Interfaith Healing Garden blessed with Blackfoot name

By Lethbridge Herald on September 29, 2022.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Blood Tribe spiritual leader Shane Little Bear, accompanied by spiritual leader Les Wolf Child and Blood Tribe Elder Tom Little Bear, lead a blessing after the Indigenous Healing Garden received a Blackfoot name this week at the Interfaith Food Bank.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – apulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The Interfaith Food Bank Society of Lethbridge received a Blackfoot name for their Indigenous Healing Garden Wednesday during a naming and dedication ceremony. 

The name the garden received is Ih’taapiinii’mopa inn’siimaan which translates into ‘Healing Garden’. 

“There is an immense feeling of gratitude for being embraced by our Indigenous community and having them work alongside us with this project,” said Danielle McIntyre, executive director of Interfaith Food Bank. 

“We’ve already had a Learning Garden here at the food bank for several years and we’ve had the opportunity to grow our garden and expand it to include more of the traditional plants that were used for food, medicine or spiritual needs,” said McIntyre. 

She said the garden also provides a place for people to gather and share the Blackfoot culture and learn from one another. 

“So that we can reconnect to the land and move forward together,” said McIntyre. 

The garden has a manhole cover that was turned into a plaque with the Blackfoot name of the garden on it. McIntyre said the plaque will age with the garden over time and future generations can see that it was built specifically for reconciliation and healing. 

“We also have a medicine wheel in the garden that signifies the Blackfoot people and the four directions and all of the peoples of the earth. We have a couple pictographs that are painted onto our stones and William Singer gifted us with those pictographs as centering on the male and the female and again the growing together in the spirit of unification,” said McIntyre. 

There is also a small sign on the side of the garden that talks about the purpose of the space and the opportunity for people to always honour those lost or affected by the residential school system. 

McIntyre said people are welcome to leave memory stones in the garden honouring any individual residential survivor or the 215 children that were first found. 

“It’s something that will always be available to our community and we’re gonna watch this garden grow and flourish as we take care of it together,” said McIntyre.

Blood Tribe Elder Tom Little Bear, who provided the Interfaith Food Bank with the garden’s Blackfoot name, said each name is unique and it stays with the person or facility in this case forever. 

“Blackfoot names, they’re very important, it identifies that it is part of our culture it’s part of our identity and when you get a Blackfoot name that name sticks with you throughout your lifetime unless you join the sacred societies,” said Little Bear. 

He explained that usually for Blackfoot naming ceremonies for people, the elder naming them would share four stories about them or good things they have accomplished, but because the naming was for a facility Little Bear offered a prayer and two spiritual leaders from the community each offered a song.

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