Southern Alberta Two Day Indigenous Tour

Day 1

This morning, you will be picked up from the Telus Convention Centre at 9:00 am and start your Adventure. Welcome to Siksika Nation. Arrive at Blackfoot Crossing to step back in time and explore the Blackfoot culture. Receive a guided tour and experience exhibits that will provide you with accurate cultural and educational information about the rich and unique spiritual foundation and survival of the Blackfoot People. Learn about the lifestyle of the Blackfoot people, the Blackfoot Treaty, the Powwow dance, and traditional cooking. We will enjoy an authentic Indigenous Lunch before departing. We will continue our journey south. Our first experience will be a visit to the Insikim Umaapi, known as the Alberta Medicine Wheel. Here you will enjoy a brief talk on the history. Next, travel to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta. Enjoy a guided tour of the Archaeological Preserve at Writing-on-Stone/ Áísínai’pi, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The cultural landscape integrates the natural environment, artistic features, human experiences, and spiritual perceptions into a unified whole. In this unique setting, Indigenous people came for centuries and recorded their experiences and visions on the sandstone cliffs of the Milk River Valley. This extensive rock art collection depicts generations of knowledge, traditions, and history. Discover how the history, stories, and language of the Niitsitapi people are woven together to provide insight into the meaning of the carvings (petroglyphs) and paintings (pictographs).

Overnight: Lethbridge

Meals: Lunch, Dinner

Day 2

Enjoy breakfast at the hotel this morning before checking out and starting to move north. You will arrive at Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site. The Interpretive Centre preserves and interprets over 6,000 years of Plains Buffalo Indigenous culture. Through vast landscapes, exhibits, and diverse programming, you will learn from a Blackfoot Nation guide about the cultural significance of this cliff to the Plains People. From the Interpretive Centre, venture out along a paved trail that leads you to spectacular views of Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Cliff, Calderwood Buffalo Jump & Vision Quest Hill to the north, the great prairies to the east, and the Rocky Mountains to the south. We’ll take a short drive south to see Alberta’s Big Rock. It is a boulder weighing 16,500 metric tonnes and 9 meters high, broken into two large pieces in the middle, sitting alone in a field. The Big Rock resembles nothing around it, except for a few scattered smaller boulders of the same type. There is no layer of rock from which it could have eroded or fallen. This massive rock has sat in its field for as long as human beings have lived in Alberta. The Niitsitapii (Blackfoot) people saw that it did not belong and told a legend of how it came to be where it rests today. Learn of this legend. Return to the drop-off in Downtown Calgary. (ETA 4:00 pm)

Meals: Breakfast