THE WOMAN WITH ROSY CHEEKS AND ITCHY EYES

Not long ago I visited my eye doctor. I like him much better than the one who preceded him, though that doctor had a reputation as a miracle worker when it came to cataract surgery. I complained to that doc and also to the present one about my eyes being bloodshot, itchy, and “tired.” I thought it was from being on the computer so much. Last summer my eyes were such a bother that I went back on an emergency basis. That time the farmers were burning fields and I decided that was the problem.

I worried that I might have damage from my diabetes, because I slip off my compliance regime sometimes. I’m having increasing trouble with forgetfulness and bad temper. It’s a symptom of age. I’m 76. But also I’m reading about atrial fibrillation — arrhythmia of the heart and how it can make the blood turbulent enough to throw off tiny clots. The clots could mimic transient ischemic attacks, or maybe they ARE transient ischemic attacks, which are little pinches in brain function. I had interpreted my diaphragm as fluttering. This has nothing direct to do with my eyes, but if I’m too forgetful to take my pills in spite of sticky notes here and there, then the eyes suffer. It’s the beginning of the final unraveling.

Prince Harry of England -- Rosecea?

The anger comes from impatience but also from losing my temper over the doctor situation, even with my well-liked eye doc. More and more a visit means some teenager goes down a checklist and not much more. Then at the end of the last examination, the Doc asked if the pink cheeks and scaliness in one spot might be rosacea. Sure, it is. I know the diagnosis because a few years ago the GF Clinic’s one-time dermatologist diagnosed it, but he didn’t explain or prescribe.  Never mentioned eyes.  He was a very weird bald guy who left in months because patients complained. I’m beginning to suspect that Montana is a dumping ground or refuge for docs who’ve been in trouble. Rosacea is so obvious that even a teenager could see it.

My cousin also has pink cheeks — we’re Scots and it’s hereditary in part, though no one really understands rosacea. In all the checkups I’ve had, including the one that was double-teamed Physician Assistants, billed as a “free” Medicare checkup (which it wasn’t because I had to pay for lab tests — not announced in advance), neither really looked at my face. They just looked at the lab printouts, which they didn’t have during the physical exam. They never met my eyes.

The treatment for ocular rosacea is hot washcloth compresses with baby shampoo washing immediately afterwards. But the docs have always acted like tap water would kill me. I’m allergic to one of the eye exam chemicals and keep my eyes from swelling shut by splashing them with tap water, but they insist on using squeeze bottles of sterile saline — and billing me, no doubt. (There’s also an over-the-counter equivalent for rosacea washes.) It never quite does the job, but instead of arguing, I just go down the hall afterwards and wash my eyes in the bathroom. (It’s Unisex, incidentally, and so is the one in the supermarket.) But what do street people do?

Anyway, I didn’t know that rosacea affects eyes until the doc told me and he simply pressed me to try the new dermatologist at the clinic. He didn’t explain in detail. Thinking it was like the brilliant idea of selling glasses in spite of the new cheap internet competition from China, and also because my insurance now requires a co-pay of $45 which would buy three cases of cat food, I put off the idea of making an appointment. Even with low cost gas, it’s a long drive to Great Falls and the ancient pickup makes funny noises.

It's got Clinton by the nose.

Yesterday I was trying to restore order around here and realized I should learn more about rosacea, so I googled. Holy catfish. This is serious. In the advanced stages it’s like Bob Scriver’s herpes keratitis in 1962 that just about blinded him and pulled us into a close relationship very quickly because he really needed help. The treatment for ocular rosacea is very simple in the beginning: using a warm compress to loosen whatever is crusted on the eyes and then using baby shampoo to wash the outsides thoroughly. Artificial tears up to four times a day. As things get worse, the tear ducts might be blocked to divert the tears across the eyeball. The same meds that miraculously saved Bob’s eyes is used for advanced rosacea and the often accompanying eyelid inflammation: dioxiuridine.

If the rosacea increases and maybe leads to the inflammation of the eyelids (called blepharitis — I knew “itis” means inflammation but not that my eyelids were “blephs”), then things get more serious. Around here eyes suffer already because of bright prairie light with a high ultraviolet component and the wind carrying particles. Maybe we should all wear goggles. The Blackfeet at one time early in the 20th century had a terrible plague of trachoma, which is a chlamydia infection of the eyelids, rather easily cured if you know what it is and what to do. But people did NOT know what to do and there was a lot of blindness. Other tribes called them the “one-eyed people.”

It was the notorious Doug Gold who had an eye doc friend back in Pennsylvania and brought him to the rez. The doc diagnosed the problem, taught the Golds and a few other responsible men how to diagnose and treat it, and resolved the epidemic. What would they have done about ocular rosacea or were they genetically immune? Do trading posts carry baby shampoo?

Folks love villains and manipulate information in order to control the public reputation of their competitors so that everyone agrees with them. A person with the prominence and control of a doctor is always vulnerable to rumour and accusation. In the early days Doug himself was considered absent-minded, the proverbial professor, but his father James Gold, the Presbyterian missionary in Browning in those days, struggled hard with depression and finally had to be sent to Warm Springs.

So far, attacking Doug, who started the school system in Browning, is based on his mistaking culture for intelligence and drawing the conclusion that tribal people were genetically dumb, accepted wisdom in those times. If one culture accrues information and then tests another culture on their knowledge of it, naturally the second culture (which has its own information and world view) will not score well. Yet people cannot get it through their heads that an IQ test only measures how well one does on IQ tests, all about things valued by people who design IQ tests. They are PRINT culture, never ORAL culture. The more assimilated the Blackfeet become, the better they do on the tests.

If a doc is a little overambitious, a little careless, a little pressed for time, the consequences might be pretty serious. But it begins to look as though the culture of many doctors has left idealism behind and gone to greed. How do we pick our way through the problem? Since public perception always has a political element and is rarely self-correcting, any dynamic of suspicion and resentment can be exploited. Reputation counts large. GF Clinic needs to think about theirs. By withdrawing proper support staff from their doctors and adding boutique profit-makers, they are diminishing their professional standards.

I AM print cultured. I’m also hip to journalistic sensationalism about greedy doctors and the rather scandalous manner in which they have delegated their management and ethical self-policing to managers expected only to increase profit. I can defend myself in part through this mechanism of the internet, but also I’m old enough to remember doctors who used to take my hands, look into my face, and try to get a sense of who I am. It’s not impossible, even now. I recently saw a vid of a doc gently interviewing a squirming pre-adolescent boy who had been living on the street, doing sexwork. It was quiet, respectful, and revealing — even healing. That man was a true doctor.

"I just LOVE your work!"

It is in the very architecture of humans that they want to relate one-on-one with individuals and if they can’t do it by being intimate, they will do it by picking a fight.  Both are a big pain in the ass, but many of us tolerate and try to harness this stuff so that we can get work out there to the public.  Sometimes you can get money out of it. But it’s frustrating when the work is vital, sometimes desperately needed, but people won't pay attention.  It’s like dealing with a puppy — you point but all the puppy will look at is your finger.

Cuts Wood School in Browning has had this problem from the beginning.  Nobody is as appealing as a primary grade Blackft kid with braids, bright eyes, round cheeks, a busy mind . . .  you know.  So people come hoping to make particular friends with their own little pet Blackft, but in the days when Darrell Kipp was there, he was so fascinating that they forgot even about the little kid they’d had on their lap, and instead began to burrow into Darrell, asking questions about his private life, trying to be his one, his only, his most precious friend.

Darrell Kipp

Then Dorothy Still Smoking would say,  “Just leave the check on the windowsill.”  To be frank, it could be a form of whoring, unless the person really came through and really did learn in order to understand, to look at what they were pointed at.  Children are not keepsakes.

The same thing used to happen with Bob Scriver.  People came and looked at the sculpture to see if it were popular and would reflect well on them, but soon their radar locked onto Bob and like guided missiles they were in his home, yearning to be in his bed.  I resented that, since I was already there.  In fact, a marriage can be destroyed that way.  

Bob always wanted to take every animal he liked into the family bed.  Even patron ladies — I always wondered about a few of the men.  I told him if he tried to bring his beloved horse into the bed, that was a deal-breaker.  But these are cultural jokes (rather nasty ones) that assume everyone always wants sex with important people and even if that were true, it distracts from analyzing the true psychic dynamics.

Bob Scriver and George Montgomery

It’s particularly strange that the middle-class people of Montana claim a special relationship with Charlie Russell even though he’s known to have been sterilized by syphillis which his wife shared, that all his life he consorted with prostitutes, children, and Indians, drunk or not, and came from a perfectly respectable and rather prosperous family in the MidWest where he had a close relationship with his grandmother.  Anyone who attempts to write an honest biography (Taliaferro, for instance) will be excommunicated because the SELLING is that he was a gentle, kind, virtuous old man who just painted things that they pretended he had seen (though he came AFTER the buffalo days).   How he loved his horse!  This leaves his wife to be the wicked one, if only for social climbing.

Not much out there about how Charlie’s work skyrocketed in price and popularity because his timing was right.  The resource exploiters needed to look sympathetic and middle-class art made them seem cultured.  (If you can tell what the figures in the picture actually are, it’s middle class.) They tried to imply they were equivalent to French impressionists and Italian old-masters, and they were sort of right.  It was a little like Caravaggio painting Christian situations featuring his own favorite bed mates (including a little boy) and selling the work to the Pope, who pretended not to notice anything but the purported subject.

There are well-known artists who have “worse” pasts: born in bordellos, child prostitutes, sleeping on both sides of the sheets and so on.  And that’s just the sex part which has always been hit or miss, fight or switch.  No one says anything about all that when selling to the middle-class righteous, but the info might be leaked quietly if it would enlist the sympathies of rich men with dubious pasts.  Besides sex, money participates in about the same patterns.

"Bacchus" by Caravaggio

People love arousal, CRAVE arousal, and nothing does the job as well as yearning, esp. yearning for something one can’t have.  But somehow — I think from being educated — I’ve grasped that the thing to do with yearning is not to find the artist and fuck him or her, but rather to look at where their finger is pointing: at their work, whatever it might be.  At what THEY yearn for.  Not always art.  And then to learn as much about it as you can.  Be your own lover.  You might be really good at it, creating masterpieces, contributing to the world.  Aside from that, to stand beside someone and see what they see is about as intimate as a human being can get.  Physical arousal is easy.  You can buy equipment.  But emotional/
intellectual shared arousal can be ecstatic to the point of merger for a lifetime.

I don’t go to the Russell auction anymore.  The people I knew are all dead or don’t go either.  The publicity is not enticing:  how much money was made, who topped whom.  Nothing about the actual art.  But I remember one morning when I did go.  I was having breakfast in the motel coffee shop because I’d left Valier very early.  The auction is held in a rather grand motel with a huge space in the middle and a swimming pool indoors.  The motel takes all the room furniture out and stores it in trucks.  Then the artists bring in stands and screens for the art and sell from the rooms.  (After the auction when the rooms are empty it’s a good chance to shampoo the carpets.)

In the café an obviously upper-income woman sat down in the next banquette and we exchanged pleasantries.  Then she asked me if I knew any good places to visit, because she had been there so many times that she’d seen all the museums, galleries, locations, and phenomena and she was bored.  I suggested that she go to the college and ask a geologist about the area, or go to the nearest Native American center or senior citizen center and spend some time visiting with them.  I suggested that she buy a cheap paint set and try her hand at portraying the buttes near town that Charlie painted.  I thought she could inquire at a ranch supply place about persons who would let her ride horses with them.  Etc.  She rejected all my ideas.  She wanted something upscale she could go watch and then claim she had crossed off her bucket list, as though she would ever do anything so vulgar as to carry a bucket.  Then she saw a celebrity, excused herself and hurried over to court him.

It was the same pattern in the ministry.  No one wanted the content of the thought — they all wanted the special inclusion in the inner circle, the most beloved, the disciples — except it never occurred to them that disciples have duties.  I never considered it pleasant to have such acolytes.  I always worried that they’ll want to oil my feet with their hair.

YET ANOTHER BLACKFEET BIBLIOGRAPHY -- DISCUSSION

A Blackft class learning sign language

There are almost as many Blackft bibliographies (lists of books about or by Blackft) as there are books of Blackft myths.  Probably too few in the first case, because they are always out-dated as soon as they are written and none of them include videos or blogs or music.  Too much is changing too quickly for a stable list, so I’m putting my list on this blog where I can update it over time.  

In the case of books about myths, the subject is not just fluid but also controversial.  As people transitioned from oral culture to written culture, it became apparent that they’d all been telling various versions — there is no Bible of mythology, definitive and authoritative, just a half dozen versions, at least.  White people in particular are quick to see any book about myth as equivalent to the Biblical myths, so one is immediately forced to admit that the Christian myths are just that and probably as various before they were written down.  Or else they raise up the Blackft stories and force them into the Christian template.  All heroic characters become Jesus and the Sun becomes Jehovah.

I'm spelling Blackft this way because in the US the word is spelled BlackFEET and in Canada the word is spelled BlackFOOT.  Many other words are spelled one way in Canada and another on the US side.  For instance, Piegan/Peigan.  It didn't matter a lot until computers demanded "accurate" spelling, meaning something like universal.  Then along came the righteous and demanded a return to the original names of the People, but they were an "oral culture" with no writing and those on one side of the rez pronounced the words differently so ended up with different spellings.  Even in English, one part of the rez spells "saddle" as "sattle" because that's the way they pronounce it.  They don’t hear the difference between a “d” and a “t.”  This symbols stuff is pretty tricky.

For instance, there are sounds in Blackft for which there are no English consonants.  To accurately "spell" those words one must go to a universal symbol system (which most of us have never learned) or go to a language like German that uses an alphabet with the back of the mouth sounds in it.  Pronunciation and spelling is the least of it -- this generation of Blackft on the US side hasn't learned or even heard those consonants.  So the language is simply bent and truncated to fit English.  It’s just as authentic isn’t it?  It’s spoken by today’s Blackft.

There is a way for everyone to hear traditional spoken Blackft: tribal radio stations like these two:

www.browningmontana.com/kbwg107.5fm.html

www.ammsa.com/content/cfwe-fm-radio  

These are low power stations, so hearing them means either being close or streaming.  There will be a lot of basketball games.  Or you can use a search engine to find white stations that repeat Windspeaker episodes.

There is very little writing IN Blackfoot, but most of it is at the University of Lethbridge.  (Lethbridge is a city bigger than any in Montana.  It is 120 miles from me, but I can’t go there until I can pay to have my passport renewed.  I balk.)

http://www.uleth.ca/artsci/native-american-studies

http://www.uleth.ca/artsci/native-american-studies/courses

Donald Frantz is the man who wrote the two Blackft language books that everyone buys and thinks they will learn, but one really needs a community for speaking the language.  Nevertheless, sometimes the books really help to decode Blackft words.  Learning to WRITE or even read Blackft is quite different from learning to SPEAK it.  

U of Lethridge, Alberta

Most of the tribal colleges in Montana and Alberta offer courses in the indigenous languages.  They will probably be taught by members of that tribal category.  The great value of speaking a different language is learning to see the world in a different way.  Every word carries a huge shadow of images, implications, experience, tropes and associations.  To TRULY learn a language means learning the sensory experience, human relationships, and cultural assumptions that developed in that specific place.  

Many people who have learned the languages of oral peoples have the purpose of creating written versions of Christian texts.  Frantz comes from this tradition.  This means that those who feel that learning the language will provide access to the Blackft spiritual world will probably not succeed by learning the written language, which is passed through a Christian filter.  This is not to put down Frantz or any others who have done this, because it is often the earliest and sometimes the ONLY access a person might have.

Donald Frantz

Recently I read about a scientific study of languages, the actual sounds of them, that discovered words respond to the environment in the very choice of vowels and consonants.  In a flat broad place, consonants make the words more intelligible.  In a jungly forested place sounds travel differently.  In Hawaii there are very few consonants: the language is carried by vowels.  In northern places, like Norway, there are lots of consonants.
http://nautil.us/blog/how-a-countrys-land-shapes-its-language

“Montana, 1911” is the translated diary of the wife of a professor (Uhlenbeck) trying to learn Blackfeet.  In the morning he interviewed speakers and listened carefully, sometimes transcribing what he thought he heard.  In the evening he tried telling stories in Blackft to an audience of Blackft friends, who often laughed at him before they corrected him.

Most people on the rez, at least those who interact with locals, pick up words like “sokahpi” which means good.  Many people learning a new language will pick up the dirty words and cursing first because that sort of electrified words because of reactions.  But there AREN’T any of those kinds of words in Blkft.  If they hit their thumb with a hammer, the words they use are English or maybe French if they are a bit Metis (mixed).  I have no idea what they said before contact.

“Books” really means “codexes” — that is, pages with writing that are fastened inside covers, suitable for sales and for stacking on shelves.  They are a European middle-class invention that fits into the assumptions of acquisition, prestige, accumulation, display, promotion and fashion.  Even the idea of “forbidden” private books.  Or books schools require.  All this is a function of a certain kind of society.  Some say that because it is based on the Ferengian tradition (“Star Trek”) of selling anything to anybody and therefore living on the fringes and transitions and avoiding offence, so it is a function of diplomacy.  

But many see books as a threat when governments or corporations understand they are introducing new ideas.  In the Seventies when many incendiary counterculture books were rumored and wanted (“Be Here Now”, “Steal This Book”), they circulated in backpacked unauthorized xeroxes, so you never got to read the first and last pages because they wore off.

Cyber-access has changed all that.  The Blackfeet Reservation has issued electronic tablets to all their kids, which means that the adults, alongside, are learning to use them.  CD and MP3 players abound, and people listen to books as they drive or travel long distances.  (Everything on the prairie is far away).  Many teachers use video cameras for student projects.  It is a form of "literacy," though that’s a word developed by codexes.

If the old-time Blackft, the Nitsitahpi, had had electronic tablets, even in the days before the horse when dogs and people carried everything, we would have a huge store of spoken and pictured resources in Blackft.  Clothes would have had pockets for carrying electronic devices.  Of course, they would have to recharge at currant bushes, but they’re close enough to sarvisberry bushes that the people would soon locate the best patches. (jokes)  It’s just that on the prairies one would have to depend on satellite networks because there are no tall trees.  But wait!  There are still high ridges like the one where Lewis and the young Blackft horse raiders met.  That didn’t work out so well.  It still comes back to culture.

There is only one Blkft text that I know of that is in sign language  It is a video of old-timers visiting among themselves.  They do a lot of laughing and joking, but it is not the malicious kind of thing on white radio talk shows.  Every time I try to talk with old timers by using sign language, they roar with language and accuse me of saying dirty things.  You can pantomime suggestive things in every language.  Even Scalia knew that.

BOOKS ABOUT OR BY "BLACKFEET" THAT ARE ON MY SHELVES

THIS BIB IS IN A STATE OF BECOMING.  THERE WILL BE ADDITIONS IN FUTURE.  It's fine to share, but you might want to put dates on your downloads.

Bibliography:  Blackfoot or Blackfeet

THE BLACKFEET: AN ANNOTATED BIBILIOGRAPHY by Brian R. Johnson, 1988

EARLY BOOKS BY WHITE PEOPLE

The Journals of Lewis and Clark, ed by Bernard DeVoto, 1953

The Old North Trail, Or, Life, Legends, and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians

By Walter McClintock

University of Nebraska Press, 1999

Old Indian Trails by Walter McClintock, 1923

SOUTHWEST MUSEUM LEAFLETS

All by Walter McClintock in the Twenties

• Painted Tipis and Picture-Writing of the Blackfoot Indians”
• Blackfoot Medicine Pipe Ceremony
• Dances of the Blackfoot Indians
• The Blackfoot Beaver Bundle
• The Blackfoot Tipi
• Blackfoot Warrior Societies

Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People                                                                

By George Bird Grinnell,  1962 (Bison Books reissue)

Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell, 1926

BOOKS BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ

“Tales of Life Among the Indians” by James Willard Schultz, edited by Warren L. Hanna, 1988

"Friends of My Life as an Indian" by James Willard Schultz, 1923

BOOKS BY ANTHROPOLOGISTS

Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians By Clark Wissler; D. C. Duvall, 1995.  Intro by Alice Beck Kehoe.

Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians by Clark Wissler,  1909

“The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization”, 1989

BOOKS BY JOHN C. EWERS

• THE BLACKFEET, Raiders on the Northwestern Plains by John C. Ewers, 1958
• The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture: With Comparative Material from Other Western Tribes”  By John C. Ewers   U.S. Government Printing Office, 1955
• “Plains Indian History and Culture: Essays on Continuity and Change” by John C. Ewers
• Blackfeet and Buffalo: Memories of Life among the Indians, by James Willard Schultz, edited by Keith Seele, 1962
• Indian Life on the Upper Missouri by John C. Ewers, 1968
• “Blackfeet Crafts” by John C. Ewers, 1945

BOOKS BY OTHER ANTHROS

"Anthropological Essays" by Oscar Lewis, 1946 to 1970  Contains two significant essays: The Effects of White Contact Upon Blackfoot Culture, 1942 and Manly-Hearted Women among the North Piegan, 1942.

"Native North American Cultures: Four Cases."  The Hano Tewa/The Kwaikiutl/The Blackfeet/The Menominee.  Edited by George and Louise Spindler.  The Blackfeet section was written by Malcolm McFee. 1972.

"Changing Configurations of the Social Organization of a Blackfoot Tribe During the Reserve Period" by Esther S. Goldfrank, 1945.  MOnographs of the American Ethnographical Society.

"Modern Blackfeet: Montanans on a Reservation" by Malcolm McFee, 2013 reissue with intro by Graybill
"Modern Blackfeet: Montanans on a Reservation", 1972

The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe by Margaret Mead, 1932  She gave the Blackfeet a pseudonym:  “Antler.”

“The Sun Dance People” by Richard Erdoes, 1972

CONTEMPORARY WRITING ABOUT OLD TIMES

"The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West" by Andrew R. Graybill, 2013.  The story of the Clarke family.

"The Bear Knife and Other American Indian Tales" collected by Ruth-Inge Heinze,1994

“The Blackfeet” by Theresa Jensen Lacey, 1995  (Public school text)

"A Schoolmaster with the Blackfeet Indians" by Douglas Gold  1963

“I Will Die an Indian” An Anthology published by the Institute of the American West, a division of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities, 1980

Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940   By Sherry L. Smith   2000

Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian

by George Devereaux, 1951  (Source for “Jimmy P”, the film.)

Montana 1911:  A Professor and his Wife among the Blackfeet” by Wilhelmina Maria Uhlenbeck-Melchoir (her diary) with C.C. Uhlenbeck’s Original Blackfeet Texts

The Reservation Blackfeet, 1882-1945  by William E. Farr

“Blackfoot Redemption: A Blood Indian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and imperfect Justice.”  by William E. Farr,  2012

Mission Among the Blackfeet by Howard L. Harrod, 1971

“Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1854” by Paul C. Rosier, 2001.

Mission Among the Blackfeet, by Howard L. Harrod,  1971

The Great North Trail by Dan Cushman, 1966

"Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains" by Theodore Binnema

"An Historical Analysis of the Administration of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation by the United States 1855-1950's"  by Michael F. Foley,  Indian Claims Commission Docket #279-D

BOOKS BY JACK HOLTERMAN

"King of the High Missouri: the Saga of the Culbertsons" by Jack Holterman, 1987
also see
"Frontier Diplomats: The Life and Times of Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-Siksina" by Lesley Wischman, 2000

"Place Names of Glacier/Waterton National Parks," 1985

CONTEMPORARY WRITING ABOUT THE PRESENT

"Piegan" by Richard Lancaster, 1966

CANADIAN WRITING ABOUT BLACKFOOT

The Gowen Sites: Cultural Responses to Climatic Warming on the Northern Plains (7500-5000 B.P.) by Ernest G. Walker, 1992

"Blackfoot Grammar" by Donald G. Frantz, 1991

"Blackfoot Dictionary of Stems, Roots, and Affixes" by D.G. Frantz and N.J. Russell, 1989

"Sweetgrass Hills, a Natural and Cultural History"  by Johan F. Dormaar  (Occasional paper #38, Lethbridge Historical Society, PO Box 974, Lethbridge, Alberta TiJ 4A2)

"Changing Configurations of the Social Organization of a Blackfoot Tribe During the Reserve Period" by Esther S. Goldfrank, 1945.  MOnographs of the American Ethnographical Society.

BOOKS BY HUGH DEMPSEY

"With Eagle Tail: Arnold Lupson and 30 Years among the Sarcee, Blackfoot and Stoney Indians on the North American Plains" by Colin F. Taylor and Hugh Dempsey.  1999

"Firewater: The Impact of the Whisky Trade on the Blackfoot Nation",  by Hugh Dempsey,  2002

BOOKS BY ADOLF AND/OR BEVERLY HUNGRY WOLF

"Indian Tribes of the Northern Rockies", a compilation"  1989
"Children of the Sun", 1987
"Shadows of the Buffalo"
"The Ways of My Grandmothers", 1980  (Beverly)
"Daughters of the Buffalo women: Maintaining the Tribal Faith, 1996 (Beverly)
"The Blood People"
"Siksika"
"The Blackfoot People"
"Charlo's People"
"The Good Medicine Books"
   "Life in Harmony with Nature"  1970
"Pow-Wow" Vol. 1"  1983

"Siksika:  A Blackfoot Legacy"y by Ben Calf Robe with Adolf and Beverly Hungry Wolf, 1979

FICTION and memoir ABOUT BLACKFEET BY BLACKFEET or Blackfoot

"The McCluskey Boys" Adventures in an Indian Boarding School" by M. L. McCluskey, 2012

JIM WELCH

Novels

• Winter in the Blood (1974)

• The Death of Jim Loney (1979)

• Fools Crow (1986)

• The Indian Lawyer (1990)

• The Heartsong of Charging Elk (2000)

Nonfiction

• Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians (1994)

Poetry

• Riding the Earthboy 40 (1971 rpt. 1975)

• Last Stand at Little Bighorn

• Christmas Comes to Moccasin Flat

THOMAS KING
"One Good Story, That One"  by Thomas King,  1993

WOODY KIPP

Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist (American Indian Lives)  May 1, 2008

STERLING HOLY WHITE MOUNTAIN

PERCY BULL CHILD

“The Sun Comes Down

SIDNER J. LARSON

“Catch Colt”, 1995

DOROTHY STILL SMOKING

"Tribal Education: A Case Study of Blackfeet Elders: A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education"  Montana State University, Bozeman.  April 1997.

LOCAL BLACKFEET BOOKS AND BOOKLETS

• “The Tale Goes with the Hide:  Memoirs of a Bullshooter”  by Rod Paisley, 1980
• “Chief Mountain Tales: Stories of the Chief Mountain area” by Rod Paisley, 1993
• “Big Sky Tales: True Stories of Western History, Special People, Memories of Experiences, Special Places and Humor.” by Rod Paisley   Paisley is a descendent of Lame Bull and Major George Steell.

“Black Moccasin: Life on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation” by John Tatsey, 1971

       Tatsey was “the Law” in Heart Butte for many years.

HEART BUTTE SCHOOL BILINGUAL PROGRAM and COUNCIL FOR INDIAN EDUCATION  1984

• “The Time up in the Sky:  Poems by students of Heart Butte School” edited by Nick Fedullo
• “Famine Winter” as told by Red Eagle to James Willard Schultz
• “Running Eagle, Pi’tamaka, Woman Warrior of the Blackfeet” as told by Tail-Feathers-Coming-Over the Hill and “The Cause of Things” as told by Red Eagle, recorded by James Willard Schultz, 1996
• Warrior Expressions '97  Literary Magazine

BLACKFEET HERITAGE PROGRAM

• “Sta-ai-tsi-nix-sin: Ghost Stories”,1979
• “Napi Stories”, 1979   Darnell Davis Rides at the Door, compiler.
• “The Educational Movement of the Blackfeet Indians, 1840-1979”,  1980.  By Jackie Parsons
• “Grass Woman Stories” by Mary Ground, 1978.
• “Roaming Days: Warrior Stories” by George Comes at Night, 1978
• “Pinto Horse Rider” by Tom Many Guns, 1979.

ASSORTED

“THE LAST STRONGHOLD: Badger-Two Medicine, Sacred Land of the Grizzly, Wolf and Blackfeet Indian” by Bob Yetter

“A Worthy Work in a Needy Time:  THE MONTANA INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL FOR INDIANS”  Bond’s Mission, 1886-1897  by Margery Pease (Malay It-chey, “Good Wood”)  1986

NAPI’s LOOKOUT:  The story of Willow Rounds” 1984

"Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions" by Andrew Gulliford, 2000

SPECIALIZED

"Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives" by Bruno Nettl., 1989.

"Encounters in Ethnomusicology: a Memoir" by Bruno Nettl, 2002

"Montana East of the Mountains,"  Photos by Rick and Susie Graetz, 1998.

RELIGION

"Mission Among the Blackfeet" by Howard L. Harrod,  1971

"Becoming and Remaining a People" by Howard L. Harrod, 1995

"The Animals Came Dancing:  Native American Sacred Ecology and Animal Kinship" by Howard L. Harrod, 2000

"The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian" by Joseph Epes Brown, 1982

"The Gospel of the Redman: A Way of Life" by Ernest Thompson Seton and Julia M. Seton, 1966

"Red Man's Religion" by Ruth M. Underhill, 1965.

"Beyond the Primitive: the Religions of Nonliterate Peoples" by Sam D. Gill, 1982.

"Native American Religions: An Introduction" by Sam D. Gill, 1982  (The Religious Life of Man Series)

"Native American Religions: An Introduction"  by Denise Lardner Carmody and John Tully Carmody, 1993

"The Sacred Tree: Reflections on Native American Spirituality,"  collaboratively written, 1984


FUR TRADE AND METIS/RED RIVER

"Strange Empire" by Joseph Kinsey Howard, 1952, 1994.  (Latter with an intro by Nicholas C. P. Vrooman.

"Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont" by Joseph Boyden, 2010.  

"Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870" by Sylvia Van Kirk. 1980.

"Scottish Highlanders, Indian Peoples: Thirty Generations of a Montana Family" by James Hunter, 1996,

"Children of the Fur Trade: Forgotten Métis of the Pacific Northwest," by John C. Jackson, 1996.