When Stoney Nakoda elder and artist Roland Rollinmud was eight years old he travelled from Morley to Banff for Banff Indian Days by horse and carriage.
It was a three-day journey then, with two nights spent camping along the way.
Today, that drive takes less than an hour, but it is a journey to an experience that would not have been possible for Nakoda families, or the public, if Rollinmud hadn’t envisioned restarting Banff Indian Days, a local celebration of aboriginal culture that ended in the 1970s.
That celebration takes place once again this Saturday (Aug. 11).
While the mode of transportation has changed dramatically since Rollinmud first started going to Banff Indian Days, the reinvigorated nature of the festival has not.
Long before it became “Banff Indian Days”, which had its start in 1889 as a showcase of Nakoda culture for passengers of the Canadian Pacific Railway trapped in Banff by a rockslide, the First Nations whose territories overlapped in the Rockies would come together in the shadow Cascade Mountain before heading off into the mountains to hunt and gather berries and herbs for winter.
At times, Rollinmud said, the meadows would be filled with 1,000 tents housing thousands of people.
Banff Indian Days became an annual event after its inception, running until 1978.
In 2004, Rollinmud, alongside Parks Canada, led a group to restart Banff Indian Days, but with a new focus. Gone were the big, showy events like the parade down Banff Avenue and the rodeo. Instead, Rollinmud saw it as an opportunity to revive the traditional aspects of the summer gatherings and to give Nakoda youth an opportunity to learn more about their heritage.
Now known as the Stoney Nakoda Family Camp, the event has become a way for the Nakoda to reconnect in the Rockies, just as their ancestors did.
“I felt in order to get on track with our ancestors’ way of getting out of the reserve and refreshing their mind to prepare for the next year, we need the kind of cleansing that our ancestors always did,” Rollinmud said Aug. 3.
He said he’s hoping to see at least 100 people from Morley, out of an approximate population of 5,000, participate in the family camp.
“There’s so many of us now and we need to get back to the time when everybody worked together and developed together and enjoyed life together for the cause of happiness, not stress,” Rollinmud said. “I’d hate to lose a value that kept us healthy: That journey is an exercise of the body to get to a destination.”
Overall, the Stoney Nakoda Family Camp is an opportunity for the Nakoda to reconnect to their traditional lands and activities, however, Rollinmud said the public is welcome to visit the Banff Indian Grounds, located just off Banff Avenue not far from the eastern-most Trans-Canada Highway interchange for Banff.
For those seeking to experience Nakoda culture, on Saturday (Aug. 11), the camp will host free activities including children’s foot races with prizes, a powwow, storytelling and drumming and dancing. These events are scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon, 2-5 p.m. and then 7 p.m.
Rollinmud said this is the last family camp he will help to organize, as he said it’s time to step back and focus on preserving his culture, history and traditions through his work as a professional artist.
“Now I’m going to take another direction and paint the values of what we have lost, painting the gathering of eggs and the gathering of herbs, using the background of familiar places,” he said.
Rollinmud is also working on a series of paintings that tell the name of recognizable Bow Valley locations, such as Canmore, Banff and Dead Man’s Flats, from the Nakoda perspective and experience.
He is currently working on a painting that demonstrates the Nakoda connection to Canmore and how the Nakoda used the area known as Indian Flats, located immediately east of Elk Run Boulevard as a regular camping area.
