more slowly in their deliberations, they might not use “rock, paper, scissors” but rather choose two very ancient modes of thought: the story and the map. Some would argue that a story IS a map -- or maybe a “song-line” like the Australian aboriginal strategy made famous in Bruce Chatwin’s book. (The songs stood for distances and landmarks, much like what someone might have drawn in dirt or might now sketch on the back of an envelope.)

Darrell Kipp says that the oldest Napi stories were meant to be told in exactly the same ancient words every time, because they code an understanding of the universe and how to be in it, a map. Starting in such a place would be a good strategy for people with time for discussion and reflection as is common in religious contexts.

If the Siksika had had time to mull over the meaning of the wave of white people coming from the East, the culture rooted in the northern prairie would not have been so shattered. But there was very little time -- a couple of hundred years. (Something like the time we’ve had to recognize, analyze and respond to global warming -- that world-changing and deniable.) I am saying that this is a valuable and under-used kind of rhetoric, not to be lightly discarded.

To be anchored in story/myth/narrative as well as maps of relationship across the land, suggests ways of disciplining one’s own behavior -- until those stories are broken, those relationships are torn. When one believes that one’s behavior affects everything in the cosmos and the cosmos has turned chaotic, then one is paralyzed from trying to understand what wrong action caused this trouble and from the impossibility of choosing what to do next for fear of more consequences.

This confused time has nearly passed for the Blackft, even as it has become more and more challenging for the rest of the world. As the Siksika find a new story and learn Euro ways, they acquire skills. Rock, paper, scissors: cooperation, corporation, or gambling?