Circa 1900. Near Browning, Montana. Blackfeet Reservation. Imagine hearing this drum somewhere out on the Montana plains. Before you ever saw who was making the sound. Before you knew what was happening. Just that deep, steady beat carrying across open country. If you were a stranger traveling through this landscape 125 years ago, I imagine it would stop you cold. In this photograph are two Blackfoot men identified as Black Bull and Stabs-Down-By-Mistake, standing beside a large drum during a Sun Dance near Browning, Montana. They wear dentalia necklaces, moccasins, and ceremonial clothing. That drum was not background noise. In ceremonies like the Sun Dance, sound, rhythm, prayer, sacrifice, community, and spiritual life were bound together. And out here, on this huge, exposed country, the sound could carry. That is the part I keep thinking about. A lone traveler. Wind across the grass. Nothing around for miles. Then somewhere in the distance... boom. boom. boom. You may not understand the ceremony. You may not know who is there. But you would know immediately that you had entered someone else’s world. And on the northern plains, that world had existed long before railroads, towns, or reservation boundaries ever appeared on a map. That drum would have meant something very different depending on who was hearing it. But I doubt anyone heard it and ignored it.