Multimedia Collection
Going to the Sun: A Creation Story of Waterton Glacier International Peace Park
VHS
58 minutes
SB486 .S65 G61 1996
This park is one of the most beautiful places on earth - over a million Rocky Mountain acres straddling the U.S.-Canadian border between Montana and Alberta. It is a sacred place for the Blackfoot Nation, where they experienced their founding religious visions over three thousand years ago. It is also the setting for the most picturesque roadway in America. Going to the Sun Highway hangs onto the Continental Divide by its fingertips and crosses over the Rockies through Logan Pass.
This film tells the story of the park as witnessed by George Bird Grinnell between 1884 and 1934. Grinnell, an educated Easterner, graphically records his growing respect for the culture of the Blackfoot, their spirituality, their sufferings on a reducing reservation, and his own part in the purchase of their sacred mountains for a dollar an acre. He patronizes the native people but he honestly strives to protect them and this extraordinary place. The new road was an extraordinary engineering achievement, making the park accessible to the average family in their automobile, taming the Wild West to fulfill America's manifest destiny." Unfortunately, that effort cut right across the basic tenets of Blackfoot culture.
Going to the Sun explores the clash between two opposing world-views, the conservationist tribal culture of the Native American with its great sense of the land's spiritual value but no concept of land ownership, versus the individualistic, acquisitive spirit of the pioneer, with its need to tame and dominate nature.
Contact Us
(541) 737-2538
valley.circ@oregonstate.edu
