UNews - Blackfoot Digital Library

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library’s Native American art installation to reflect Blackfoot heritage in surroundings

trevor.kenney — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 17:40:50 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library is embracing the ‘library as place’ concept, recognizing that library users should see themselves mirrored in their surroundings. To that end, the library is celebrating the installation of three pieces of Native American art and the redevelopment of the Blackfoot Digital Library website.

Grant Spotted Bull's Medicine Wheel series is one of three new pieces of Native American Art to be installed in the U of L Library.

“Our university is located on traditional Blackfoot land and it is important that we respect and honour this heritage,” says Wendy Merkley, associate ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ librarian. “Our students should feel comfortable and welcomed when they come into the library, and that their culture is valued as an integral part of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ community.”

The pieces of art installed in the library include Medicine Wheel, Ten Grandmothers Quilt and Medicine Bundle.

Medicine Wheel – Artist Grant Spotted Bull

Spotted Bull, of Blackfoot heritage and born and raised on the nearby Blood Reserve, is a fourth-year bachelor of fine arts student at the U of L. His piece is a four-painting series that tells the story of colonialism and its effects on First Nations people.

Ten Grandmothers Quilt

The quilt is a collection of 10 key messages from 10 ceremonial women from southern Alberta and Montana. Their messages are about how to live and raise your children in a positive way. The words they share are not their own, but the words of women from many generations before. Collectively, they say to listen and to care for one another through mistakes, through growth and through change. Just as importantly, they advise to always be self-sufficient and to help one another by sharing.

Medicine Bundle – Artist Gordon Monroe

Monroe is a member of the Blackfeet Tribe in northern Montana. He was born in 1946 in Browning, MT on the Blackfeet Reservation. He started work as a sculptor in 1965, and started teaching art at the Blackfeet Community School in 1972. His works centre on themes of dancers, ceremonies and traditional scenes, creating Medicine Bundle in 1979. It was purchased in 1980 by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, through efforts led by professor Alfred Youngman of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

The library is also marking the redevelopment of the Blackfoot Digital Library website. Since 2006, the U of L library has been involved with the Blackfoot Digital Library, helping to gather and digitize artifacts, documents, audiovisual and archival materials. In addition, the library has been a leader in preserving oral histories by digitizing existing interviews and collecting new videos of Elders sharing their knowledge and stories.

“The Blackfoot Digital Library wouldn’t exist without the U of L Library stepping in to give it a permanent home,” says Adrienne Heavy Head, Blackfoot Digital Library liaison. “The digital library is unique in that it is the only indigenous library that focuses on one group of indigenous people and is also created by those people.”

Library aids in preserving Blackfoot past

trevor.kenney — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:57:21 +0000

Through its involvement with the Blackfoot Digital Library, and a recent effort that digitized back issues of the Kainai News, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library is helping to ensure that valuable Blackfoot heritage is being preserved for generations to come.

The library first got involved with the Blackfoot Digital Library project in 2006, with a digitization venture originally started by Ryan and Adrienne Heavy Head. It was designed to support community efforts in locating and repatriating Blackfoot materials, and later linked to the U of L's Native American Studies program's CURA project through Red Crow College. The goal of the partnership with our library was to gain access to ongoing funding through the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library (LHCADL) initiative.

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ saw great opportunities to partner with Red Crow College to ensure the longevity of the resources being catalogued by the Heavy Heads, and in 2008 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the two institutions. Through this agreement, the Blackfoot people retain ownership of the assets collected, and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ is responsible for the website.

The project continues to grow today as Adrienne Heavy Head gathers and digitizes artifacts, documents, audiovisual and archival materials. She also remains commited to the original initiative by identifying collections of Blackfoot items in museums around the world. Once found, she tries to get the items returned, or at least have digital photos or scans of the materials sent so that they can be added to the digital collection.

Many large collections of Blackfoot materials are housed in museums in the UK, and Adrienne is working on developing relationships with scholars and archivists in Scotland and England to learn more about their holdings. For example, the British Museum has a huge collection of items that very few Blackfoot people have seen, and it is only through cultivating these relationships that we are able to share information.

Heavy Head has been invited to present at conferences throughout the UK and is currently planning a trip to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Oxford to view the collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum. She also intends to visit both Cambridge and Exeter.

"These museums have some of the oldest collections of Blackfoot materials in the world," she says. "It is through our connection to the Blackfoot Digital Library that many of these doors have been opened to us, as we are now invited to conferences and they are more willing to talk to us."

Heavy Head has also made connections with both the National Trust for Scotland and the Glasgow Museum.

In addition to artifacts, oral history is also being preserved through the project. Existing interviews from older formats are being digitized, and the Kainai Studies Department at Red Crow College collects new videos of elders sharing their knowledge and stories. These invaluable experiences could otherwise be lost with their passing.

The Blackfoot Digital Library is available at blackfootdigitallibrary.org

This story first appeared in the Legend. For a full look at the January issue of the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Celebrating National Aboriginal Day

trevor.kenney — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:44:14 +0000

A large collection of interviews about Blackfoot culture and traditional dances, compiled by a pair of ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers and their colleagues, will return to the Blackfoot (Kainai) community in a most un-traditional way – on DVDs, CDs, and with a 'digital deposit' to the Blackfoot Digital Library at Red Crow College.

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge researchers Lisa Doolittle (theatre arts) and Troy Emery Twigg (Native American studies), along with Anne Flynn (kinesiology) from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary and their colleagues, will be handing back to the community all the materials generated by their five-year-long research project which investigated the various forms of Blackfoot dance from the perspective of several elders and young people in Southern Alberta Blackfoot communities.

An archival image of a traditional Blackfoot pow wow. Courtesy Glenbow Museum.

The ceremony will take place Monday, June 21 to coincide with National Aboriginal Day.

"Traditionally, when elders passed on knowledge, it was the duty of the learner to ensure it would benefit the whole community and be returned to the community," says Emery Twigg. "This very contemporary digital format is a new way of transferring ancient knowledge."

Beginning with the criminalization of indigenous dances, such as sun dances and give-away ceremonies, which were made illegal through changes to Canada's Indian Act in the late 1800s, the researchers looked at a wide range of dance practices and collected in-depth information through interviews with selected elders and young people.

"To us as outsiders, the resilience of this community in the face of multiple assaults on their way of life is most striking, and that resilience is powerfully expressed in the unbroken practice of dance ceremonies, and in the immense popularity of dance competitions and in contemporary artistic expression," says Doolittle.

If the overall aim of the project is to stimulate conversation and increase research about dance and related aspects of Blackfoot life over the past century, opening the collection of materials up to the worldwide community puts a whole new perspective on the traditional method of transferring knowledge, according to a Red Crow College spokesperson.

"If this sort of transfer were to become a trend, there would be far less strain in relationships between native communities and universities and other institutions like museums," says Ryan Heavy Head, who has been instrumental in initiating and managing the digital library.

"The collaboration of Red Crow College and the Kainai Studies/Blackfoot Digital Library initiative enables wide distribution, allowing others to see the materials for themselves, and reinterpret and reuse them."

Local community members, teachers, international scholars and any interested members of the public will be able to easily access videos, sound recordings and print materials through the Blackfoot Digital Library.

The materials are also accessible through the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library web pages through a link to the Blackfoot Digital Library. Red Crow College partnered with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library to establish the Blackfoot Digital Library.

Researchers Doolittle and Flynn, who titled their project "Blackfoot Dance History: Selected Perspectives," investigated how dancing affects identity and influences public policies both within communities and in cross-cultural situations. They have presented aspects of this research at international conferences in the UK, the United States and Canada, and, along with Emery Twigg, will be featured plenary speakers at the International Conference of the American Society for Theatre Research in Seattle in November.

The project is part of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council–funded investigation into dance and multiculturalism in Canada, and has received additional funding from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Research Fund and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Scholars program.

To view a brief video clip of elders speaking about Blackfoot dance, follow this link.

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