"Modern Blackfeet" by Malcolm McFee

“Modern Blackfeet: Montanans on a Reservation” by Malcolm McFee is a nifty little pocket history of the Blackfeet with some excellent ideas in it. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc; copyright 1972. ISBN 0-03-085768-6) The only trouble is that it’s out of print, though one can sometimes find it on Abebooks.com or Alibris.com.

Malcolm McFee’s first occupation was as a plumber which means he has a good sense of structure and flow and a strong grip on what’s really important. He’s dead now. He was here in Browning in the years that I was a newcomer, so his version of the reservation is the same as mine. There have been many other accounts in the thirty years since, but no new book as good and none with so clear an attitude. This is typical of McFee: “A major message I want to communicate to all is that the men, women and children who live on this Indian reservation are individuals who differ greatly in personality, aspirations, attitudes, opinions, beliefs and behavior.” He believed in uniqueness and the right to self-determnation.

One of his major insights was that though one could sort out rez folks according to their blood quantums: Indian on this side, white on that side -- uh, what do we do with this guy? -- one could also sort them by their, um, “lifestyles.” Then it would suddenly be obvious that this full-blood Indian was looking and acting like a white man (white-oriented) and that white man was looking and acting like a full-blood Indian (Indian-oriented).

Even MORE important was that some people managed somehow to combine the best of both worlds, creating what McFee called the 150% man. (This was before Feminism. If McFee had known about that, I’m sure he would have tried to be gender-inclusive.) At the time it was assumed that a half-breed specifically had to make a choice between one side or the other and novels were written about what that choice did to people. The notion of a 150% man was a door slowly creaking open and has given this slender book an impact beyond what McFee could guess.

In the convention of the time (late 50’s, early 60’s), McFee disguised all the people he studied, but they are easy enough for locals to recognize. The oldest people are gone now. There is a young, frisky, intelligent batch of youngsters who are unlike anybody anyone has seen before. They have both skills and confidence -- economics is the problem and they’re learning to get past that. They are not in this book because they didn’t exist yet.

“Albert Buffalo Heart” (1878-1964) is an old timer, a ceremonialist, an elder, a tourist greeter, a son of a chief and warrior, and a good Catholic. “John Arrowhead” is in his fifties, a street wino but a willing worker, a repository of traditional knowledge who is not entitled to lead, a man with no future. “Roy Conrad” is nearly seventy, ranches with his sons, is mildly interested in old-time things, but much more interested in what the Tribal Council is up to with the resources of the tribe. All are full-bloods. McFee goes on, drawing word pictures of men quite different from each other but all classified together. (He hardly mentions women except to say they made nice homes.) In accumulation, he has assembled something like characters in a novel.

This is pre-Indian Empowerment. He feels comfortable saying that “An Indian is a person defined as such by law. But the law has been built over time from decisions made in individual cases, so that it is difficult to write an all-inclusive definition. In general a person can be defined as an Indian if he qualifies on two counts: ‘(a) that some of his ancestors lived in America before its discovery by the Europeans, and (b) that the individual is considered an ‘Indian’ by the community in which he lives.’ (Federal Indian Law 1958:60) ”

Membership in the Blackfeet Tribe is more stringent. The Constitution stipulates persons “of Indian blood whose names appear on the official census roll of he tribe as of January 1, 1935...[and] all children born to any blood member... maintaining a legal residence within the territory of the reservation at the time of such birth. (Blackfeet Consitution 1936:1).” No limitation was imposed by a necessary degree of Blackfeet descent or “blood” until 1962 when the tribal constitution was amended to require 1/4 or more blood quantum for membership thereafter.”

In the reservation world, belonging is a big concern and people conform to the values and behaviors of the groups to which they would like to belong. This works well when the parents of a young person are clear about who they are and how to proceed, but if they are not or if they are missing, a young person has a hard time finding role models or even places to be that they can manage to fit. When McFee was doing his studies, the new president, John F. Kennedy, was just pushing for better housing through various programs. A flood in 1964 made emergency housing a high priority. McFee had left before the results could be worked out. Some of the buildings in his photos are gone now and far more impressive ones exist, but he shows none of the housing projects that became problematic.

McFee confronts racism directly, describing how even high-achieving people could be punished for looking “Indian.” In fact, they resented the slights more than low-status low-achievers who sort of felt they deserved to be put down. This would all change in the next ten years.

George and Louise Spindler, who edited this series (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology), are aged but were still active when I corresponded with them ten or fifteen years ago. The publisher no longer exists. I don’t know what would be necsssary to put this book back into print, at least locally, but it would be an excellent idea. Still, those most opposed to such a thing would be those most accurately described. Such straightforward confrontation is not always comfortable, even when some of the issues have been successfully resolved, and even when it is done with this much kindness.