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Crowfoot, a Chief of Blackfoot nation, negotiated one of the most controversial treaties in Canadian history and his personal regalia ended up in a British museum. Did colonial forces literally steal the shirt from his back?
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00:04Nothing happened by accident this was orchestrated our people weren't allowed to leave the dead were
00:15so numerous that people didn't even have time to mourn this is a story about power I believe
00:25this is what we have to do what other choice did we have the power to take everything is disappearing
00:34so the calamity is still happening I don't think they intended for people to survive
00:41for the spirit of the warriors are waiting for those things to come back and the power to take
00:49something back if items were taken if items were given I don't know my concern is how can we get
00:57them back to their proper home in the days of the British Empire things were taken they usually
01:05ended up in museums and galleries with polite plaques my name is Mark Fennell and this is
01:12the not so polite story of how they really got there
01:23hello oh hi there how are you not too bad yourself nice to meet you I'm Mark hey Mark Janie
01:28welcome
01:29to our camp this is amazing I've never seen one before you've never seen a tipi before no Janie
01:35Redgun is from Siksika one of the nations of the Blackfoot people who have lived in this part of
01:40Canada for centuries but it was really only in the last few years that Janie and his family decided to
01:45build this I was actually raised in the downtown area inner core of the city but ultimately when
01:54I was a kid I've always been more connected to my my family my grandparents my ancestral roots so
02:02it's something that's always been with me and I've held it since I was a child especially this culture
02:07that is disappearing there's very few people who do it camps like Janie's used to be everywhere
02:15here the lands of the Blackfoot people once spanned across a huge area of Western Canada and down into
02:21the United States they moved seasonally following herds of their most important resource the buffalo
02:29speaking of which are we going to tip it out go ahead and stretch it out any way you wish
02:37the fur is
02:38going to be on the outside the bottom the bottom sorry your fur on the bottom okay okay Janie has
02:44decided to put me to work he's teaching me how to tan a hide us Blackfoot people us plains people
02:51general
02:52buffalo hunters people who depended on the buffalo for everything traditionally the hide was also used
03:00for clothing some of that clothing would be used for ceremonies in which case it would be called regalia
03:05and that is why I'm here the regalia of one of the most important leaders of the Blackfoot people chief
03:13Crowfoot um I wanted to ask you about Crowfoot right who is Crowfoot here Crowfoot yeah he was a very
03:26special chief chief Crowfoot was a really great leader to the people he was generous he was kind he helped
03:35us at a very special and unique time in our history but when it comes to the regalia of Chief
03:42Crowfoot there
03:44is a problem some say it was stolen I don't know if you knew this but Chief Crowfoot is regalia
03:52as in
03:52England all I know is Chief Crowfoot's regalia isn't a place that does not belong that place is here Britain
04:03almost 150 years Chief Crowfoot's regalia has been held by the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter
04:10his bow a blade a sacred war shirt somehow ended up thousands of kilometers away from Blackfoot lands
04:18and their journey is shrouded in mystery so who actually was Crowfoot why is he considered so
04:26important most importantly why would somebody want his stuff I'm on my way to meet someone who has
04:37dedicated his life to Blackfoot history and knowledge I'm Mark by the way it's nice to
04:42meet you Kent Kent a young man sits on the council of Siksika nation one of the reasons why I
04:50wanted to
04:50talk to you is I'm trying to understand who Crowfoot was he was the leader of the moccasin clan there
04:58was
04:58a whole governance system amongst each clan amongst the Blackfoot people and people were put there on
05:05how they had the ability to protect their people and and to bring fortune to bring good things Crowfoot
05:17he had a relationship with the newcomers the early white people and due to that relationship they
05:24trusted him to be kind of that main spokesman for the Blackfoot people his ability to have that speech
05:32that's what they relied on so Crowfoot is a leader is a diplomat and has some kind of relationship with
05:41the
05:41white settlers but that still doesn't answer the question of how the regalia changes hands would
05:46he just give them something like a war shirt just how important were these items to Crowfoot
05:53hello oh hello how are you good to see you that is why I'm here Siksika elder Clarence Wolfeleg
06:03believes there is something about Crowfoot's clothing that's been overlooked you have to
06:09attain the respect and qualified to wear a shirt like that you don't just put it up because it
06:15looks beautiful when warriors go into battle when people do honorable and brave things it's really
06:23equated to the military the military gets a very plain uniform and as they go on they started to put
06:33citations and medals insignias and ranks Clarence knows a thing or two about military insignias he's a warrior
06:42himself who served with the Canadian Army and the UN and he's brought me here to Siksika's own
06:50museum to show me that each regalia is unique it's loaded with meaning so the basic warrior served as
06:59hair printers special designs some the powers of the thunder the Sun they carry all those into battle so
07:09for example on Crowfoot's regalia is actually the tail of a weasel so the weasel is a very cunning and
07:17courageous animal it'll stand up to any so they use the weasel tail to take the spirit of the animal
07:25to
07:26the battlefield would have courage that's why that church very important for Blackfoot people there's
07:34also an important spiritual dimension to Crowfoot's regalia so for years the museum in Britain refused
07:43to return Crowfoot's regalia but they did invite the Blackfoot delegation to view Chief Crowfoot's
07:50belongings and Kenta Youngman was there so they had everything ready for the group to view and it was
07:57just tight in that storage and they had that cloth over those items so when we all walked in we
08:06stood
08:06there and then it was quiet and when they unrolled that that cloth there was emotion some of the older
08:19folks that were part of this delegation they got emotional and to think about these items being
08:27worn by a super Mexican prophet that he wore these items at one point in time that's what fascinated me
08:37when I looked at those items I I kind of start to get goose bumps saying I felt honored really
08:46how did
08:47Crowfoot's items his war shirt how did they get over to the UK well as far as I know nobody
08:56really knows
08:57Crowfoot had a lot of respect for what he wore because he risked his life many times to have such
09:06a shirt
09:07would he have given up something so sacred I don't think so I don't think so
09:16Crowfoot's regalia somehow made its way from here in Canada all the way to a museum in the UK but
09:22that
09:23museum itself does offer some clues as to how this all happened when you go into the records of the
09:29Royal Albert Memorial Museum the place which has housed Crowfoot's regalia for well over 100 years
09:33it's actually a report back from 1878 of a woman loaning them what we now know to be Crowfoot's regalia
09:38but
09:38the interesting part is this she reckons it came from her brother a guy who has a very interesting
09:43history here in Canada guy by the name of Cecil Denny so who was this Cecil Denny guy how did
09:52he end up in
09:52what is now modern-day Alberta Canada well to find out I've come to Fort Calgary not far from
09:58Siksika to meet Alison Graham hey welcome to Fort Calgary thank you for having me yeah Alison is a historian
10:06and program manager here at Fort Calgary Fort Calgary is the museum right now but historically it was a
10:15Northwest Mounted Police fort founded in 1875 on this site in Calgary Alberta Canada and the Northwest
10:23Mounted Police are instrumental to this story so at this point Canada was a dominion this jigsaw piece
10:30within the global British Empire it's also a huge jigsaw piece millions of kilometers the Northwest
10:37Mounted Police was sent by the government to march across vast territories establishing at least their
10:43idea of law and order they want settlers from Eastern Canada from England to come west and settle this area
10:52and develop it and that is where Cecil Denny comes in he was born in England so he's there originally
10:59and once
11:00he was here he was a fairly high level person for the Northwest Mounted Police he came on the March
11:07West
11:08when a couple hundred Northwest Mounted Police officers came to this site now as part of that March the
11:15government started doing these treaties with the indigenous people for access to land and in Blackfoot
11:21territory it was called treaty number seven now that document features signatures of both Cecil Denny
11:28and Chief Crowfoot so could it be that Crowfoot somehow gave his regalia to Cecil Denny at this point
11:37it is a bit of a mystery I don't have a such a clear understanding but we know that Cecil
11:42Denny was a
11:43signatory of treaty seven so he was there at the treaty in 1877 it's possible that he received
11:49Crowfoot's regalia at the signing of the treaty or shortly thereafter there's ideas that Crowfoot and
11:56Denny how they were best friends you know really close to the idea of them being friends Crowfoot and
12:02Denny where do we get that idea from we get that idea from the Northwest Mounted Police themselves right
12:08okay Cecil Denny himself wrote a lot about himself and so his memoirs share a lot of information but we
12:18have
12:18to take that with some caution right they were diplomats they were negotiating different sides
12:24so it could have been technically a gift but it's hard to know what that gift actually would have meant
12:30to Crowfoot and to Denny so we know that the regalia gets to the UK by this guy named Cecil
12:37Denny the
12:38question is how well it seems like it happens in the midst of a major event an event that has
12:42drastically
12:43reshaped this land the ceremony where this treaty seven is signed but what really happens here
12:56so where are we well we're overlooking the area where the Blackfoot people signed treaty seven dr.
13:08Gabrielle Lindstrom is a researcher and a member of the gay now a nation which is another of the
13:13Blackfoot nations so imagine we've got camps of hundreds of people and so there was lots of
13:21ceremony that was happening lots of praying you know lots of dialogue this is serious business very
13:29sacred times because the future of our people was at stake I'm trying to get an understanding of the
13:37arc of what's happened here on this land what was leading up to the signing of that treaty what were
13:42the circumstances that led to it their events leading up to the signing of the treaty really
13:48coincide with with the opening up of the West new settlers are encroaching more and more on these
13:57territories and contact initially brought disease particularly smallpox smallpox was a highly contagious
14:05disease killed hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Canada it must have been a devastating thing
14:12to see the dead were so numerous that people didn't even have time to mourn another thing that hit us
14:20hard
14:20was the starvation policies of the Canadian government and the intentional slaughter of buffalo to ensure
14:27that First Nations didn't have access to food it's literally impossible to carry on the previous way of
14:35life like you can't this was the situation facing Chief Crowfoot and all the other indigenous leaders here in
14:43this valley as they weighed up the prospect of a treaty with the crown when our people were camped here
14:50along
14:51this valley the government had their military camped up on the hill and they had cannons and they were
14:58shooting off those cannons ever so often just to kind of demonstrate the military might to to our people
15:06I guess say you have our leaders who are wanting to ensure the survival of our people and so it
15:14really was
15:15about being pushed into a corner what other choice did we have to rather you enter into a treaty with
15:22the Canadian government or you don't or or our people continue to die so that was what was happening at
15:29the time of the signing of treaty seven sign and the Blackfoot become British subjects with the Queen no
15:37less promising annual payments and education no one knows exactly how Crowfoot's regalia is
15:44handed over but less than a year after this treaty seven is signed it is in the UK
15:51it's possible that Denny purchased it from Crowfoot but really it's kind of a matter of opinion here
15:59well from my understanding of the history Sir Cecil Denny he was gifted it by Crowfoot himself
16:07I guess I gotta just take that one with a grain of salt you know we don't really know but
16:11that's just
16:12according to their records that's what they say my reaction to that is that's just an absolute load
16:18of horseshit that's my reaction that just completely angers me but that's the settler colonial narrative
16:25but the thing about our people we're generous when we have visitors we gift them if people admire
16:34something that somebody's wearing well they'll take it off them and give it to that person who admires
16:39is to call that a gift is it's it's infuriating to me because that belongs to to the Blackfoot people
16:46that belongs to sixy guy you know that belongs to Crowfoot's family you know that's that's not a gift
16:53that that is that belongs in the community
17:01so at the core of this is a question for me right we have Crowfoot's regalia that at the very
17:07moment
17:07sits in the UK and there's at least three different possibilities that have put to me one is that it's
17:13a gift one is that it was stolen and the other that it was purchased out of those options what's
17:19the
17:19most plausible to you can it be a combination yeah I guess so I mean I think even if we
17:26go with the
17:26gift theory there was likely some coercive elements around that so even if it was a gift to seal a
17:33treaty it was a gift to seal something that wasn't perfect and that ended up being uh ended up being
17:41dishonest on the part of the Canadian government so even if it was a gift there's that coercive element
17:48there as well and that's really the thing whatever happened with the exchange of Crowfoot's regalia
17:54it sits in the shadow of a far darker handover for Blackfoot people 3d7 was not what it seemed
18:02in terms of what the British what the Canadian government are trying to do is it's basically
18:06for them wanting to get indigenous people to surrender their land so essentially it's to displace
18:14and remove indigenous peoples for white settlers and that's also why the railway comes it's to bring
18:19those white settlers here once that land has been uh supposedly surrendered but really it was all about
18:26negotiating a treaty that was not meant to really benefit indigenous people at all
18:30and Cecil Denny and the Northwest Manor Police would have known that
18:40when you're standing here on this ground it's impossible not to put yourselves
18:45in the shoes of the people that were here when they signed that treaty could they possibly have known
18:51everything that would flow from this moment
18:57so there was a great comet that traveled through the night sky the comets represent a bad omen amongst
19:06our people and there was a lot of hardship that our people encountered with agreements like treaty seven
19:15and other government policies what flows is a profound and devastating shift in Blackfoot lives
19:24shortly after the signing of the treaty our people were placed on this reserve
19:31this reserve here our people weren't allowed to leave our people were pretty much corralled
19:39on on this strip of land here nothing happened by accident and it's an indigenous people didn't
19:47drive themselves into states of poverty that we find ourselves now in you know this was orchestrated
19:53that orchestrated destruction of a culture beginning with the disease and culminating in in the treaties
20:02and then the implementation of the Indian residential schools and those policies of genocide
20:07that is something that is still ongoing today
20:14residential schools for indigenous children have left incredible scars on this land
20:19i was put in a residential school when i was three years old we were incarcerated we talked about physical
20:29abuse psychological abuse of course sexual abuse we have hit 751 unmarked graves too many children did not
20:42not make it home today answers still are needed
20:51for people that don't understand what residential schools were
20:55for is there a way you could explain what they were designed to do well a residential school was
21:02basically designed just to take the indianness from our people
21:11and it was done in places like this this is the old sun indian residential school today's the old sun
21:20community college
21:22my mother went to this school my aunties and uncles all went to this place here
21:28they were taken from their homes and put into these types of places to educate our people
21:40my grandparents they went through residential school they were abused severely and oppressed
21:48where their culture was viewed down upon it stopped our ceremonial way of life
21:55our language everything everything what it is to be a blackwood indian as they were trying to assimilate our people
22:05they literally went against everything that we identified everything that we belong to
22:11because of that i think a lot of the elders and a lot of the people are
22:14shamed and kind of shunned away from it that's why i'm trying my best to preserve that culture because it
22:22is disappearing
22:25we're still healing there's been slow recoveries but there's i think we still have a long ways to go
22:35the way i look at it is any ceremonial items we bring back to our community we're bringing more of
22:43who we are
22:45back into our community back to the siksika people
22:54when so much has been taken the fight to get crowfoot's regalia back to siksika
23:00is part of a healing process for a community
23:06well mark uh welcome to siksika nation this is our council chambers here and uh inside the council
23:14chambers resembles i uh inside of a teepee inside of a teepee lodge if items were stolen if islands were
23:23taken if items were given if items were sold i don't know i don't know how they got over there
23:30i'm not concerned how they got over there my concern is how can we get them back to their proper
23:35home
23:36ever since he took up the position of blackfoot chief o ray crowfoot has made the return of the
23:41regalia one of his goals i sit this chief's chair right here and right behind me is uh over my
23:48left
23:49shoulder is my great-great-great-grandfather it's simple moksika which is crow indian bigfoot
23:53translates to crowfoot there's a reason why i'm here there's a reason why each one of these
23:58councillors are in these chairs we're here because of the decisions that were made from our previous
24:03chiefs our previous leaders and we've got to keep that in mind for the future generations so when we
24:08make these decisions how does it not just impact siksika today but how is it going to impact siksika
24:14for generations to come when he took the role years of negotiations between that uk museum and people
24:21here in siksika had ground to a halt but then i had a call i had a call phone call
24:27with with exeter
24:28and i told him give it back to siksika that's our items you know that's my great great great
24:33grandfather's items we need those things back at siksika
24:41negotiations culminated in a historic moment today when a exeter museum handed back parts of its
24:46collection to a delegation from canada after a race call exeter city council who owned the uk museum
24:54actually had to vote on whether to return the items well that's a unanimous vote chair and the
24:59resolution has been carried and today for the first time in over 140 years crowfoot's regalia is coming home
25:17what does it mean to have those gifts back here i believe you know the spirit of the warriors the
25:23spirit of the gifts that came even though their home has been placed someplace the spirits are waiting
25:31for those things to come back a lot of us really appreciate having chief crowfoot's items his personal
25:41belongings being returned from england when we bring these things back to our community to our people
25:51it strengthens that it strengthens our spirituality keep bad that people it will strengthen our way of
25:59life as blackfoot people now it's up to us to bring this way back to our our family our way
26:07of life
26:07life to raise our children with kibata bills our songs our sundance and our ceremonies throughout the year
26:37what makes you proud being blackfoot makes me proud and the fact that we're still here
26:52they need to be back because they give our people our strength
26:58and they allow us to be connected with those long time knowledges and protocols that shape who we are
27:07today as nitsi to be people being blackfoot it's an honor an absolute honor and a gift
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