Description
Book SynopsisBlackfoot Ways of Knowing is a journey into the heart and soul of Blackfoot culture. As a scholar and researcher, Betty Bastien places Blackfoot tradition within a historical context of precarious survival amid colonial displacement and cultural genocide. In sharing her personal story of reclaimed identity, Bastien offers a gateway into traditional Blackfoot ways of understanding and experiencing the world.
For the Siksikaitsitapi, knowledge is experiential, participatory, and ultimately sacred. Bastien maps her own process of coming to know, stressing the recovery of the Blackfoot language and Blackfoot notions of reciprocal responsibilities and interdependence.
Rekindling traditional ways of knowing is essential for Indigenous peoples in Canada to heal and rebuild their communities and cultures. By sharing what she has learned, Betty Bastien hopes to ensure that the next generation of Indigenous people will enjoy a future of hope and peace.
Trade ReviewBastien has produced an important work that lays the foundation for making the Blackfoot way of knowing more accessible. Her discussions of Siksikaitsitapi ontology and pedagogy offer culturally appropriate ways of transferring this knowledge through a Siksikaitsitapi-controlled education system. Russel Wright, the late Siksika teacher and elder often said, "We have been studied to death. It is time we start studying ourselves back to life." He would have been proud of Betty Bastienâs study. Geralt T Contay, Histoire social/Social History
Betty Bastien's ambitious goal is no less than the decolonization of Blackfoot ways of knowing as a vehicle to regaining independence, promoting personal and cultural healing, and providing a basis for a new educational system . . . Bastien has done a good job in capturing the complex issues that concern many Blackfoot elders who are striving to live by means of traditional teachings and fulfilling the responsibilities that come with having a "good heart." Patricia A. McCormack, Great Plains Quarterly
Table of Contents
- Foreword by Pete Standing Alone (Nii'ta'kaiksa'maikoan)
- Preface by Betty Bastien (Sikapinaki)
- Blackfoot (Siksikaitsipowahsin) Pronunciation Key by Duane Mistaken Chief, Sr.
- I. Context
- 1.Introduction
- 2. Innahkootaitsinnika'topi - History of the Blackfoot-Speaking Tribes
- 2.1 Introductory Remarks
- 2.2. Iitotasimahpi Iimitaikes - The Era of the Dog or the Time of the Ancestors (Pre-Eighteenth Century)
- 2.3. Ao'ta'sao'si Ponokaomita - The Era of the Horse (Eighteenth Century to 1880)
- 2.4 Ao'maopao'si - From when we settled in one place (1880)
- 3. Cultural Destruction - Policies of Ordinary Genocide
- II. Tribal Protocol and Affirmative Inquiry
- 4. Niinohkanistssksinipi - Speaking Personally
- 5. Traditional Knowledge in Academe
- 6. Cultural Affirmation
- 7. Protocol of Affirmative Inquiry
- III. Affirmation of Indigenous Knowledge
- 8. Kakyosin - Traditional Knowledge
- 9. Kiiomohpiipotoko - Ontological Responsibilities
- 10. Siksikaitsitapi Ways of Knowing - Epistemology
- 11. Knowledge is Coming to Know Ihtsipaitapiiyo'pa
- 12. Kakyosin/Mokaksin - Indigenous Learning
- 13. Niitsi'powahsinni - Language
- 14. Aipommotsspistsi - Transfers
- 15. Kaaahsinnooniksi - Grandparents
- IV. Conclusion: Renewal of Ancestral Responsibilities as Antidote to Genocide
- 16. Deconstructing to Colonized Mind
- 17. Eurocentred and Niitsiapi Identity
- 18. Reflections and Implications
- Afterword: Remembering Ancestral Conversations by JÜrgen W. Kremer
- Glossaries by Duane Mistaken Cheif with JÜrgen W. Kremer
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Siksikaitsipowahsin-English
- English-Siksikaitsipowahsin
- Biblography
