NARCISSE BLOOD: GONE ON AHEAD

Narcisse Blood

To people away from here and even to people who are here, there is a tendency to think about “Indians” or “aboriginals” as all one thing, one type -- maybe good and maybe bad.  There are some who define them according to white academic anthropologies and some who see them as assimilated.  Few are equipped to see a category that is at the boundary between the past and the future, not as a point of division, but as a line of meshing, interacting, extending.  Narcisse Blood was one of those people.  I am honored to have known him a little bit while he was alive and grateful that he can still be seen and heard at sources like YouTube.

Like Darrell Kipp, he was a traveler, an interlocutor, a practitioner of what the French call “L'entretien infini” which goes on many ways in many places.  The key word here is “place.”  Narcisse was a man of Place in the most real and living sense.  But also note that this French phrase translates as “endless conversation” for which you need two people: these people were working in dialoging and collaborating pairs but also between populations.  

Some years ago Rosalyn LaPier and Darrell Kipp produced August seminars featuring Siksika scholars, another category many people just don’t register.  It was meant to increase understanding between whites and rez people.   One year Narcisse Blood and Ryan Heavyhead were invited to describe their summer’s work mapping the ancient trails and camping spots of the Nitsitahpi.  They did this walking, as the dog people did, using logic and empathy to figure out where a person would go, then employing GPS to mark the spots on the great dry sea of the east slope prairie, and then sending that info back to Red Crow College where computers recorded it on wide printed-out maps.

They were a little late, having had a bit of trouble at the border as usual, and made an entrance with us all sitting laughing at Darrell’s corny jokes.  Two handsome slim-hipped men, sun-dark, walking easy with their backpacks and wide-brimmed hats.  We were all smitten.  Darrell said,  “Welcome, my brothers.”  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9HrBw1o_YI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7hIELgcS9I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD5CaCixgww

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGEDUgDIRdM

These videos are about Narcisse and the other fatality, Michael Green, also a close collaborator.  

They (Narcisse, Ryan, Darrell) are “catch-fire” people, kindlers.  Narcisse was naturally a person of “oral culture” -- didn’t write much, but Ryan could handle the academic stuff, the pesky white man’s paper hoops.  The compromise was videography and the production of films.  Ryan called it being “artists of relationship” -- Narcisse said, “Let’s tell some stories together!”

At first glance these two guys might seem a mismatch.  Ryan is a martial arts standout who rehabilitates magpies and rescues rattlesnakes from their danger in an urban environment by taking them to the nearest rattlesnake community.  He always knows where they are.  These two guys were Power People, but it was the Power for Good.  Ryan's tribute video on YouTube, which includes memories from Ryan’s wife, a news account of the crash, and a direct address to Narcisse, might give outsiders some understanding.

My earliest trope as a traveling UU minister among congregations a hundred miles apart was that the land is a text which one “reads” by traveling across it.  This fits into the work of Narcisse and Ryan.  It also offers a way of understanding of death -- that it means “traveling on ahead” over a horizon, an edge we cannot see across.  We don’t know what’s over there.  Sand hills?  Another way of existing?  Yet we have the strong feeling that the people we love are not gone, just “away”.  

Several times I was on the highways around Regina for one reason or another.  Once in particular was in perilous weather, snow/ice/rain obscuring the windshield, the roadway slick, late at night, and my van heater couldn’t cope.  I had a little three inch porthole I could see out of and my passenger, an intrepid young woman, helped navigate.  More than that, when the three-inch hole shrank even more, I would pull over and she leapt out with a scraper to make the hole bigger.  We were on prairie, no settlement, no place to hole up and wait.  More traffic than anyone would expect, all of it moving fast.  

Later, on another perilous trip, this time passing the actual Sand Hills in thirty below weather, the van simply stopped because the air intake had frozen shut.  That time a mechanic relocated the intake over a hot part of the motor and it worked.

I don’t know the circumstances of this particular accident that ripped a great wound in the arts/indigenous/academic community of the prairie, but it was weather-related, they say, with all the implications of some superhuman force smashing into our lives.  It’s a waste of time to rail at the injustice and unreasonableness of it, but important to grieve a while.  Narcisse had already planted the seeds of replacement and transformation.

Down here in Piegan country there has been schism focused on the ceremonialist aspect of Siksika (Blackfeet/foot) life.  Some have seen that they could make money by going through the motions of Bundle Opening.  Others have lived the ceremonies through their families.  Both need to remember what Narcisse instinctively knew and Ryan has learned -- that the real source of human spirituality on the prairie is the land itself and one doesn’t make ceremonies real by attending a pricey workshop some weekend.  Rather one walks it.  Daily.

One of the signs of ancient encampments is a big patch of sarvisberries because the people would historically use that spot as a latrine and “plant” berries with their own bodily fertilizer.  It’s a bit funky to think about, but this is the way the world works:  recycling, renewing, surprising with consequences of long ago happenings.  

No need to dwell on it, but it’s good to look for parallels: old discarded practices -- perhaps unpleasant or maybe just not needed anymore -- that laid a substrate for something new and unexpected.  Before there are berries, there are flowers -- quite beautiful.  But where there are berries, there are bears.  Life is not all garlands.  Keep walking.

NATIVE PLANTS v. TUMBLEWEEDS

This week I went back to Blackfeet Community College to hear Narcisse Blood and Ryan Heavy Head.  The topic was again Abraham Maslow’s visit to the Blood Reserve and how that appears to have triggered his “actualization” pyramid schema, probably as much prompted by tipi designs as anything else.  Blackfeet designs are very stylized, different heights for different depictions (hills and potholes at the bottom, four stripes near the top for the four directions, the spirit-animal on either side of the door, 7 stars on the smoke flap, the dream moth at the top of the back) that to the uninitiated may seem to be only stripes and dots.  These two Blackfoot teachers have given this talk many times and have a graceful way of trading off the speaking between them, guided by a series of old-time photos on a projection screen.  They’ve taken it to Oxford in England.

(You can find the presentation online:   http://blackfootdigitallibrary.com/en/asset/blackfoot-influence-abraham-maslow,-presented-narcisse-blood-and-ryan-heavy-head-university-mo   These speakers are conscientious about using the Internet to include everyone with a device that can access it.  Until recently, the infrastructure to access the materials was not necessarily present on the Blackfeet Rez.  Computers, yes; smart phones, maybe not.)

Always shadowing this sort of thing is the tension between the traditional academic approach (white European) and the traditional indigenous approach (red North American).  The problem in this setting is that for an institution like BCC to exist, providing useful credits for future academic work or for related employment, one doesn’t dare get too far off the trodden path.  Credentialing bodies are essentially conservative and often weighted against minority approaches.  But there is always ALWAYS a great need on the part of the people in the class (who are of all ages, but mostly women) to testify about the attacks, the grievances, the injustices, the weirdness of not being seen for who they are.  They are desperate (I’m not exaggerating) to hear explanatory principles, particularly coming from those like themselves.  

Actually, I was butting in, and though I was treated well, it was not for me and I should have bitten my tongue more.  Here was I, a person who has lived on the fringe for fifty years and built a pretty comprehensive library about Blackfeet, but both my genetics and politics are wrong.   Three of my former students were present, each of them vital, authoritative and great successes in their fields: Mary Margaret McKay Johnson, the newly retired Superintendent of School District #9 who miraculously was able to lead the district through building a new high school, a most risky and rewarding accomplishment; Debbie Magee Sherer, a world-class art beader and quillworker who wins major prizes and was accepted in England as equal to Narcisse and Ryan; and Gail Hoyt, a mainstay of the Methodist Church and a tackler of impossible projects in school humanities.  We were all young together. They’ve been far more successful in life than I have. 

They said nothing in class.  In spite of talk about how women “don’t get no credit,” when the organizer (female) asked for promising other authorities to address this class, none of the three was suggested.  Well, it happened to Jesus, whatever that means.  People don’t recognize their own resources, always looking for outside experts.  Though Narcisse and Ryan are not exactly outsiders. In fact, I failed to recognize Debbie until after the class, so I’m the most guilty of all.  http://blackfootdigitallibrary.com/en/asset/artist-perspective-debbie-magee-sherer

“Who are these Europeans?” Narcisse asked.  “What makes them so anxious to come to our land and take what we have?”  He might have also asked, “Why are the Americans less able to recognize and accept indigenous people than the Europeans in Europe?"   I suggested white Americans are tumbleweeds who have lost their roots, so blew across the continent until they came to something that stopped them -- like gold or oil or the Rockies.  Ryan had a better idea: reverse cargo cults.  Cargo cults formed on the South Pacific islands where the people witnessed war-time airplanes landing to unload huge piles of good stuff.   They invented ceremonies to make them come back.  But in this case, the planes landed when they saw something good to load INTO the airplanes and carry away.  

Both Red Crow Community College men talked about interviewing academics who work on Blackfoot issues and discovering that if they stuck with it long enough and questioned closely enough, the toughest guys would tear up and reveal their deep-hearted attachment ever since they, for instance, read “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.”   Narcisse asked, “What is it that makes them feel like that?  What are they searching for? Why do they think we have it?”  It’s a question at the intersection of anthropology and psychology -- maybe even geography or theology.  What is the GPS of happiness?  Of "self-actualization"?  That’s  where we ought to locate Maslow and his buddies, all those Third Force guys like Erikson, Perls, Rogers, May, and a host of others. Discipline boundaries sometimes interfere.  

Today the borders of disciplines and departments are all in question anyway.  On the humanities listservs that I monitor (environment, animals, indigenous peoples, and a little bit of literature), there is always a thread running about dumping out the old categories and reorganizing the territory.  When neurology and psychoanalysis are in fervent dialogue, why separate them?  When humans are dominating the environment, isn’t it time to seriously add the Anthropecene Era?  We just reclassified Pluto as a non-planet.  God has been replaced by a Higgs boson.

But these students do not ask such questions.  Anyway, they have enough to handle trying to figure out the traditional categories -- not all of which make that much sense.  There’s a sense of an unfair bait-and-switch game going on that might keep them struggling with classes and debts for the rest of their lives.  When do we get to the gainful employment anyway?

Ryan Heavy Head

Oh, joy!  Ryan Heavy Head has a blog.  http://akayokaki.blogspot.com   It’s about Kainai issues but also the land that supports them and the beings that inhabit it.   (Birds, bugs, snakes!) I took along a print-out of last week’s prairiemary essays prompted by the last workshop and handed them to Narcisse.  I think he couldn’t figure out what I wanted -- did I think he was a publisher?  Was I trying to seduce him?  (Fat chance!  I’ve heard him talk about his honey!)   Or just riding his coattails?  But I feel as though blogs are replacing textbooks if you know how to bring up the stuff you need and want.  It’s a time for scouting.  Blogs can be trails and track reports -- not just personal opinions, but maps of the information out there.  

The white tumbleweeds, by leaving their places of evolution, have lost their feeling for the survival of the larger group.  They have become so committed to themselves individually -- and possibly their own immediate families -- that they will happily sacrifice and crowd out all others.  This is why they are weeds, by their own standards, which industrial farmers and teakettle politicians want to eliminate with poisons and knives.  They fear wilderness, life going along on its own terms.   Instead of learning from it, they want to wall it out and end it.  Survival of the individual without the survival of the supporting and sheltering group is impossible.  But survival of the group at the expense of the destruction of individuals is evil and, in the end, self-destructive.  The question is:  are our family and education structures creating a kind of person who will destroy us all?  Sometimes I think so.  But Narcisse and Ryan give me hope.  Also Mary Margaret, Debbie, and Gail.  

CIRCLES ON THE PRAIRIE

“Circle of the Sun”  http://www.nfb.ca/film/circle-of-the-sun/  was made in 1960 by Colin Low, a Mormon who grew up in Cardston, Alberta, near the border.  Later he was a convert to Catholicism.  Plainly he is a religiously anchored man.  His point of view in this film is “salvage” mentality, meaning that he believed himself to be recording something that was disappearing, that should be saved because it was valuable and meaningful.  (He was quite right except for the part about disappearing -- it persisted but transformed.)  This short film is one of the earliest about life on the high prairie in the Blackfoot Nation, the most truthful of films and the most intimate, though what Low called “Sun Dance” was what I know as “Horn Society.”  He went on to make many anthropological films and now lives in Montreal.

I came to Browning, Montana, the next year (1961) and the movie shows the culture I stepped into.  Because I partnered with a white sculptor born in 1914 who had grown up here, and because he was so immersed in this culture himself that he began to dream, which the Browning old people interpreted as directions for becoming a Bundle Keeper, and because “the woman” is the practical protector of what goes on, I was in deep enough to be painted in one of those double lodges in the middle of the camp circle.  This film shows a Bundle Opening -- I think a Beaver Bundle because of the rattles on rawhide instead of hand drums.   Also, the film shows the last years of the previous oil drilling activity in the area which is now renewed by “frakking.”

The film uses as an anchor Pete Standing Alone, a handsome young man who spent ten years in the States to make a grubstake, then returned home to ranch and rodeo.  In the footage about the rodeo, watch for a puppy-pile of boys who seem to be petting a dog.  When they stand up, it turns out to be a colt.  These are intensely horse people.

http://www.nfb.ca/film/round_up/    This second film, "Round Up," is also about Pete Standing Alone, but now he’s old and selling off his horse herd.  This film was made by Narcisse Blood, a tribal member of the North Piegan.  I’ve never met Colin Low, but I’ve met Narcisse and heard him talk.  If all goes well, I’ll hear him talk again in Browning on Friday.  He’s speaking about Abraham Maslow’s brief but intense visit to the Blood Indians and some derived ideas called “Breath of Life”.  Narcisse is brilliant -- no one argues about it.  If you want to hear what he says, below are samples.  There are many more online, but my computer won’t open them so far.  If you are Blackfoot or are teaching about the Blackfoot confederacy, you will need to figure out how to watch them as they are an invaluable resource.  I’ll keep working on it myself.

http://www.galileo.org/initiatives/moka-meyo/moka/english/land.html

Writing on stone is the equivalent of cave art, except that it’s out in the open on cliff faces and therefore vulnerable.  Some of it is “pecked” into the surface.  None of the figures are as naturalistic as the cave paintings, but they are still interesting.

http://www.trailtribes.org/greatfalls/since-time-immemorial.htm

Great Falls is my shopping town, eighty miles to the south of Valier.

http://lc-triballegacy.org/video.php?backTo=0&source=tribe&tribe=3&vid=71

Lewis and Clark left their mark near here, both because it was the point from which they could see the northern limit of the Louisiana Purchase and because near here they killed the only Indians who were casualties of the expedition: boys herding horses camped overnight with them.

http://montanatribes.org/digital_archives/meet_the_speakers/NBl.html  This is a short video of Narcisse explaining his point of view.  He is a “code-switcher,” able to function in two worlds and aware of that.  What he may not be thinking about so far is how to find a universal “code” that can mediate between them.  That may not be necessary.  Humans may be able to handle several codes, switching as needed.  He finds his double understanding to be the answer for reconciling education with assimilation: two “kinds” of education, each on its own terms, depending on the setting.  In fact, the larger world already code-switches -- between humanities and “hard” science; or inside the “circle of believers” and outside the circle in the meta-thought world.

The Blackfeet in the US, the Amskapi Pikuni, have had the great advantage of staying in contact with the reservoir of the Blackfoot Confederacy across the arbitrary line of the 49^th parallel.  (A near-closed border, as at present, cripples them.)  As turbulence and greed have swept the Montana side, the Alberta reserves have kept more of the old ways.  Narcisse Blood gracefully accepts the obligation to renew the old ways of the land, reconcile them with the best of Euro-thought -- like Maslow’s Third Force psychology -- and express them in a voice precise and eloquent.  He sounds quite different from the activists on the Montana side.  He is calm and centered.

Piegan Institute is a formal institution meant to preserve and promote the speaking of Blackfeet and the accumulation of scholarly materials about the Blackfeet.  To understand the meaning of this, one must consider that during and after the AIM activism, Blackfeet tribal members were sometimes prevented from using the library of the federal Museum of the Plains Indian for fear that they might tear things up.  Then everything changed and the Museum itself “cleansed” the files of all things white, taking them to the dump.  When Darrell Kipp, on behalf of the Piegan Institute, took a college class of Blackfeet to Calgary to use the library of the Glenbow Institute, such a thing as a Blackfeet class visit had never happened before and the staff was worried to the point of alarm.  So when Rosalyn LaPier organized a series of annual August day-long academic lectures and invited Narcisse Blood and his teaching companion Ryan Heavy Head, it was a new thing to do.  They were late because the US side of the border had trouble understanding why they were coming.

When they entered, dark and lithe from a summer of walking in the sun to make GPS records of the old trails and camps on the east slope (many made in the days of the dog travois), it was as though they entered from another world and, in a sense, they did.  They had been walking in the past, for the sake of the future.  They knew what a day of walking was like and they knew how to translate that into a high tech medium, partly video and partly sophisticated map-making computers, that can be put on the Internet to escape the guards at libraries and museums.

Other indigenous people have also claimed identities developed in a specific place, later swamped or displaced by other cultures from elsewhere.  Now we see that somehow we’ve got to reconcile the mosaic of many people, all searching for something on which to stake their lives.  Rather than stamping out what came before, rather than strong people strangling the weak people in order to feed off their resources, we’ve got to find high principles and daily ways of sharing.