is one of the most celebrated and well-known psychologists of the 20th century. His work in psychology still influences scholarly studies in education and business administration in the United States, as well in other countries around the world. Perhaps the best known of his contributions is that of his hierarchy of needs and his model of selfactualization. This paper explores one of the many lectures given at several colleges by Heavy Head and Narcisse Blood as a projective piece that reveals underlying current concerns of the Blackfoot Indian Tribe. The major theme of the lecture is the collective loss of cultural identity and the tribe's current perception of place within the Western world. An attempt will be made to delineate themes and symbolic representations embedded within the words of the lecturers, further aiding in the understanding of why certain misattributions have occurred. A survey of Maslow's personal correspondence and professional works will be used to correct possibly erroneous attributions, to explore the origins of the development of his theories, and to explain his field work with the Blackfoot. The end result should not draw criticism upon the ways in which the members of the Blackfoot Tribe tell the story of Abraham Maslow because it is not an ideation of correctness that is the concern of this paper. The Blackfoot use stories as autobiographical accounts or as early memories to enable the Western world to understand the struggles they face as a marginalized group.

During the summer of 1938, Abe Maslow was engaged in a field study of the Northern Blackfeet. He received a grant-in aid from the Social Science Research Council under the sponsorship of Ruth Benedict to study the "security needs" of the tribe. This project reflected Benedict's long-term interest in her concept of synergic and nonsynergic societies, which culminated with her publication of Patterns of Culture in 1934. It was Benedict's thesis that synergic societies, such as Zuni, had most of their psychological security needs met, whereas low synergic societies, such as the Dobu, did not. Initially, Maslow as a neophyte anthropologist employed a questionnaire to members of the Northern Blackfoot tribe to measure psychological security needs. Scholars have already postulated that this experience had lasting effects on Maslow's later development of concepts such as "self-actualization and "peak experience." However valid this is, the thesis of this article is that Maslow's anthropological turn disappeared over time and his later work indicated that he did not understand the synergic collective anthropological approach of Benedict but rather misused the concept of synergy to promote a person-centered psychological reductionist position mostly devoid of its cultural context.