The return of water: the role of micropolitics in reclaiming indigenous space and decolonizing the Blackfeet Nation

Abstract

The Blackfeet Tribe's relationship to their land and water is ancient and sacred. Before Colonial settlement the Blackfeet people (properly known as the Amskapi Piikani) intentionally and sustainably governed a vast territory that spanned from Northern Saskatchewan, Canada, to the Yellowstone River in Southwest Montana. By means of a succession of treaties, the Blackfeet Tribe lost large tracts of their ancestral land to the US Government via the creation of Glacier National Park and the designation of US Forest Service districts. Federal laws and policies enacted during the Manifest Destiny Era spurred widespread settlement of Native lands and incentivized the consumption of natural resources for the purpose of building a Western agricultural empire. Thus began a steady state of settler colonialism and ongoing extraction which caused the near destruction of Tribal socio-political structures and the transition of long- standing agricultural practices to commodity production. Since the first European touched foot on Blackfeet soil, the Tribe sought to protect and reclaim their territories through community- level action or "micropolitics," and the Tribe's remarkable leaders have since stunned the world with policy and culture-based solutions that have reversed the effects of colonization and settlement. By tracing effective actions taken by Blackfeet leaders throughout 100 years of Blackfeet policy history, this empirical, in-depth case study sought to better understand how Native communities can engage federal "macropolitical" systems and devise creative on-the- ground micropolitical strategies that result in the decolonization and regaining control of physical and socio-political spaces. Informed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's spatially- oriented work, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia that describes how societies self-organize, and Lance Gunderson and C.S. Holling's Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, a work that illustrates the mechanics of complex, interconnected human and natural systems, this study illustrates how colonization and decolonization actually work as systems tied to essential resource use, cultural preservation, and human dignity and freedom.