Storied Landscapes: Enlivening Blackfoot collections in UK Museums

Current anthropological research demonstrates that the apparently universal and foundational distinction between nature and culture is more pertinent in some societies than in others. In this paper we explore this idea with reference to how Blackfoot people relate to material in museum collections acquired from their communities.

With the support of a Leverhulme Networking Grant focused on Blackfoot collections in UK museums, project members from the UK visited places of historical and ceremonial significance in southern Alberta, Canada, and northern Montana, United States. Blackfoot colleagues used these visits to explain to curatorial staff the relationship between the materials they had engaged with in museum storerooms in Cambridge and Exeter the previous year and the landscape from which they emerged. The paper will focus on visits to Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park at the Siksika Nation, ceremonial sites located on and close to the Kainai Nation, and the Two Medicine River area of the Blackfeet Reservation to explore how stories about landscape and sites of encounter contribute to a fuller understanding of Blackfoot historic collections.