Chief Leo Pretty Young Man; 1994
In March, 1994 I was in Calgary, Alberta Canada shooting a television commercial for Office Depot , this was part of their “Takin’ Care of Business” campaign. I had shot most of Office Depot’s television commercials since they were a small chain with just three stores.
We were shooting in and around the Calgary Saddledome covering the Calgary Stampede. The campaign was biographical, telling the stories of people of interesting businesses, showing them in their working environment Takin’ Care of Business.
When I travel for production, I always bring my still cameras, sometimes it would be a Wisner 4×5 technical view camera in a 45 pound backpack. Though this time it was a Mamaya RB-67 6x7cm medium format camera. Nowadays I tend to travel with a Nikon D8000 and bunch of lenses.
On this particular day, we had several of members of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation who participate in the Stampede events as actors in the commercial. One of them was Chief Leo Pretty Young Man. Leo was very active in the Indian Village at the Stampede and at the time a Blackfoot chief.
After our lunch break, I asked Leo if I could take a few minutes and photograph him and he was very happy to do so. We went into an empty conference room with a large window that flooded the space in soft daylight and in about ten minutes, I captured these shots.
As he posed for the images, he told me the story of how he was involved in the celebration in 1977 of the centennial of the First Nations Treaty No. 7. Wearing his buckskin outfit and headdress, he helped induct Prince Charles as an honorary member and chief of the tribe with the name Red Crow.
Chief Leo Pretty Young Man passed on a couple of years after these images where taken. He was instrumental in the development of Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park located on the Bow River east of Calgary, which opened in 2007, long after his death. This is where throughout most of the history of the Blackfoot people, they were able to safely cross the river on the Old North Trail. It is also the infamous site of the signing in 1877 of Treaty No. 7, where with little choice in the matter, the chiefs agreed to “cede, release, surrender, and yield up to the Government of Canada for Her Majesty the Queen (Victoria) and her successors for ever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever” to southern Alberta. http://www.blackfootcrossing.ca/index.html
