Blackfoot Elders 

Joe Eagle Tail Feathers – Iitsooahp’potah (Attacks | Battles in the Water) – is from the Kainai First Nation (Blood Reserve), which is part of the Blackfoot Confederacy & Treaty 7. His parents are Frank Eagle Tail Feathers and Helen (née Chief Calf) Eagle Tail Feathers. Joe makes his home east of Standoff (in southern Alberta), and he lives in the same home as his late parents. Joe is a spiritual leader. He has been involved in ceremonies all his life, and he has conducted different types of ceremonies on his own since 1995. 

Prior to that time, Joe was a helper to and learned under several medicine men including Danny Volon, John Day Rider, Buster Yellow Kidney, Alan Shade, George Good Striker, Floyd Rider, Winston Day Chief, Joe Spotted Bull, and Allan Prairie Chicken (all but Dan Volon have passed on). He has also learned from several women who have passed on, including Margaret Hind Man, Margaret Running Crane, Lucy Day Chief, and Rosie Day Rider, some of whom were medicine women. 

Since 2007, Joe has been a leader to a sun lodge – a piercing sun dance. In 2021, Sundance Coulee Society became recognized as a registered charity. Throughout the year, the collective promotes spirituality, healing, wellness, and community engagement. 

Outside of Treaty 7, Joe has extended his ceremonial involvement into the Shuswap territory, Yukon, Northwest Territories (where he has visited seven times as a result of being called on for ceremony), on Canada’s East Coast (working with the Mi’kmaw and Maliseet people) and West Coast. He has worked with the Plains Cree around Regina (Qu’Appelle Valley) as well as Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in northeast SK. In the United States, he has run ceremonies in the states of Washington, Oregon, and South Dakota. From 2018–2025, Joe served as the Elder-in-Residence at F.P. Walshe School in Fort Macleod, Alberta. 

Calvin Williams – Mahtsaohhtaan (Pretty Shield) is a Blackfoot Elder from Kainai First Nations,  and he is the Board Chairperson for Red Crow Community College on the Blood Reserve. Calvin has shared the following points on Indigenous knowledge as it relates to Joe Eagle Tail Feathers - Iitsooahp’potah. 

Mahtsaohhtaan has been involved in transfer ceremonies (pommotsiiysinni). He is a three-time member of the Sacred Big Holy Society - also known as the Horns Society. He is also a current member of the Brave Dogs Society. In addition to his time with the Sacred Big Holy Society, he has pierced in a sunlodge in the Northwest USA, he has sundanced with the late Morris Crow at Crow’s piercing sundance, and he has sundanced with Iitsooahp’potah. Calvin started the vision quest ceremony with the late George Goodstriker under whom Calvin regarded himself as being a student. Calvin has supported Joe for a very long time, and he continues to help Joe along on his journey. He has twice sponsored Joe’s piercing sundance. Joe takes Mahtsaohhtaan as both his elder and advisor, and he shares one of his experiences with Calvin in the Chief Mountain video. 

As Mahtsaohhtaan explained to Christopher Grignard, Indigenous knowledge can vary. Some forms of it can be learned from written documents with which many can be familiarized, such as the kind that people can gain through Western education and books. Mahtsaohhtaan emphasized that the knowledge Joe holds is different and rare. According to Calvin, only a few individuals hold what Joe has. It has been acquired through sacrifice and years of ceremonial involvement on Joe’s part, spanning more than four decades. The kind of knowledge Joe has cannot be acquired through school. He would not be able to do what he does from information gained from a classroom. Joe’s learning institutions are his culture, the mountains and hills, his ancestors, and his spirit helpers. As Mahtsaohhtaan states, “What Joe has does not come from humans but from the spirit world. The spirit helpers provide this knowledge. It is very individualistic and one of a kind. No two people get the same knowledge and guidance.” 

What Calvin shares here connects to a point Joe makes in that no two ceremonies are alike as the spiritual leaders will have received different directions and will have undergone different experiences in their spiritual journeys. Calvin has his own Blackfoot Odyssey, one that is different from Joe’s, yet both connect in the spiritual world and in the support they have for one another. One can understand another through this difference. One recognizes another more because of this difference.

Calvin offered his own experiences acquiring Indigenous knowledge through transfer ceremonies (pommotsiiysinni) to illustrate a significant difference between how he acquired Indigenous knowledge and how Joe acquired the knowledge. For Calvin, to acquire the bundles he has been transferred, the payment for that knowledge will come in the form of material (such as money, blankets, horses, rifles, and other possessions). Joe’s payment, that is, what Joe has given of himself for the knowledge he has acquired, has been through his body and his life. Mahtsaohhtaan stated, what Joe endured for what he has now is “a lot harder than going after a bundle that can be transferred.” 

Calvin has contributed this explanation for the Blackfoot Odyssey to help those understand the depth of Indigenous knowledge and its various forms. Calvin recognizes the rarity of the knowledge and experiences being shared here by Iitsooahp’potah. 

It is the hope that Joe’s and Calvin’s journeys will help not only to enhance the students’ reading of the Blackfoot Odyssey in the novel Fools Crow but also to enrich the students’ individual journeys to Indigenization.