Into the Fire in the Mountains: A Journey of Healing with the Blackfeet
So what brings you to the mountains? The bands, the call of nature, the need for escape, a spiritual cleansing, a sense of belonging—or maybe just rest? I wasn’t entirely sure, but initially, it was to see Old Man’s Child play the Millennium King, a song released in 1998 and never played in the United States. When they were announced as the headliner of Fire in the Mountains, my interest was piqued. As I learned more leading up to the event, it began to feel like a festival created for those of us longing for something sacred in sound - something that could breathe life back into our souls and offer a step toward healing from burnout.
Fire in the Mountains was a sacred interruption, an ephemeral glimpse of what radical, mutual care and artistic resistance might look like. It was a rupture from the ordinary, a call to attention for a deeper kind of listening and presence. No alcohol was permitted at this festival. There was no electricity, no phone service, no communication with the outside world. To reconnect, we first had to disconnect. The Blackfeet invited us onto their ancestral land to share in this communal experience. And it was an honor.
The festival was co-produced by Fire Keeper Alliance, a grassroots collective of mental health professionals, educators, legal advocates, musicians, language preservationists, and public health workers, united by a shared commitment to confronting the crisis of suicide and expanding access to support across Indigenous communities. Fire Keeper Alliance was co-founded by Charlie Speicher, a mental health counselor who also serves as Director of Buffalo Hide Academy in Browning, Montana. He works alongside Robert Hall, known by the name Aatsióiskaan, who facilitates workshops on Blackfeet song, drumming traditions, and tribal sovereignty, and contributes to the Alliance’s legal and educational initiatives.
One of the panels at the festival, Heavy Music Heals, discussed the Heavy Music Symposium, a class they helped develop for students in Browning. Charlie talked about how there is catharsis in heavy music and how it allows you to express pain or grief - how it is vital to embrace the “profane.” And to express grief through art.
One of the students was part of the panel and discussed how meaningful the course was for him. Classmates were eager to attend the class and dive into conversations about music, identity, and life. He talked about his relationship with his teacher, Colin Sibbernsen, and how they connected through music. He later took the stage during the opening act with Pan-Amerikan Native Front, a band led by Kurator of War, an Indigenous Mexican whose music channels the struggles of Indigenous peoples across the Americas. During the final song, he and his classmates, festival volunteers, emerged together, proudly holding the Blackfeet Nation flag. It was a moment that brought many of us to tears. For the students, there was catharsis in heavy music.
The following day, while sitting on the beach during the Music as Medicine panel, I instinctively began building small structures out of rocks, sticks, and plants. It felt like instinctual play, and I noticed that this kind of interaction with the land was common at the festival.
The night before, I had skipped rocks with fellow anarchist Austin Lunn and Panopticon, all of us momentarily reverting to childhood. As Krallice played their ambient set in the background, we became competitively friendly over how many skips we could get and how far the rocks would go. There was even a philosophical moment about how the “best rock” would differ for each person, depending on their unique style of throwing, the ideal shape and size aligning with the rhythm of their body.
Krallice at Two Medicine Lake
Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, one of the speakers from the previous day, had remarked that “it isn’t Blackfeet without children yelling and interrupting,” a comment that stuck with me. The lack of background noise during the panel felt strange, almost eerie.
But within a few minutes of starting my little construction project, two children wandered over and began to help me build what they later named “Rock Stick City.” For the next hour, we collaborated as they brought me various treasures from the beach—stones, “diamonds,” sticks, flowers, feathers—which we integrated into the city’s design.
One of the children, a six-year-old named River, told me that his father was speaking on the panel and was wearing a gray hat. I later realized his dad was Kurator of War.
I frequently noticed the energetic frequencies of connection between people at the festival. There were maybe fifteen or twenty people I kept seeing, and every time we talked, it felt like I was meeting a best friend I just hadn’t known yet. In the middle of the night, a spiritual writer whom I had met on line during the afternoon barbecue, bumped into me. She talked to me about a book she was working on, which was about the appropriation and neoliberal invasion of sacred spiritual spaces, such as White Instagram spiritual prophets selling crystals and essential oils, or the White IG models wearing native headdress and tribal tattoos while selling subscriptions to OnlyFans. It’s cultural theft.
Most notably, however, were the neurodivergent people with mental health challenges. There was the recovering addict, now sober, teaching yoga by day, and caring for disabled people by night. He noticed my Emma Goldman silhouette shirt and called me over to listen to music on his boombox.
And the person who told me he had battled anxiety and depression, and was so low that he had a plan to kill himself, but was saved after going into an Anthrax mosh pit and breaking his ribs. He described the mosh pit as healing, a theme echoed by many throughout the weekend.
I found myself reflecting on this as well, though in a broader context of movement. We talked about how Muay Thai serves a similar purpose for me, and he related—he practices Kenpo. We discussed the complexities of aggression in sparring and how it can become a form of safe haven attachment healing. There’s trust in our partners, in the rhythm of give and take. From a polyvagal perspective, it’s a dance between sympathetic nervous system activation and the ventral vagal complex, a way of moving between mobilization and social engagement, and learning to regulate through connection.
The mosh pit was always full of smiles, especially during the most aggressive and violent set, Converge. Someone’s tooth was chipped, but they returned within moments because they didn’t want to miss out. At one point, I was tossed around without any control of my own body, just being pushed between so many people, and was falling, but as I was falling and about to hit the ground, several arms were there to prevent my fall, and throw me back into the mix. This felt like an incredible metaphor for the sort of community I was in at this moment. We were connected and there to provide support. The pit was the juxtaposition of violence and tenderness.
The last song of the set, Last Light, was especially powerful. From the opening lines, Converge’s vocalist, Jacob Bannon, stood grimacing as tears streamed down his face, and stunned us with his gut-wrenching delivery of lyrics by the end of the song:
This is for the hearts still beating
Beating, beating, beating
A small group of us spontaneously embraced, forming an expanding circle as more people joined in. Someone raised a fist and shouted, “Keep fighting,” and we all echoed the cry. Someone captured this moment, and I am grateful, because it is one of my favorite photos from the festival.
It was a cry to keep living, to throw yourself into the pit and feel the support from others, because we’re here for you. Because we love you, and you are worth our love.
Because this was the kind of place where you could walk into the Tsiikó’tssáatúkii’pinnaana - a space for grief, reflection, and creation -leave behind a piece of your heart in art, and walk out to find someone waiting with open arms. Someone who saw you. Because you weren’t the only one moved to tears in that tipi. You weren’t alone in your grief. And there was no shame in it - only shared humanity.
That’s what made it powerful. These were people who, to outsiders, might appear cold or intimidating in their black clothing, tattoos, and piercings. But they were among the most emotionally attuned, open, and compassionate you’ll ever meet.
While there were many dark themes present, love was at the forefront. One of my revelations was how Love is the place from which you observe all else, and the glue for collective liberation. My mind often thinks of the Beatles All You Need Is Love when I notice these themes in my mind. I became aware of the beauty all around me, a quiet gift we’re so often too distracted to see. But you have to “remember to remember” to look at it (sati, aka mindfulness). So I set my intentions toward observation of nature, the Yarrow and Purple Aster flowers, and the beautiful scenery. I began doing a very slow walking meditation, allowing myself to take in the beauty of the landscape. Every moment felt like a painting -picturesque, surreal, almost too beautiful to be real. What struck me was that I needed things to slow down to truly notice. It wasn’t stillness in the traditional sense. The music was playing, and I still felt the urge to move. But something about the walking meditation revealed a different kind of stillness. A stillness that meant moving with what was given, flowing with it, breathing alongside it.
And it made me think of the buffalo, the nomadic lifestyle of the Blackfeet, and how their rhythmic flow with nature was a form of wisdom, connection, and belonging that we’ve largely forgotten. Before coming to Fire in the Mountain, I was reading about the intentional extermination of the Buffalo, which is one of the most nefarious aspects of Blackfeet erasure and genocide.
The destruction of the buffalo was not a tragic accident of industrial expansion - it was a calculated act of warfare. For the Blackfeet and other Plains nations, the buffalo was more than sustenance; it was kin, economy, and cosmology. To sever that relationship was to collapse an entire world. U.S. military officials openly encouraged the mass slaughter, knowing that without the herds, Indigenous peoples would be starved into submission. What followed was a forced transition from nomadic freedom to imposed sedentism. Tipis gave way to cabins, communal hunting grounds to individual allotments, and seasonal movement to fenced-in agriculture. The Blackfeet were pushed into a capitalist framework that demanded ownership, productivity, and dependence. This was not just land theft - it was cultural annihilation repackaged as “civilization.” The legacy of this assault lives on in the bones of the prairie, in the lost migrations, and in every attempt to re-indigenize time, space, and economy.
During the Fighting for Sacred Spaces talk, Evan Thompson and Sterling HolyWhiteMountain discussed the structural and historical forces that have constrained tribal sovereignty and economic self-determination. They explained that Indian is a federally defined legal category, one that permits tribal nations to engage in treaties with the United States but simultaneously locks them into a status of domestic dependency. The panel highlighted the tension between symbolic sovereignty and material disempowerment: while tribes hold sovereign status on paper, they are often landlocked, under-resourced, and forced into competition under capitalism, both with settler economies and with one another. They emphasized that the United States has little incentive to support thriving tribal economies, because true independence would empower over five hundred nations with land-based claims and political autonomy.
The speakers also addressed the insidious legacy of blood quantum, a colonial eugenics tool that redefined Indigenous identity in terms of fractions rather than kinship, culture, or responsibility. This system, imported from feudal Europe, fragments tribal belonging over generations, which diminishes voting populations, federal funding eligibility, and access to governance. “We think of ourselves in fractions,” one speaker said, tracing how that thinking was imposed to destabilize long-standing social systems rooted in collective belonging.
They also explained that Indian is their preferred term in legal contexts, as it carries specific governmental meaning and is not inherently offensive to them. However, when speaking more personally, they prefer to identify by their specific band within the tribal confederacy, such as Piikani. He chuckled slightly, pointing out that Blackfeet isn’t even a proper translation, rather, it is a colonial term assigned by early explorers and traders, later codified through federal recognition as the Blackfeet Nation.
During the Blackfeet Artists and Writers panel, one of the writers described how their creative work had been shaped and constrained by colonization, beginning with the expectation to write in English, the language of the colonizer. This sentiment was echoed during the Tribal Sovereignty, Historical Trauma, and Cultural Resilience panel, where speakers emphasized the importance of preserving their language and instilling cultural identity in their children, especially in the wake of what was stripped away through the trauma of boarding schools. The artists and writers reflected on the complexity of authenticity, a term that has been co-opted by those trying to profit from marginalized identities. They spoke of the discomfort in being packaged for mainstream appeal, emphasizing that their culture is not a brand, nor something to be commodified. They described this dynamic as the “Indian Trap,” a situation where the cultural identity of an artist is foregrounded to the point that the aesthetic and formal qualities of their work are overlooked. It’s a form of essentialism: reducing artists to spokespeople for their identity rather than recognizing the full range of their creative expression.
This dynamic is also important to consider in the context of the festival itself, where Indigenous metal artists took the stage throughout the weekend. Their performances challenged reductive expectations about what Indigenous art “should” look or sound like. Rather than offering palatable or stereotypical representations, these artists embodied a refusal to be boxed in, expressing grief, rage, resilience, and resistance through distortion, blast beats, and guttural vocals. In doing so, they pushed back against the commodification of Native identity and asserted their place within genres often seen as disconnected from Indigenous culture.
The Blackfeet Artists and Writers panel closed with a reflection from one of the speakers who emphasized that their art is about being with people by visiting, connecting, and sharing knowledge. It’s about storytelling as a living practice of cultural transmission. This deeply resonated with the teachings of Kevin D. KickingWoman, who spoke during his session on The Power of Native Song. Kevin, whose Blackfeet name is Kookii (“Corner Post”), is a Blackfeet educator, cultural teacher, and singer, known for his dedication to preserving and teaching Blackfeet language, history, and traditional song.
In his talk, Kevin described how songs carry stories, responsibilities, and rights. In Blackfeet oral tradition, song can hold the essence of an entire life, and it must be witnessed by elders, the community, and spirit, to ensure it is carried forward with integrity. He spoke about singing with care, imagining how each song might have sounded hundreds of years ago, honoring the lineage from which it came. While Kevin didn’t use the term explicitly, his teachings reflected what Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson describes as “relational accountability,” the idea that knowledge is held and shared through relationships, and that those who carry it are responsible to their community, their ancestors, and the land. In this way, song becomes not just a form of expression, but a sacred act of preservation, accountability, and cultural continuity.
As the festival neared its end, the lessons of song, story, and sacred witnessing lingered in the air, each note, each voice a thread in a much older tapestry. And then, just as the final performance was about to begin, the land itself responded, as if reminding us that we were still guests in a living story.
During Inter Arma’s set, the power suddenly went out. For a moment, the stage went dark, but the drummer kept playing. What began as an impromptu solo quickly transformed into a surge of energy as the crowd joined in, chanting along as he launched into a thunderous rendition of War Pigs. It felt like we conjured something together, something feral and electric. And then, almost miraculously, the power returned, just as the iconic Black Sabbath riff cut through the air, distorted and triumphant. It was as if Ozzy himself had breathed life back into the set, the fuzzed-out guitars roaring to life and the drums hitting harder than before. The revival was complete.
But just as the headliner, Old Man’s Child, was about to take the stage, a bolt of lightning tore through the sky. The show was paused for about thirty minutes as a sudden downpour swept over us. Then, just as quickly, the rain stopped, and the fire in the mountains burned once more. We dried off by the flames, the music resumed, and the weekend entered its final chapter. Blood Incantation closed the night with their Timewave Zero set, one last cosmic meditation to process everything we had just lived through.
So what brings us to the mountains?
To keep the fire burning.
To grieve and rage and remember.
To gather in noise and stillness.
To move and be moved.
To listen.
To live.
