When Heather Black leads hikes and snowshoe tours through the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, she draws visitors’ attention to more than just the stunning scenery. As a member of the province’s Blood Tribe, Ms. Black’s goal is to encourage people to go “walking these lands with a different lens.”
In winter, she offers the Onestop Crossing Snowshoe tour, which begins with a 2.5-kilometre snowshoe hike and concludes with a smudge ceremony, a full meal – stew, bannock, berry soup, mint tea – and fireside stories with Dave Onespot, who operates a campground on Tsuut’ina “The berry soup is something that I specialize in,” she says. “I’ve been taught by my aunties how to create that, and it’s a delicacy for us Indigenous people.”“It’s our being and it’s how our ancestors had walked thousands of years before us.”