A’kee Piskun

So for my first one I figured I would write and research about A’kee Piskun. This is a Blackfoot site in Alberta, Canada. I haven’t travelled to this one but I would love to make it up here if I can. I first learned about this site from a class I took this last semester. I thought it was interesting because it put forth the idea of space and place differently. This means Woman’s Jump. I had to read an article by Lindsay M. Amundsen-Meyer and that’s how I learned about this.

“Landscape archaeology offers a new perspective on space, attaching both ecological and ideological meaning to defined features on the physical or geographic landscape: to places. Place is fundamentally different than space, as it encapsulates space, time and experience. Consequently, many researchers have turned to the study of place names, oral traditions and trails in an attempt to recreate a cultural, place-filled landscape. In this framework, human lives are not lived inside or at places, but rather “through, around, to and from them, from and to places elsewhere”(Amundsen-Meyer pg 3).

The story for this is so cool. The men and women that made this site a thing were separate at first but came together to hunt mammoths and made the first marriage between these two groups. Space is very different because the way a lot people who aren’t Native Americans think of it as just a place you go to but it doesn’t have any spoken meaning towards it. I love that with this it has oral tradition assigned to it. A lot of people just don’t get that with things like this just because there is physical stuff associated with it doesn’t mean it isn’t important to native peoples. Learning stuff like this is super fun and its different to think about because its different than what people normally think about.