Niitooii—"The Same That Is Real": Parallel Practice, Museums, and the Repatriation of Piikani Customary Authority

When we dissect western process, we can dissect out the language, what is written, what is legal...formal, informal, what's authority....We should be looking at parallels at every one of those levels too, for every one of those things, in our traditional processes with our practice.... -- Reg CrowshoeWhile land claim and resource actions have dominated headlines on Native/non-Native in Canada since the 1990s, another intersecting set of materially and politically important interchanges has been unfolding. Museums and First Nations people have been engaging in extraordinary re-negotiations surrounding sometimes corresponding, often conflicting goals concerning Aboriginal cultural property and knowledges retained by museums.(1) Many museums are now collaborating respectfully with First Peoples on the making of exhibits, engaging in ceremonies with objects in those spaces and in communities, and, even more importantly, returning objects to original peoples. The Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, which concentrates on Western Canadian history is notable both as a flashpoint--recall the Lubicon protests associated with The Spirit Sings exhibition in 1988(2)--and a mediation point, especially in with members of the three Blackfoot speaking First Nations of southern Alberta: the Siksika, Kainaa, and Piikani--the last of whom are the principal focus in this article.Though encounters with museums--in particular with the Glenbow--form the launching point for the following discussion of transcultural relations, there is far more at play. This paper pointedly tracks into an Aboriginal community setting where accelerated use of repatriated materials and associated knowledge, practices, songs and rights by Piikani people has been aiding the reconstitution of wider socio-economic, political, and authority practices, affecting ever wider circles of Native/non-Native relations. Attention is drawn to an historical trajectory of contact associated with a Blackfoot practice of metaphoric action: that is, of making parallels. Reg Crowshoe offers a Blackfoot term which captures this practice: Niitooii, the same that is real. As elaborated over the course of this paper, Niitooii refers both to the paralleling of Blackfoot and non-Aboriginal sociocultural practices, as well as the paralleling of entities of the physical world and those of the shadow or world.A key proposition is that parallel-making enables the repatriation (in the political sense of return to an originating nation) of indigenous cultural, material, legal and personal rights and authority--or Niitsitapi shadow authority, the authority to survive as Niitsitapi, a Real Person.(3) The premise is that Niitsitapi authority is attached to transferred community objects and is further animated by restored use of these objects, often following their return through with museums.The paper is organized into four sections; first, aspects of the contemporary network of museum/Blackfoot transcultural are outlined; second, a particular genealogy of Piikani/non-Native emphasizes the persistence of material/metaphoric exchange historically; third, the tradition(4) and contemporary manifestation of Niitooii abstract relations and parallel-making is considered. Anthropologist Michael Asch's recent analyses on the relational other offers inspiration for the fourth section. There, Niitooii parallel-practices--what Reg Crowshoe terms repatriation--are considered for what they offer to the renovating of native/non-Native by recognizing indigenous authority and principles of sharing between nations.Entangled Authorship--A Note for ReadersThis article draws significantly on exchanges of the last 15 years between Brian Noble, Mai'stooh'sooa'tsis(5) and Reg Crowshoe, Awakaasiinaa.(6) Noble has been associated over that period as cultural exchange developer, anthropologist, museums programming advisor, and extended family member. …

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