Indigenous Knowledge Keeper - Darcy Turningrobe

Students get to try the drum!  Talk about reverberation!

Here's a video for you to hear the sound of this magnificent drum!

As you know in the grade four our humanities curriculum revolves around the stories of important people in Alberta.  We are extremely lucky this week to have a guest speaker, Darcy Turningrobe come and share some of his knowledge of the Blackfoot People.

Here is some knowledge he shared with us today:
He told us a story about how they got their name.   A long time in the past there was a very dangerous prairie fire that burned for weeks and weeks, the Blackfoot people ran and ran to escape the roaring fire they made it to the mountains finally.  When they looked down at their feet,  their moccasins  were covered in charcoal from the burned grass, and so this is how they got the name Blackfoot.

This is one of the reasons they honour horses in their culture.  To them horses are sacred like family members, they help them to get to places more quickly.  Therefore, any of the drum skins are never made from horse hide.  For the blackfoot people, buffalo hides were used for tipis, robes and bedding.  For drums, they used deer and elk hides because they are smaller.  The gigantic drum that you see in these pictures is made of elk hide.

It was wonderful to share the power of oral storytelling, our students were mesmerized by the history of this land our school is built on.