Blackfoot Elders

ELDERS

In Piikani society, an elder is somebody who has looked after a bundle that helped the community, and who has passed on that bundle and become a ceremonial grandparent. The ceremonial grandparent can be called back to conduct or oversee ceremonies. And you look to them for guidance, and consult with them.

We asked our elders about how to communicate between a white man’s world and an Indian’s world - because the world we live in today has so much confusion, and this causes a lack of communication, which leads to conflict.

We wanted to look at how we view the world from our Piikani belief systems - those forms of knowledge that have been in place for thousands of years.

So we asked our Elders: who are we as Indian thinkers? Our Creation stories; what do they say? And a lot of our stories said that humans were created as equal to all creation. And the concept of being equal defined our thinking and understanding. So I was equal to the animals and plants, the air and the water; the stars were equal to me, and I was equal to all human beings, and even to bugs.

Now the concept of being created equally was the basis of all our practices - our forms of governance, and social relations. We are all created together, and all are sacred. So our Piikani Blackfoot language and oral system are based in ceremonial practices; a ceremonial circle structure was our way of communicating and working in a group.

Then we asked our elders: What is a white man thinker? And they recalled the saying, “God gives dominion to man.” We were taught in residential school that this dominion gives man the right to be superior over all Creation: over the plants, animals, rocks, even the skies. This type of thinking was new to our elders; because if you’re superior to everything, then the power to make decisions and build credibility is given to man; it’s not in Creator’s hands any more.

The word “dominion” used to appear on all the government documents. Every document the Indian agent gave out had “Dominion of Canada” written on it. So we had to learn a new language based on the idea of the superiority of man. And authority was now held in written documents, rather than rites transferred through song and ceremony. And we look to documents for authority today; we ask, “What kind of paper does he have?” This defines leadership now: the products owned and acquired through dominion, authorized by the written word, and controlled by a hierarchy that places man at the top of all creation.

All these concepts were embedded in the white man’s education, government and religion. And today we have to operate within that perspective. This creates challenges for us, in passing on traditional Piikani knowledge to our children.

If we’re going to keep our culture alive, we need to involve our elders and ceremonial grandparents in our operations. So we took the circle model that our Elders had, and started working with that - looking at how to interpret that so we can use it today.

For example, when we discuss things or make decisions, the topic is like a sacred bundle – it should be opened respectfully and understood with care, as deeply as possible. We still have a smudge altar, which is parallel to the gavel used in modern boardrooms to start meetings. And we still need our elders at the door, to advise and watch over us, and help us to respectfully manage our process. These are just a few examples of how we have been adapting our circle model, and the knowledge of our elders, to the modern world.