The colonial impact of the erasure of Blackfoot Miistakistsi place names in Paahtomahksikimi, Waterton Lakes National Park

Abstract

The Miistakis (mountains) in Paahtomahksikimi (Waterton Lakes National Park) are sacred for Niitsitapi. The experience of fasting in the mountains is what brought us our healing wisdom from thousands of years ago. When we fast, we call the mountain by its name, for its spiritual presence to be connected to us. The colonial erasure of Blackfoot names and the imposition of European names by colonizers disrupted that relationship, and our access to practise Itaksiistsimoo’pi (Vision Quest) and fasting. I bring a Blackfoot methodology based on lived experience and the transferring of oral history, of knowing from land, and of my language, Niitsipowahsin (Blackfoot). I bring this knowledge transferred from time immemorial, of the relationship between mountains and the Itaksiistsimoo’pi (Vision Quest), into the learning space. My purpose is to record the impact of the mountains no longer being called by their Blackfoot names, and to begin decolonizing the process of obtaining a PhD.