NEWSLETTER

People need to know that we are on the bridge toward allowing spirituality back to the Blackfeet. The ceremonies that we have today are like opening the door, getting a glimpse of something, and then opening the door again to find out if you really saw what you thought you’d seen. We have the Medicine Pipe Thunder Bundles here—two of them. That’s the most-often-used ceremony in our tribe. We have the Beaver Bundle ceremony here too. That is an old, old ceremony that was recently brought back to life.

I have taken care of two Beaver Bundles now. The Beaver Bundle includes the entire universe inside it. The celestial beings, the earth beings, and the water beings all interact in it. That isn’t the case with the Medicine Pipe Bundle. That’s more exclusively about birds.

Traditional Blackfeet spirituality wasn’t a part of my upbringing. At that time, Blackfeet spirituality was very much undercover. It was just elderly people secretly practicing the ceremonies.

Since we don’t speak the language, people think that the ceremonies are not the same as they once were. In reality, it has nothing to do with language. It mainly has to do with belief and music, which I guess is just a different form of language. The music was given to us Blackfeet people by all the animals, the birds, and the spirits of the universe. Some of our stories talk about, for example, an individual who fell asleep and had a badger come to them and give them a song. Then that song would become the spiritual ability of that person.

I see an assessment going on among our people right now. At one time, you couldn’t discuss any opinions. Everything was yes or no. That seems to be changing now. People are more open to talking about beliefs. I see that as the beginning to a better society. Within a couple of decades, we will have massive change.

I lived through a time when material poverty was the only way of life. I’m talking about a house without running water. You either had a metal tub or you cleaned up in the river. My lifestyle now is much better. I have been learning and practicing the ceremonies for 20 years now. It is a respectful way of living. There was a time when our ceremony people discovered alcohol, and everyone was scared of them. I mean, let’s say there was a person who could actually heal you if you were sick, but you went to see them and they were drunk. You would be a little reluctant to ask them for help. Now we are more responsible.

I truly believe that there are Blackfeet people who will pass through life without ever knowing the happiness of being a Blackfeet Indian. We went through an era of Indian self-hate. People didn’t want to acknowledge being an Indian. They had a lot of shame and a lot of internal sadness and they didn’t know why.

Indians attack their own people, both subtly and obviously. It’s called internalized oppression. The way our culture is designed—the way we are designed—is that we like to share our happiness with people. But if you start to make too many people happy, the internalized oppression on the reservation will turn around and create a jealousy among our people. They will try to tear down the happiness they’re seeing.

We really don’t communicate among ourselves very well. We don’t know each other. Our reservation has 1.5 million acres and 8,500 people, so some of us have never met each other or said “hello” or “I like you” or “I dislike you.” Somewhere in this last 100 years, we lost our connections with each other. There used to be a common saying in our community. Every time you’d meet someone, you’d say, “Oh, you’re my cousin!” Then people even started shaming that saying. They thought it was sort of a hillbilly thing to say. But that saying gets to the heart of our Blackfeet mind-set: We claim everybody rather than excluding them.

CAROL MURRAY

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