This project is the culmination of decades of work searching and archiving the A'aniiih's cultural property. Before George P. Horse Capture, Sr's passing in 2013, he presented this work to the Fort Belknap Indian Community. His original archive was challenging to distribute because the format was in a stand alone format. His work has been converted to this format that makes it easier for tribal members to view and contribute. This information is only accessible by A'aniih tribal members. The following is his words from his original archive:
To our Ancestors who made the long difficult journey here from the Beginning.
To the Present Tribal Members who have the Responsibility to Survive.
To the Future Members of our Tribe: May you have it easier and always Keep the Faith.
Origins:
In the early years of the twentieth century our tribal world grew smaller while the outside world grew larger as many of our elders and traditions passed from the scene. By the 1930s when I was born most tribal customs went the way of the buffalo and we found ourselves caught between the Indian and White worlds. Many of us had few elders or tribal beliefs on our Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana and we psychologically wandered aimlessly. When we looked around in our classrooms, at books and in town, we Indians were alone with most everyone in authority being non-Indian. Even Jesus was white.
As an adult in college those memories of the early days compelled me to remedy this emasculating and restricting condition as best as possible and I began to research, copy and collect as much material about the Ah-ah-nee Gros Ventre Indian people that came within reach, and the quest continues to this day.
Process:
While at the University of California at Berkeley in 1972, I enrolled in a course that allowed me to research tribal history and a small grant made field work possible allowing a few tentative steps in the direction of the long held dream; I visited and photographed our actual sites in Canada and this country that are prominent in our tribal history. It was so fulfilling. Over a period of years the research continued as either part of a college course, part of my employment, as opportunity presented itself, then for pure pleasure; It became a way of life. A generous series of funding agencies assisted research over the years with small grants such as: The Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Montana Committee for the Humanities, Montana Arts Council, several magnanimous individuals, and our household budget.
Over the years my quest lead to most major libraries and museums in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Holland, Germany, East Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, France and other places I can't even remember. Europe has the best and largest collection of traditional art pieces from our tribe, especially Germany. The essential tribal music came from Dr. Regina Flannery, Anthropologist; the Ethnographic music archives at the University in Bloomington, Indiana and the efforts of an Ethnomusicologist from the Library of Congress who was convinced to spend a year in Indian Country researching and recording our live native music from many places including Fort Belknap, our Reservation in Montana.The material increased until it included the fundamental essence of our tribal history, music, traditional art, and the first tribal grammar and language books written by a Jesuit linguist in the 1800s, later a professional University linguist was encouraged to renew his study of our tribal language working primarily with Theresa Lame Bull until the massive dictionary, grammar book and a guide to pronunciation was successfully completed in 1994. These components form the basic elements of the culture of a people ultimately allowing us to become experts on ourselves! Achieving freedom!
My good fortune continued and in the same year another dream came true with my employment at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City to help build the new institution on the Smithsonian Mall. While developing many parts of it and emphasizing connections with the American Indian community, this long-term archival research project continued. As the NMAI progressed many people from around the country joined our staff to work on this historical endeavor while others offered their financial assistance. One such offer came from a couple in the west and they wanted to contribute to a community oriented educational on-going project. Our Development Officer asked me if I knew of such a project from within our museum and after describing my research project she informed the potential donors and they pledged their commitment to this project and we kicked things into a high active gear and we were off and running.
A highly qualified tech, who specialized in digitizing all sorts of media and had the necessary equipment to accomplish the task started to process the material into the digitized form which began to fill our main database. The aggregate that forms this archive is unique in several ways and other archives are steadily spreading among the tribes as they amass and create their own tribal information. Today in the computer age knowledge is truth and empowerment.
This archive is almost totally focused on one tribe by a few members of that tribe utilizing every medium within reach over a period of at least 41 years, then everything was digitized, so now our tribal members can utilize and learn from it. We didn't get everything everywhere associated with our tribe but we got a big chunk of it but there is more out there like the Carver Papers at MSU, the archives at The Montana State Historical Society and photographs of Strikes on Top's painted tribal exploit account that recently arrived there. Because there is always more somewhere and this tribal archive lays a strong foundation for others to build upon. Most everything in here I read and learned a massive amount. There are still situations with such a project that are still evolving. Most of this material is about us in some way, many are government documents, some are excerpts, some have been written by others and I have written some. I don't know how this aspect will work out but it is important to remember this is a work of love, I have never received a cent in salary for this commitment. It will never be for sale, because our benefits will be much more- knowledge and the confidence it provides. The external hard drives that hold almost 20 Gigabytes of information will be freely given to our tribal library, local schools, Montana Universities, and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D. C. The databases will be structured in a restricted way that they cannot be copied, changed or sold. No more than 15 databases will be available and allowing them to be accessible on the open internet will be decided by the local elders and the White Clay Society, which is a traditional tribal society.
Future:
Considering the many thousands of words in here there are bound to be some typos or other mistakes, although I've read it many times. Even our tribal name that means "White Clay People" has various spellings. The sacred material is restricted by a code that is now available to a select few or until there is enough response to alter the sensitivity restrictions. When necessary the data can be updated.
It is difficult to realize that after all of this time and the mileage covered that this project is over, but all good things should come to completion. Although school curriculum and community cultural development have greatly improved since my grade school days riding that big yellow bus to the Harlem school, much work still needs to be done because we still need to be experts on ourselves. This tribal archive and others in the future must always be a close part of our lives, life-long friends even, as we honor our past and our ancestors: Knowing the road upon which we have traveled that reminds us how special we are. I am old now but I can rest. Wahay!George P. Horse Capture, Sr.
For inquiries: Please contact [horsecapture(at)aaniiih.org] the administrator of this site.
