Transitional Story

Pipe Bag Story

When I think about the pipe bag or any container in our culture, a container is something that we carry things in, and we protect them from getting lost or from losing them. So those are the thoughts I have when I talk about a pipe bag or a container. When I think about an organization coming together, the organization will have no need to become a society or an organization if they don’t have anything common [that they carry with them]. But if they find a need in their community, then they would come together based on that need. And coming together they would have their discussion on what the need was.

Through that discussion, they [the organization] can prioritize all the important points that they brought up. And from the prioritized list, in Western culture, they’ll write them down. And once they have them on a piece of paper, then that gives them their goals and objectives. That’s how we understand the written system. But when you look at the oral system—with this pipe bag understanding—we also have shared goals and ideas and practices belonging to a group of people coming together for a [common] need, and through their discussion they prioritize that need.

However, in an oral culture, we didn’t write, so what we did was, once we had the priorities, those priorities were represented with cultural items from an environment that we all share within all of creation, whether it’s animals, plants, rocks, and so on. Those cultural items are brought together to represent those visions and missions. And of course we have to wrap them [the cultural items] up so they don’t fall all over the place. So we have a pouch or a container. In a lot of cases, we’d say a pouch bag or a pipe bag [or a bundle] that we can put them in, and that’s what we bring to all our meetings, so that represents our visions and mission.

We don’t have Western practices. We don’t have a file that we put in a filing cabinet, but what we do have is the bundle itself that’s handed over through a ceremony, an oral practice, to somebody to be responsible for it. They’ll know the knowledge. Usually the leader. Then, when the leader retires and a new leader comes in, that container is transferred to the new leader, and the old leader then becomes the keeper of our oral policies [our oral filing cabinet] to give us direction, advice, and help. That’s why Elders are so important in the coming into circles of meetings.

Oral Teaching, Piikani Elder Dr. Reg Crowshoe