Description
Book Synopsis[LaPier’s] book refreshingly is tied to her extended family, especially its women, instead of the generalized ‘Blackfoot’ of most outside ethnographers. Readable in style, [Invisible Reality] conveys the self-respect and confidence that paternalist governance and poverty could not defeat.—A. B. Kehoe,Choice
Rosalyn R. LaPier demonstrates that Blackfeet history is incomplete without an understanding of the Blackfeet people’s relationship and mode of interaction with the “invisible reality” of the supernatural world. Religious beliefs provided the Blackfeet with continuity through privations and changing times. The stories they passed to new generations and outsiders reveal the fundamental philosophy of Blackfeet existence, namely the belief that they could alter, change, or control nature to suit their needs and that they were able to do so with the assistance of supernatural allies. The Blackfeet did not believe th
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“[LaPier’s] book refreshingly is tied to her extended family, especially its women, instead of the generalized ‘Blackfoot’ of most outside ethnographers. Readable in style, [Invisible Reality] conveys the self-respect and confidence that paternalist governance and poverty could not defeat.”—A. B. Kehoe, Choice
“Rosalyn LaPier guides us through the meanings the Blackfeet community has attached to the plants and natural phenomena that surround them and at the same time makes clear the boundless complexity and stunning beauty of this indigenous cultural tradition.”—Frederick E. Hoxie, Swanlund Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and editor of The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History
“This is an important, accomplished, creative, [and] imaginative history that zings with original insights.”—Sarah Carter, professor and the Henry Marshall Tory Chair of the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta and editor of Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own
“An important book that tackles some interesting philosophical issues in epistemology and ontology from a Native American perspective, [Invisible Reality] does so with a critical eye regarding change under colonization and modernity.”—Patricia Albers, professor of American Indian studies and anthropology at the University of Minnesota and coauthor of The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Something Vital Was Missing
1. No Nothing: The Blackfeet Reservation in 1910
2. Invisible Reality: The Blackfeet Universe
3. Visible Reality: The Saokiotapi
4. Closed Season: The Blackfeet Winter
5. Opened Season: The Blackfeet Summer
6. Storytakers: Ethnographers Visit the Blackfeet
7. All That Remain: From the Prairies to the Atomic Age
Epilogue: And the Dogs Have Separated
Notes
Bibliography
Index
