It always takes a while to process an experience as rich as this Symposium at the Blackfeet Community College. Maybe I can sum it up by telling you I struggled to remember the names of people I knew and to connect the ones I didn’t know to their grandparents who were in the English classes I taught in the Sixties. When I came to Theda New Breast, she simply put her arms around me and said, “Thank you for coming to be with us.” Suddenly I connected her to all the good things that have been happening on the rez, entirely obscured by the media reportage of Council doin’s. I’m talking about “walks”, feeds, and a host of small consultations and interventions. They were often seen as “women’s stuff,” and therefore not important, even when Theda’s mother was on the Tribal Council, where she was a strong force for good.
To understand me, one must imagine that the Amskapi Pikuni is a long procession coming across the prairie out of the past. At first they walk with their dogs, then they begin to have horses, then wagons, Model T’s, and finally an increasing stream of modern cars up to the f250 Ford pickups of today’s ranchers. A few miles away, going along a ridge, is a little old Ranger pickup (my pickiup) with me peering intently at the People, trying to understand and be “with” them over the distance. When I first came in the 1960’s, I joined Bob Scriver who traveled between two streams of people, trying to belong to both, with his white family pulling him away from the Pikuni and his heart pulling him towards them. All his friends in childhood and many in adulthood were Blackfeet and he longed to be truly one of them. But he was blue-eyed and he was hairy as a grizzly. He hated that.
Quietly, not quite secretly, in the Sixties the two of us became Bundle Keepers because of a dream Bob had and then he had another dream that became his Badger Lodge. In the process we were taken into the not-quite-secret circle of old-timers who mostly lived on Moccasin Flats. Richard Little Dog was the officiant and gave us our names. Later, when everything became politicized, Bob did not give up his practice but was isolated further. When he died, the Montana Historical Society took everything. The Thunderpipe Bundle disappeared. The badger tipi with its bundle was transported to the Historical Society but they will not admit whether they have it or not. They understand NOTHING about any of the materials they acquired from Bob. It would be an excellent mission of the BCC to become friendly advisors on Blackfeet materials for the MHS. They are terrified of seizures, legal proceedings, repatriation, and other diminishment of their holdings. They have always been vulnerable to secrecy and under-the-table transactions. Consult with Loren Rattler.
Technically, as Bob Scriver’s only living wife and as a co-participant in the ceremonies of transfer and creation, anyone who uses those materials or tries to “own” them would be legally required to get my permission. Richard Ground has already said that he and Elsie would like to become the proper keepers of that Little Dog Thunder Pipe Bundle if it ever re-surfaces and I’ve agreed that I like that idea. We also agreed that ceremonial objects with great power have their own intentions and that the Bundle will do what it thinks is right. (This is called “personification” which is a figure of speech and in this case something like “fate.”)
I'm told the scanned program was impossible to read, so I'll push my post schedule up a little bit. I have a lot to say as a result of this Issksiniip symposium -- many ideas crowding to be sorted and shared.
When Indian Empowerment came to the Blackfeet, it had an academic overlay, a Vietnam political overlay, a Christian Pentecostal overlay (besides the more clearly recognized Catholics) as well as the crux of this symposium which is meant to address the human suffering of a rez: poverty, alcoholism, trauma, broken families and so on. This means that it has been cloaked in specific conventional language drawn from each of these contexts, plus a mixture of sources that haven’t really been reconciled. I’ll write more about this in the next few days.
The major insight I have from fifty years of contact with all these elements is that there is a language shortage and it is on the “white” side, but it is not because English has no words for some of the spiritual values of the Blackfeet. Rather the English vocabulary for spiritual matters has been pushed aside in order to let the dogma of Christianity take its place. The main modern Christian tradition that deals directly with the deep experiences of spirituality is Pentecostalism, sometimes mocked as “holy rollers.” (Catholic Cursillo is similarly intense.) Because Pentecostal "inspired" people talk about Satan and seem to go into another world, they are both respected and feared -- magnetic. I have been studying how to get at these concepts in a universal way.
Another source of spirit needing greater recognition is music and dance. Physical life in general has not been drawn into a context of spirituality. At lunch I sat next to a young man who had just arrived in Browning to start work on a degree in physical conditioning. He was Navajo, Cheyenne, and Blackfeet and a Wyoming state champion runner. I pestered him with lots of questions and he showed me on his smart phone a short video of his best friend shooting hoops in an echoing gym. The friend was only 5’8”, the young man explained, but so vigorous and smart that he was an excellent competitor.
Mike LaFromboise is a prominent Indian singer, so he can testify that it is literally "spiritual" since it takes so much breath!
Most of the time I was the only white person in the room other than staff. But I forget that I’m white -- maybe they don’t. These are upwardly mobile tribal people, those who managed to get their feet under them and walk towards achievement. The part that impresses me is that this is the first time that I’ve seen willingness in them to turn back and help those who are still tipped over in the dust. In the past it was so hard to go forward and it depended so much on the belief that the successful were exceptional, that they were anxious to separate from all those abusive, degraded, diseased, dirty old sprawled and staggering people that throw stigma on everyone else. Now that they sit in a beautiful building (the new math and science building) with confidence in their right to make their own decisions, they can be more generous. I am glad for this because in the Sixties, Bob was the city magistrate and hired many of those dirty old sprawled and staggering people for occasional labor because he had known them for decades, dealt with them in court, and understood that when they were sober, they were skilled. I worked alongside them for the same pay (dollar an hour) and knew them as People, even friends.
Two who were both sober and skilled were Jack Heavyrunner and his son, Tom Heavyrunner. Tom was Tiny Man’s father. Tiny Man was one of my high school students and later so was his son Josh. I kept in touch with Josh while he served his first long sentence in prison. There was a strong spiritual craving in both Tiny Man and Josh and it has been dangerous. People, not all of them Indian, have paid a high price. I have not forgotten Marie and I won't.
Once embarked on the journey of “redemption” (a Christian term for social work) as the Blackfeet are beginning now, the confusion and conflict come tumbling out and send us all sprawling in the dust. Outsiders do not understand the driving anguish that needs the sort of first-line response this symposium was about and those still gripped by demons (a pre-Christian idea) can be terrified to finally break the wall of silence. There will be tears. I hope not blood. But if these women, wearing their straight-up warbonnets, will walk ahead of the procession, many will follow into a far brighter future.
Un-yi-yee.
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