This assignment is based on an integration of current events with an examination of indigenous cultures in North America. There are two final products involved – a presentation and a fullclass discussion.
As Cree people, we were given the gift of being named for the four parts of human beings. Nehiyawak, we were called.
It means being balanced in the four parts that are found in the four directions of the Medicine Wheel. These four parts for human beings are the spiritual, physical, emotional and mental aspects of the self. We need to try and balance these four parts that were given to us, to function as people.
The fire is in the centre of the Medicine Wheel. That is where the meaning of the teachings comes from. For me this fire is also the self. When you look at the Medicine Wheel, you start from self. And as you look out, you make your circle.
This is how the Medicine Wheel represents the life journey of people.
The Piikani Nation is part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The Siksika, the Bloods, and the Piikani all speak the Blackfoot language, and we’re all part of Treaty 7 in southern Alberta - along with the Tsuu T’ina, or Sarcee, who speak a different language.
When they put in the border for the United States, they put it right through our Piikani territory. Half of us were sent to the states and the other half went north. So we became the northern Piikani. The Southern Piikani are across the border in Montana.
Looking at interactions between North American natives and European settlers through primary sources offers us fresh and sometimes surprising insights into the fascinating exchanges that took place in early America as peoples encountered others who were different. It allows us to look beyond school textbook accounts of political and military conflicts or alliances to witness the plentiful cross-pollination between cultures. Indians and settlers were often intrigued by one anotherŐs ways, and open to adopting items, ideas and motifs that they found useful or pleasing. We see products of these encounters emerging that are hybrids of cultures Đ and are no less "authentically" Indian or colonial for being so. Examining remains of these interactions also helps us to dispel the seeming silence of native populations, as their words and ideas have been preserved in many forms. Texts, visual art, artifacts and physical structures all document ways that native peoples interacted with the Spanish, French and British in North America. They offer a richer and more complete story of what the encounters meant to the people involved, and give students a chance to explore those meanings for themselves.