ABSTRACT
Residing in the remote northwest plains, the Blackfoot Peoples remained beyond the focus of Euro-American modernization pressures longer than most of their Native American neighbors. Eventually, however, they became major targets of missionaries, ethnographers, and collectors of Native American “art” and “artifacts.” These are groups whose members, by and large, felt and continue to feel that they can easily interpret the Blackfoot worldview according to Euro-American conceptions of reality. Their interpretations are rooted in notions of symbolism. They think of the very real, living, personal side of the Blackfoot world as a “primitive” facade of another, truer reality-the reality seen and lived in by most Euro-Americans. Ironically, however, these Euro-American perspectives upon value, and what is real, true, and important, are characterized by abstraction and symbolism themselves. Some philosophers argue that all interpretations involve abstraction. It should be clear to the reader, though, that the values prioritized most often and most publicly in mainstream Europe and North America are more abstract than indigenous values are. In this chapter, I explore the consequences of such perspectives upon value, reality, truth and importance as they are imposed upon Blackfoot medicine bundles, which normally circulate in a very different system of value. I also explore the Blackfoot responses to the commoditization of their culture that has resulted from these impositions.
