Blackfoot Ways of Knowing - by Betty Bastien (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

Blackfoot 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.

Review Quotes

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

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

About the Author

Betty Bastien was an instructor in indigenous studies at the University of Calgary. Her experience included teaching and curriculum design at Red Crow Community College, in the Native studies department at the University of Lethbridge, and at the University of Calgary.

Jurgen W. Kremer, who contributes an afterword to the book, is an executive editor of ReVision - Journal of Consciousness and Transformation. He has written about ethnoautobiography, dissociation, healing and cosmology, and violence against indigenous peoples.

Duane Mistaken Chief provides language consultation and is a senior instructor and lecturer in Blackfoot language and Blackfoot ways of life at Red Crow Community College on the Blood Reserve.