Love Thy Neighbour: Repatriating Precarious Blackfoot Sites

Abstract

This paper explores the question of responsibility for the care of significant Blackfoot (Siksikáítapiiksi) sites particularly in the province of present-day Alberta.i Traditional Blackfoot territory is described and events that eroded Siksikáítapiiksi access to, and thus relationship with, all the land in their territory is related. We give examples of significant Blackfoot sites and recount the forces that have destroyed many of them, including the pressures that urban and industrial development place on the remaining sites. This chapter outlines current attempts to include Blackfoot perspectives in the provincial mandate to preserve and protect heritage sites. The notion of repatriation, which is commonly understood to mean the return of ceremonial objects, is offered as a model for authentic participation of Blackfoot in protecting and preserving these sites. Repatriation, as an idea and a practice, acknowledges the Siksikáítapiiksi view that places are animate beings with whom humans live in relationship. Like any interdependent relationship, the one between people and the places that sustain them is nurtured through unimpeded access, continued use and ceremonies of renewal such as visiting and exchanging of gifts. Click