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As published in the Great Falls Tribune, Tuesday, April 12

Longtime Blackfeet leader dies

By ERIC NEWHOUSE
Tribune Projects Editor

Services are this week for the late Blackfeet leader George Kicking Woman.

BROWNING — Funeral services will be held this week for George Kicking Woman, one of the most revered spiritual leaders of the Blackfeet Nation.

Kicking Woman, the holder of the tribe's Thunder Pipe medicine bundle, died Thursday, just five days after his 92nd birthday.

A wake gets under way at the Browning Middle School today, with funeral services there at 2 p.m. Thursday.

"People came to George for advice, whether it be political, social or religious," Earl Old Person, chief of the Blackfeet Tribe, said Monday. "And they came to him for his prayers."

For more than half a century, George and Mollie Kicking Woman cared for and prayed over the Thunder Pipe bundle, which passed down through her family.

The bundle, believed to be more than 400 years old, is opened in an elaborate ceremony after the first spring thunderstorm each year.

The ceremony provides a blessing for the Blackfeet, George Kicking Woman said several years ago.

"I know there's a power that goes out to help my people," he said at the time.

Friend Darrell Norman described Kicking Woman as one of the last true, practicing shamans. "Owning a medicine pipe bundle means being totally open with everything," said Norman, owner of Browning's Lodgepole Gallery.

"They have to be willing to give to everyone and be willing to live humbly," Norman said.

Kicking Woman was also voted onto the tribal business council several times.

An all-round athlete in his younger days, he remained a fan of local sporting events. He also was a leader in a number of tribal societies, Old Person said.

"George was called to take a leading role in all ceremonies involving the Blackfeet Nation and among other peoples," said Old Person.

George and Mollie Kicking Woman lived out traditional values in a modern setting, Norman said Monday. "They were like a bridge, carrying the old ways over into a new time and trying to reconcile those things," he said.

The family is still determining who will be named the new holder of the medicine bundle, Norman said.

But Old Person said he believed that Clyde Heavy Runner had learned enough in assisting his father-in-law to be able to continue the tradition.

Attached Images

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