Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park is a hidden gem located just 45 minutes outside of Strathmore; it's a world-renowned cultural, educational, and entertainment centre built for the promotion and preservation of the Siksika Nation people’s language, culture, and traditions.

Museum Communications for Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park Shilo Clark says that Blackfoot Crossing was built as a vision from their elders, and they say that there was a need of having a cultural centre on Siksika Nation.

"It would be a place to uplift our culture, our traditions, our languages, and educate young people. Not only that but an opportunity to invite non-natives to learn what they didn't know about Blackfoot people about the history, about the culture, and an opportunity for people to gain some understanding and some compassion so that hopefully we can walk that path of truth and reconciliation."

The truth is always hard to hear, and Clark always says that it is important to have understanding, which will lead to compassion and then that will lead to reconciliation.

"A lot of times we hear truth and reconciliation, and people want to often put the reconciliation part in front of the truth because the truth is not always something that people want to hear. The truth is awkward, the truth is uncomfortable, but we really need to understand the truth to get to the reconciliation."  

Blackfoot Crossing has got some new exhibits in the works, one being the Chief Crowfoot Gallery; they received Chief Crowfoot's belongings from Exeter, England. 

"So those items were in Exeter for about 155 years right after the signing of Treaty 7, they were brought over to Exeter, England and they remained there in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and then about 20 to 30 years ago we had a bunch of folks get together and decide that we needed those items back. We need Chief Crowfoot to come back home and so at that point people started working on the repatriation efforts and it has just been a lot of red tape and hoops to jump through to get him home and I am so pleased and thrilled to announce that we have achieved that." 

There is a whole gallery that is dedicated to the life of Chief Crowfoot and once you read all the information you are then treated to his items that are on display at the end of the gallery.

The future of Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park is very bright. There is a lot of infrastructure that has been going on like making the tipi camp more accessible. The park is also working on creating an elders' gathering area in front of the building and having the Treaty 7 signing flats all preserved.

"We're looking at building an amphitheatre that could potentially fit around 30,000 spectators so we could have our very own mass of powwow and gatherings down here. There's lots of developments and in the far future, we're just looking to expand this even larger, we want to be on the world stage where everybody from across the globe knows about Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park."

Clark wants to leave off with a message of understanding and having compassion.

"Many times, we might have a person walk down the street and see a homeless Indigenous person and oftentimes their reaction is, 'wow, geez, why can't these natives just get over it?' But they're saying that without understanding what 'it' actually was, what 'it' actually is, that intergenerational trauma, that trauma that trickles down from grandparent to parent to child."

Clark explains that he is an example of intergenerational trauma in the sense that he can hardly speak Blackfoot because his grandmother was punished in school for speaking the language. 

"She never taught my mother, and my mother never taught me. It wasn't till my grandma was in her later years that I asked her, 'Who are we? Where do we come from?' and I want to learn the language that we speak. Then she started to teach me."

Clark says that without understanding we can't come to a point of compassion and that reconciliation is impossible without compassion, understanding and the truth.  

"I always tell people when you hear these stories from residential school survivors or just some of these stories that are difficult to listen to, sit with that uncomfortable feeling and understand where it's coming from because the person that told you the story experienced it and it was far worse that you could have imagined." 

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