Written by: RETROactive staff
The RETROactive Live Alberta Heritage Speaker Series continues. Join us on Monday, June 8 for a discussion about the Okotoks Erratic. Click this registration link to sign up.
The Okotoks Erratic has been a site of visitation and ceremony for as long as anyone can remember. Join Historic Resources Management Branch staff Christina Robinson and Blair First Rider in a discussion about Blackfoot perspectives of Okotoks, and the network of knowledge that has expanded our understandings of how to respectfully preserve and share this special place.
Blair First Rider can still remember the first time he heard the Okotoks creation story. Raised as a kiipita pooka—a grandparent’s child—he grew up with the stories shared by his grandfather, Maatoom Kitopi (George First Rider). Despite generations of government policy that forcibly separated Indigenous peoples from their language, community and places of significance, the stories and oral traditional prevailed. “I used to listen to the old men who would come around to the house, and they would tell stories way into the night. One of the stories was about Okotoks. That’s how they impart knowledge and life lessons and morals to the children, through Napi stories.”
Watch a special video from Blair First Rider, discussing the significance of this site to the Blackfoot Confederacy.
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