Groups partner to host Indigenous pop-up gym

By Ry Clarke on September 23, 2022.

Herald photo by RY CLARKE Shawn Daye-Finley and Quaid Mountainhorse play the drums and shakers with kids at the Roving Gym Thursday in Henderson Lake Park.

Lethbridge Sport Council partnered with Piikani Traditional Games to host a pop-up gym Thursday at Henderson Lake Park.

In support of Reconciliation Week, the event taught Indigenous song and dance with a focus on the fundamental movement skills associated with those activities. Participants were led by Arnold Mountainhorse and son Quaid as they danced and played on instruments made from traditional materials like moose and deer hide, learning about Blackfoot culture as they stayed active.

“Today’s pop-up roving gym is in the spirit of reconciliation. We put together a special gym using rhythm and sound, one of the fundamental movement skills that we don’t regularly get to work on,” said Shawn Daye-Finley, program coordinator with the Council. “We brought the Mountainhorse members here today because dance is a parallel between what the roving gyms program is trying to do in teaching fundamental movement skills.”

Working with kids five and under, the gym’s goal is to help parents get their kids out and about while acquiring skills towards physical well-being.

“Physical literacy is connected to better health, and better learning. We set out to do this free program to help the community improve that physical literacy and we’re thankful to have the Mountainhorse’s here to help teach rhythm dance,” said Daye-Finley.

The Mountainhorse family teaches drumming and various styles of dancing, including the chicken dance, a ceremonial dance of the Blackfoot and Plains Cree tribes.

“This particular style of dancing has been with the Blackfoot people for as far back as over 100 years.

It began as a ceremony, and we used to have a society called the Prairie Chicken Society, a very sacred society,” said Arnold Mountainhorse. “Dancers portray the prairie chicken when it dances during mating. With their mating, the male wants to impress a female. The male will start dancing with its wings all out, towards the female, in a form of courting.”

Playing with drums and shakers, kids and parents got to enjoy a new form of play while learning more about Blackfoot culture, adding to their experience.

“We stress that parents teach their children to start them off as young as possible. That way they grow up with this knowledge. So when they have children, they will do the same thing. It keeps our traditional ways going from one generation to the next,” said Mountainhorse.