Transitional Story

Blackfoot Story of the Smudge

When I go back to our Indigenous knowledge, the story of the smudge came from the interaction of creation. When I look at interaction within the spirit world, the mystical world, and the real world, I would look at jurisdiction and how those three worlds interact. In the Blackfoot stories, a hero from one of our community camps was Scarface. He was living in a camp that had hard times—a lot of famine—and even he personally had a hard time. He was being bullied in the community as a child; he had a scar on his face. He went to a Creator’s Lodge, which is in the spirit world. It’s a long story, but eventually he vowed to go to Creator to have his scar removed. He went all the way through the real world, the mystical world, and then to the spirit world. When he got there, he had Creator clear off his scar. Creator healed him in a sweat. Creator took the feather and wiped off the scar with the feather while they were in the sweat. We called that action of wiping the scar off Scarface’s face Somiikan. His name then changed from Pii’ak’ski to Somii’on. The story went on that Creator told Somii’on, “When you came all the way to the spirit world, to the Creator’s world, you came because of your hardships and the hardships you’re having with your camp—your famine, your sickness, your deaths—and the hardships you’re having with your whole people are represented in that scar. So I’ve cleared off the scar with my feather.” Then Creator told him “The sweetgrass represents the concept of a sanctified kindness of all our relatives.” Anything that is created is our relative. So the sweetgrass is my relative. The buffalo, the water, the air, and the stars—those are all our relatives.

Creator said that the sweetgrass represents the concept of sanctified kindness. His instructions were to “take a hot coal from the fire and put it down, and then take the sweetgrass—which is sanctified kindness for all creation—and put it on the hot coal; then the smoke will come up.” The sun represents Creator’s world. It’s hot in the morning, and when you smudge it is like Creator taking the scar off you. The smoke comes up from the smudge, and your hand becomes a representation of the feather that Creator had to take the scar off Scarface. So you take the sweetgrass, put it on the hot coal; when the smoke comes up, you put your hand over the smoke, and you cleanse yourself. You transform yourself into a safe space to have a gathering, so you can learn or make decisions. We all go through the act of cleansing ourselves.

After that sweat was done, Scarface brought the sweetgrass back home. When he came back from the spirit world or the sun’s world—which is also Creator’s world—back to his community, he brought the sweetgrass. So that’s the basic understanding of our call to order. We make a smudge as a call to order, but the smudge builds the understanding that everything in creation is our relative, and we must enact that sanctified kindness so that we can take away whatever or what isn’t working for us to make right decisions.

Oral Teaching, Piikani Elder Reg Crowshoe