BROWNING, Mont. — Kenneth Cook used a mallet and a chisel to crack into a pig’s skull in the gravel driveway outside his home on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana.
Cook planned to use the pig’s brains in brain tanning, practiced by Indigenous people for thousands of years.
The brains are mushed up in water and worked into deer and elk hides to make leather. Cook said the brain’s fatty acids both soften the hide and give it a beautiful white color before it’s smoked for waterproofing.
