The Blackfoot gallery committee tell it like it is

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Nitsitapiisinni-The Story of the Blackfoot People

By the Blackfoot Gallery Committee, The Glenbow Museum

Key Porter Books

88 pages

$19.95 (sc)

Key Porter Books has just released Nitsitapiisinni: The Story of the Blackfoot People, a book written by the staff of the Blackfoot Gallery of the Glenbow Museum. Nitsitaissinni means our way of life.

The slim volume represents a collaboration between Blackfoot Elders and spiritual leaders and museum staff in order to set to paper Blackfoot history and traditions as a permanent record for the first time. It documents the elements of the people's beliefs and practices from earliest times to the present day, and it discusses how the old ways have been fused with or distinguished from the ways of the newcomers to Blackfoot territory.

The story is plainly written in seven short chapters with many pictures highlighting the lives of the Kainai (Blood), Pikani (Peigan) and Siksika tribes. The Peigan includes the Amsskaapipikani people of Montana and the Apatohsipikani of southern Alberta. A glossary of Blackfoot terms is included in the back.

Both positive and negative adaptations of the culture since European contact are seen here. While the book points out that "much has changed in our culture and many young people have difficulty learning our language," it also states "the core values of our culture are still important to us." Important enough to share, with the hope that even after all that has happened in the last century and a half, disparate peoples may yet learn to live together in harmony.

It explains that in the early days a few people prospered under the imported European regime, such as those Blackfoot men who positioned themselves to control access to traders holding desired new goods such as copper and metal pots, cloth and beads, but the disadvantages and losses to their way of life were great. As a few Indians acquired wealth and status through their association with traders, the people's traditional non-linear government by consensus was steadily undermined. The negative effects of alcohol, foreign diseases, the demise of the buffalo hunt, racist laws and policies and residential schools also are predictably mentioned, but the book is no mere catalogue of negative experiences where two cultures meet.

The book has come out to coincide with a new Blackfoot exhibit that opened at the Glenbow Nov. 3.

It is factual, not academic. Analysis is left out of it. Rather, this book is an invitation to "come see." The person who is drawn to the broader, tactile experience of the gallery will find more to admire than regret in the Blackfoot legacy.

Myths and legends that bring out the pragmatic and artistic facets of the resilient Blackfoot identity predominate in this book. It is a story of survival and a testament to the fact that the great assimilation experiment failed.

The acknowledgments section reveals that although there was both corporate and provincial government support of the Blackfoot Gallery and this book, both book and gallery are clearly products of Blackfoot ideas, direction and substantial control. The Blackfoot Gallery committee is heavy with Blackfoot names, and the Glenbow's senior curator of ethnology, Gerald Conaty, states he spent more than 10 years learning Blackfoot history and culture before these projects came to life.

Earl Old Person, chairman of the Blackfeet Tribal Council, writes an introduction that hints at the reason they produced the book: "Our ability to adapt to the environment and to change is infinite and assures our survival. The struggles Indian people went through to survive assimilation by the United States and Canadian governments have made us stronger and it is through this experience that we can conquer the obstacles ahead."

This book is highly recommended for readers of all ages and abilities who want to understand how "real Indians" live and think.