Content Warning: Discussion of colonization of indigenous peoples and death. Brief discussion of racism, misogyny, and genocide.
In this episode, I tell the myth: "Woman Chooses Death" by the Niitsitapi, or Blackfoot people. The tale originates from a number of different accounts from the early 1900s CE, including an ethnology by a dubious anthropologist. The Niitsitapi have historically lived in the modern-day regions of Alberta and Montana (the Northern Laurentian Great Plain). There is contention concerning the origin of the Niitsitapi; the most accepted narrative is that the Niitsitapi migrated from the Great Lakes Region and assimilated with previously extant tribes sometime before European expansion, though the timetable is unknown. Today, their peoples are restricted to two separate reservations: one in Canada and the other in the United States. The Niitsitapi are composed of four distinct tribes: the Siksikawa, Kainai, Northern Piikani, and Southern Piikani; estimated at about 16,500 people present today.
We'll explore how the Niitsitapi navigated the complicated political world of the Buffalo Wars, the encroachment of Euro-American colonizers, and attempts to limit the practice of their customs post-reservation. We'll also discuss how the myth convergently evolved the "humans-as-clay" metaphor found throughout a number of different creation stories, the inherently misogynistic nature of the patriarchal creator god, and how the myth conceptualizes of death.
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