Glenbow Museum holds first mulicultural days

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Calgary's Glenbow museum held its first multicultural days last week, and Blackfoot children from the Milo school south of Calgary were the first to come and listen to Indian legends, participate in Metis jigs and see the many artifacts from the Indian people of Southern Alberta.

The week-long event featured exhibits and lectures on a variety of Canadian ethnic groups, with one day set aside for the Native people of Alberta.

Children visiting the museum were greeted by Maurice Guibord from Ottawa, who showed them some of the well known French-Canadian and Metis jigs.

The children then moved on to the Blackfoot teepee which has been donated to the museum by the Black Robe family. The children sat inside the teepee and listened to Napi tales and the story of Tailfeathers Woman, who brought the Sundance rituals to earth. The children were very curious about the paintings on the teepee and volunteer Vera Van Veen explained the meaning of the edging along the bottom of the teepee. The edging has elongated bumps and this denotes the family comes from the foothills area. Along the top are circles which depict the stars, and in between is the spiritual area which in this case was decorated with the otter.

Then they were taken to the Sundance exhibit and were shown a buffalo skull which was painted and placed on the centre pole during the Sundance ceremony. Van Veen explained that the circle painted at the entre signifies the sun, the crescent is the wife and the large black dot represents the morning star, their child. Van Veen also points out the holy woman's headdress which is used during the Sundance and is made of rawhide

leg bands with a human effigy attached. The doll is filled with tobacco seeds to symbolize new life.

The children then moved around the artifacts and were intrigued by the little people sticks which were put in the ground after tobacco was planted. These sticks had tiny moccasins, a footbag and tobacco pouch attached and were placed in the ground for the little people who guarded the crops.

Van Venn also recounted the story of the buffalo stones. She told the children that ages ago when the Blackfoot people were starving in the winter, a woman gathering firewood heard something crying that it was cold. She looked around but all she saw was ammonite, or the buffalo stone. She placed the stone inside her robe and that night she dreamed a spirit told her where the tribe would find the buffalo. The tribe indeed found the buffalo and since then the stone has become sacred.

The Glenbow museum is staffed mainly by volunteers or docents. The docents have to undergo a course from the Glenbow directors on the history of the Native people in this area and are also expected to continue research to round out their knowledge.

Carol Rowling, a docent who specializes in the history of the Calgary Stampede, pointed out that docents give up their spare time in order to educate the public and especially school children on a one-to-one basis.

"The children really enjoy this kind of learning and they show a lot of interest in Native people and their culture. They especially like the Napi stories," she smiled.

The Glenbow multicultural days was a 10-day event. A spokesman for the museum said the museum had decided to hold this event to pay tribute to the legacy passed down by the original peoples of this land in the hope that discrimination can be eliminated from society.