DARRELL ROBES KIPP: A Story
There are two "Darrell Kipps" on Twitter. This is the one I know.
The “original Kipp” was a handsome man, Jim Kipp, had a son named Joe Kipp who was equally charismatic and historically powerful. But Darrell Kipp was not descended from them. Genetically, he was a Heavyrunner, the peace chief who was murdered by the US Cavalry in the “Baker Massacre”, an incident suppressed when I came to teach English on the Blackfeet Reservation in 1961 but now annually memorialized by the tribe in 2018.
Darrell chose his own middle name, “Robes.” It commemorates a fraction of the Blackfoot Nation that was extinguished: the “Scabby Robes” who were more willing to relate to white men and therefore were decimated by disease and betrayals. Darrell thought he could keep them alive in some way if he took their name, though he was Pikuni or South Piegan, meaning the group that was captured by the USA when the 49th parallel was defined as the boundary. The other two groups are on the Canadian side.
Darrell grew up partly in Blackfoot, which was a village established at the end of the Great Northern railroad while they were surveying and constructing the railway through Marias Pass. The railroad was defined before the auto highway. For a while one crossed the Rockies by loading one’s auto onto railway flatbeds.
Blackfoot dwindled when the Pass was finished and in use. Joe Kipp had built a hotel “road house” which had two stories and was primitively maintained (wood stove in each room and infrequent laundry). Darrell said he barely remembered an old woman who occupied one room and had furnished it like a tipi with an insulating canvas wall around the room to make it round. She had no furniture but put her trunks and bundles behind that “wall” as she would in a tipi. He thought she might be his great-grandmother.
Tom Kipp, Darrell’s father, had been a railroad man until retirement. At that point he sat at a chair and table on the second floor in that building, and watched until his end. He didn’t say much. His mother was one of the secretarial pool at the BIA, typing and filing with a group of similar women. He said their pay didn’t always keep up with their emergencies, so they often borrowed five dollars from each other, but always paid it back. This couple probably had a high school education partly from government residential schools. Darrell’s brothers all died young, struggling with alcoholism, its entailments and causes. His sister was in one of my English classes, a composed and peaceful woman. His uncle, James Kipp, taught English at the Browning High School about the same time as I did, but I didn’t know him.
Darrell graduated from the Browning schools in 1962. I knew who he was because I started teaching there in 1961. He was respected and even loved. The secret of his success was that he read constantly. He must have been drafted. The Korean War never really ended, but it was dwindled down. The Koreans are the tallest people of the Asian countries and since Darrell was “Blackfeet-size” (big) he probably could not have passed farther south. He learned the language and remembered it decades later.
His buddy, Jim Fisher, who became a fine photographer, went with him to Eastern Montana University in Billings. In those days any graduate from a Montana high school could attend, tuition free. They were naive and gave no thought to housing or food, but the school had people who set them up with rooms and simple janitor jobs. The two remained compatriots lifelong.
Darrell’s roommate was white and lived in Great Falls. They were a revelation to each other. When Darrell was returning to the rez, he hitched a ride with the roommate to Great Falls, thinking he would "thumb it" the rest of the way. The white boy’s mother, a lawyer’s wife, fed him a big breakfast and gave him a bus ticket. He was completely impressed with the lovely house and ways of this family and tried all his life to be like them.
I’m not sure how Darrell met Roberta, a beautiful woman belonging to a BIA executive family. After Harvard he was employed by a Canadian tribe that had kept its rez in the Canadian cooperative style and was much influenced by that. The People didn’t own their housing but occupied whichever shelter matched their needs. He once told me about a dream to have a circle of housing for good friends with a central meeting place, a sort of kibbutz. The Sixties and Seventies were idealistic times that encouraged experiments.
While Darrell was at Harvard, the counselor at the Browning High School, Bill Haw, organized a Free School. Bill was newly arrived from Detroit and trained in Rogerian counseling. I never taught at the school but I hung around it quite a bit. It was called “The Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop” in the hope that it could pay for itself and was located in an old commodities warehouse. It was certified by the state and accepted intern teachers from Missoula. It had ended by the time Darrell returned.
Learning to speak Blackfeet ran into the historical harsh punishment for speaking the language (along with religious ceremonies and beading) so that people had encouraged their own children to learn only English. They were conditioned to fear speaking Blackfeeet (Siksika in their language.) Also, they had learned to admire their captors (Stockholm Syndrome) rather than value their own indigenous culture except in the backwaters of the rez. But now, in the name of independence, people began to think about re-learning their language. The Free School supported this, but when Haw left, the enterprise staggered and fell.
When Darrell came back from Harvard and Goddard, arrangements were made by the tribe to take advantage of his new degrees. But Roberta did not want to raise her boy on the rez, so a household was acquired in Missoula where an academic neighborhood was progressive. James Welch lived nearby. Darrell more or less commuted.
In the early Seventies Marvin Weatherwax’s mother taught Blackfeet in the high school using the methods and machinery for learning French. Terry Sherburne, the foreign language teacher, helped with this. Both people are deceased, but they had made a start. Darrell and Dorothy Still Smoking received a contract to teach Blackfeet in the public schools, but all that happened was endless arguments sitting at a table. Finally Darrell just went over to the elementary school, asked the teacher (whom he knew) to go have coffee for half an hour, and taught the kids some elementary stuff. They loved it, they begged for it.
The experience led Darrell and Dorothy to found Piegan Institute. It also taught them not to get money from schools, the tribe, BIA, or any other federal branch. They began to raise money from NGO’s like the Latham Foundation. They were much helped by Bill Grant, an architect, who designed and built both the Moccasin Flats one-roomed school and the more complex Cuts Wood building. These are organic, warmly colored, sun-oriented buildings that can be used many ways.
At first the thought was the pattern of the one-roomed school houses that dotted the rez, but then the teachers asked to be together to share ideas. The students were elite mixed-bloods for the most part, but the teachers spoke the language. The parallel Catholic charter school helped form the style. Darrell was then nationally pressed to speak, be on panels, serve as an expert evaluator, and otherwise go public to raise money. This was exhausting and he only survived by developing a range of jokes — like pretending to “teach” the audience to make bogus applause in Indian Sign Language. (“Indins” don’t applaud.) — and also by completely disengaging in summer at his cabin along St. Mary’s Lake.
A second strand to the Institute was the accumulation and preservation of the many academic papers written about the Blackfeet but who had never been included in the distribution. They filled a whole room until people started borrowing them; then like seeds they had a tendency to travel.
An unexpected development was being asked to curate things like the Southwest Museum’s collection of Curtiss photographs. Relying on Shirley Crowshoe was key. She was a Blackfoot from Canada, a speaker and a close analyst. The Southwest Museum was acquired by the Autry museum, which was much larger and richer but didn’t have many artifacts. The two experts worked in a room filled with kachina dolls, which are said to change the weather if they are moved. So they would say to each other, “Since I’m moving this doll out of the way, watch out — it may rain now.”
Back on the rez Darrell was a tribal judge, a miserably complex and troublesome demand, esp. since he was often given the worst cases, like big-shots who wanted a divorce from a powerful woman. Its far more successful role was in helping to organize Siyeh, a completely owned subsidiary corporation with an independent board authorized to do business. One if the persistent problems had been council members who were high-handed in profiteering, and also BIA interference. With tight bookkeeping and shared decisions, Siyeh made money.
Many more good things happened due to Darrell’s thinking. We shared a lot of ideas and principles which is the basis of the letters I’ve accumulated. All was not roses. He went through some hard times. It was a lonely road. He was discouraged when he met famous tribal people who were drunks. I haven’t grouped or analyzed these materials, preferring to keep memories.
Darrell Robes Kipp
Darrell chose his own middle name, “Robes.” It commemorates a fraction of the Blackfoot Nation that was extinguished: the “Scabby Robes” who were more willing to relate to white men and therefore were decimated by disease and betrayals. Darrell thought he could keep them alive in some way if he took their name, though he was Pikuni or South Piegan, meaning the group that was captured by the USA when the 49th parallel was defined as the boundary. The other two groups are on the Canadian side.
Darrell grew up partly in Blackfoot, which was a village established at the end of the Great Northern railroad while they were surveying and constructing the railway through Marias Pass. The railroad was defined before the auto highway. For a while one crossed the Rockies by loading one’s auto onto railway flatbeds.
Blackfoot dwindled when the Pass was finished and in use. Joe Kipp had built a hotel “road house” which had two stories and was primitively maintained (wood stove in each room and infrequent laundry). Darrell said he barely remembered an old woman who occupied one room and had furnished it like a tipi with an insulating canvas wall around the room to make it round. She had no furniture but put her trunks and bundles behind that “wall” as she would in a tipi. He thought she might be his great-grandmother.
Tom Kipp, Darrell’s father, had been a railroad man until retirement. At that point he sat at a chair and table on the second floor in that building, and watched until his end. He didn’t say much. His mother was one of the secretarial pool at the BIA, typing and filing with a group of similar women. He said their pay didn’t always keep up with their emergencies, so they often borrowed five dollars from each other, but always paid it back. This couple probably had a high school education partly from government residential schools. Darrell’s brothers all died young, struggling with alcoholism, its entailments and causes. His sister was in one of my English classes, a composed and peaceful woman. His uncle, James Kipp, taught English at the Browning High School about the same time as I did, but I didn’t know him.
Darrell graduated from the Browning schools in 1962. I knew who he was because I started teaching there in 1961. He was respected and even loved. The secret of his success was that he read constantly. He must have been drafted. The Korean War never really ended, but it was dwindled down. The Koreans are the tallest people of the Asian countries and since Darrell was “Blackfeet-size” (big) he probably could not have passed farther south. He learned the language and remembered it decades later.
His buddy, Jim Fisher, who became a fine photographer, went with him to Eastern Montana University in Billings. In those days any graduate from a Montana high school could attend, tuition free. They were naive and gave no thought to housing or food, but the school had people who set them up with rooms and simple janitor jobs. The two remained compatriots lifelong.
Darrell’s roommate was white and lived in Great Falls. They were a revelation to each other. When Darrell was returning to the rez, he hitched a ride with the roommate to Great Falls, thinking he would "thumb it" the rest of the way. The white boy’s mother, a lawyer’s wife, fed him a big breakfast and gave him a bus ticket. He was completely impressed with the lovely house and ways of this family and tried all his life to be like them.
I’m not sure how Darrell met Roberta, a beautiful woman belonging to a BIA executive family. After Harvard he was employed by a Canadian tribe that had kept its rez in the Canadian cooperative style and was much influenced by that. The People didn’t own their housing but occupied whichever shelter matched their needs. He once told me about a dream to have a circle of housing for good friends with a central meeting place, a sort of kibbutz. The Sixties and Seventies were idealistic times that encouraged experiments.
While Darrell was at Harvard, the counselor at the Browning High School, Bill Haw, organized a Free School. Bill was newly arrived from Detroit and trained in Rogerian counseling. I never taught at the school but I hung around it quite a bit. It was called “The Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop” in the hope that it could pay for itself and was located in an old commodities warehouse. It was certified by the state and accepted intern teachers from Missoula. It had ended by the time Darrell returned.
Learning to speak Blackfeet ran into the historical harsh punishment for speaking the language (along with religious ceremonies and beading) so that people had encouraged their own children to learn only English. They were conditioned to fear speaking Blackfeeet (Siksika in their language.) Also, they had learned to admire their captors (Stockholm Syndrome) rather than value their own indigenous culture except in the backwaters of the rez. But now, in the name of independence, people began to think about re-learning their language. The Free School supported this, but when Haw left, the enterprise staggered and fell.
When Darrell came back from Harvard and Goddard, arrangements were made by the tribe to take advantage of his new degrees. But Roberta did not want to raise her boy on the rez, so a household was acquired in Missoula where an academic neighborhood was progressive. James Welch lived nearby. Darrell more or less commuted.
In the early Seventies Marvin Weatherwax’s mother taught Blackfeet in the high school using the methods and machinery for learning French. Terry Sherburne, the foreign language teacher, helped with this. Both people are deceased, but they had made a start. Darrell and Dorothy Still Smoking received a contract to teach Blackfeet in the public schools, but all that happened was endless arguments sitting at a table. Finally Darrell just went over to the elementary school, asked the teacher (whom he knew) to go have coffee for half an hour, and taught the kids some elementary stuff. They loved it, they begged for it.
The experience led Darrell and Dorothy to found Piegan Institute. It also taught them not to get money from schools, the tribe, BIA, or any other federal branch. They began to raise money from NGO’s like the Latham Foundation. They were much helped by Bill Grant, an architect, who designed and built both the Moccasin Flats one-roomed school and the more complex Cuts Wood building. These are organic, warmly colored, sun-oriented buildings that can be used many ways.
At first the thought was the pattern of the one-roomed school houses that dotted the rez, but then the teachers asked to be together to share ideas. The students were elite mixed-bloods for the most part, but the teachers spoke the language. The parallel Catholic charter school helped form the style. Darrell was then nationally pressed to speak, be on panels, serve as an expert evaluator, and otherwise go public to raise money. This was exhausting and he only survived by developing a range of jokes — like pretending to “teach” the audience to make bogus applause in Indian Sign Language. (“Indins” don’t applaud.) — and also by completely disengaging in summer at his cabin along St. Mary’s Lake.
A second strand to the Institute was the accumulation and preservation of the many academic papers written about the Blackfeet but who had never been included in the distribution. They filled a whole room until people started borrowing them; then like seeds they had a tendency to travel.
An unexpected development was being asked to curate things like the Southwest Museum’s collection of Curtiss photographs. Relying on Shirley Crowshoe was key. She was a Blackfoot from Canada, a speaker and a close analyst. The Southwest Museum was acquired by the Autry museum, which was much larger and richer but didn’t have many artifacts. The two experts worked in a room filled with kachina dolls, which are said to change the weather if they are moved. So they would say to each other, “Since I’m moving this doll out of the way, watch out — it may rain now.”
Back on the rez Darrell was a tribal judge, a miserably complex and troublesome demand, esp. since he was often given the worst cases, like big-shots who wanted a divorce from a powerful woman. Its far more successful role was in helping to organize Siyeh, a completely owned subsidiary corporation with an independent board authorized to do business. One if the persistent problems had been council members who were high-handed in profiteering, and also BIA interference. With tight bookkeeping and shared decisions, Siyeh made money.
Many more good things happened due to Darrell’s thinking. We shared a lot of ideas and principles which is the basis of the letters I’ve accumulated. All was not roses. He went through some hard times. It was a lonely road. He was discouraged when he met famous tribal people who were drunks. I haven’t grouped or analyzed these materials, preferring to keep memories.
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