Galt hosting tours for residential school survivors

By Alexandra Noad - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on June 27, 2024.

Herald photo by Alexandra Noad The Oki sign sits overlooking the coulees outside of the Galt museum who will be hosting four different tours from July to September for residential school survivors and their descendants.

The Galt Museum is hosting Nitsitapii tours for residential school survivors and their descendants.

The tours are funded by the Anglican Healing Fund as a way of promoting healing through Blackfoot language.

Camina Weasel Moccasin, Indigenous curator at the Galt Museum, says the Anglican Healing Fund is working on reconciling the impact the residential schools had on Indigenous people.

“A lot of people involved in residential schools having the language taken from them had a huge impact. This is recognized by the Anglican Healing Fund and so they’re providing money to allow us to do programs that really focus on promoting the Blackfoot language as a form of healing,” said Weasel Moccasin.

There will be four different sessions for 40 participants from July to September. Each session will have unique activities based on traditions of each location.

“Each tour, or each site visit, there will be different elders that accompany the groups to each site and then at each site there will be a different activity that takes place and it’s related to the traditional land use of that site. For example: one site we may do a pipe ceremony at another one, we may paint faces, at another one, we may leave an offering. So just a few examples of how each one is kind of tailored to the site that we’re going to visit,” said Weasel Moccasin.

The tours will be building off of the Galt Museum traveling exhibits with a new one being unveiled at the end of summer.

Weasel Moccasin hopes these tours will provide healing for all generations of the residential schools.

“I think what’s important with this one as well is that we’re really focusing on inter-generational healing. So, we really encourage survivors to bring their descendants so that hopefully we can have two or even three generations healing together at these sites,” said Weasel Moccasin.

For more information, or to register, call the Galt Museum at 403-320-3954.