Truth and Bright Water

Content Warning: This section references colonial trauma and genocide.

Many of the characters in Truth & Bright Water are members of the Blackfoot Confederacy, a political alliance of Indigenous and First Nations people who have historically lived in the northern Great Plains of western North America. Prior to European colonization, the Blackfoot were a nomadic people who used bison not only as a food source but also for clothing, tools, and fuel. The skins of the buffalo were crucial for the creation of tipis (sometimes referred to as “lodges” in Truth & Bright Water). Through the mid- and late-1800s, the Blackfoot signed treaties with the US and Canadian governments forcing them onto reservations. During this same period, the Blackfoot faced existential changes as the buffalo supply dwindled—caused, in large part, by the US government’s efforts to hunt the buffalo to extinction and thus force the Blackfoot to stay on their reservations.

The loss of their most stable food source, coupled with exposure to unfamiliar diseases, caused mass death among the Blackfoot. In the midst of this, the US government took extreme measures to attempt to assimilate the Blackfoot and annihilate their connection to their traditions. Blackfoot children were sent to residential schools and were forbidden from speaking their parents’ language, traditional ceremonies of worship and celebration were outlawed, and land allotment laws were passed to break up communally-held tribal lands.