Reading Notes: Part A Blackfoot

I chose my reading this week because my grandfather was a part of the Blackfoot tribe. So, I was really interested to see what the stories were about and how they were told.

I really enjoyed the story of the wolf man. It was interesting to me that the first thing he did after being freed from the hole wasn't to get retribution on his wives. Instead he decided to move on and live with the wolves. While this wasn't the moral of the story I believe that "forgive and forget" is a big theme of the story. The man had to choose to move on from his wives that tried to hurt him. This is very important because in live we all make choices, the wives chose to kill him rather than ask for help and he choose to move on rather than dwell in the past. For my story I would like to play around with choices and in particular a "would you rather" type game. The would you rather question will be based off of the stories

-Would you rather bring back your wife from the dead or lose your son? The Camp of Ghosts

Another story I would like to play with is The Theft from the Sun. I really liked how the sun was personified and how the man came to realize that the Sun's lodge was the entire Earth. For my story I would like to see what happens when the sun and moon are enemies. Does the world go into chaos? Does one refuse to rise and set? To stay true to the original Native American stories I would like to think of a strong moral or reason for the story.

A representation of what it would look like if the sun and moon fought. Source 
Bibliography: The  Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell (1915).