Blackfoot Ways of Knowing

The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi

Table des matières

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
Siksikaitsipowahsin–English
English–Siksikaitsipowahsin
Biblography

La description

Blackfoot Ways of Knowing is a journey into the heart and soul of Blackfoot culture. In sharing her personal story of "coming home" to reclaim her identity within that culture, Betty Bastien offers us a gateway into traditional Blackfoot ways of understanding and experiencing the world. As a scholar and researcher, Bastien is also able to place Blackfoot tradition within the context of knowledge building among indigenous peoples generally, and within a historical context of precarious survival amid colonial displacement and cultural genocide. In mapping her own process of coming to know, Bastien stresses the recovery of the Blackfoot language and of the Blackfoot notions of reciprocal responsibilities and interdependence.

For the Siksikaitsitapi, knowledge is experiential, participatory, and ultimately sacred, rather than objective and inert. Rekindling traditional ways of knowing is essential if First Nations people in Canada are to heal and rebuild their communities and cultures. By sharing what she has learned, Betty Bastien hopes to ensure that the next generation of First Nations people will enjoy a future of hope and peace.

Reviews

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

Bastien 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 Bastien’s study.

- —Geralt T Contay, Histoire social/Social History