Where are we?

Southern Alberta

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a buffalo jump located where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains begin to rise from the prairie 18 km west of Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada. I had no idea this existed in Canada until I spent a year living in Calgary. 

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home of a museum of Blackfoot culture.

The buffalo jump was used for 5,500 years by the indigenous peoples of the plains to kill bison by driving them off the 11 metres (36 feet) high cliff. Before the late introduction of horses, the Blackfoot drove the bison from a grazing area in the Porcupine Hills about 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) west of the site to the “drive lanes”, lined by hundreds of cairns, by dressing up as coyotes and wolves. ~ Wikipedia

WOW, The Stories I know now

Interpretive Centre and Museum

Opened in 1987, the interpretive centre at Head-Smashed-In is built into the ancient sandstone cliff in naturalistic fashion. It contains five distinct levels depicting the ecology, mythology, lifestyle and technology of Blackfoot peoples within the context of available archaeological evidence, presented from the viewpoints of both aboriginal peoples and European archaeological science.

The facility is laid our to perfection, you start at the top of the museum and work your way down each floor and as you descend deeper, your knowledge broadens and goes deeper into the traditional knowledge of the history of this area and the Blackfoot people.  As you journey through the museum they truly tell a story with audio components and visual displays that really connect with you on a different kind of level than just reading a bunch of signs.

FUN FACT:
On the side of the road on the way to Head Smashed In is a rock with a sign that says it is a tourist site, so I pulled over to check it out. The sign was labeled “The Rock That Ran”. And that was that…I know nothing else about this giant rock, in the middle of NOWHERE and why it is a tourist stop. LOL