Siksikaitsitapi: Stories of the Blackfoot People (by Payne Many Guns and others, Durvile and UpRoute Books, 2022). Siksikaitsitapi means “all things Blackfoot”— “a powerful word in our culture identifying our existence,” writes Alayna Many Guns in this enlightening book’s introduction. Written, illustrated and translated by Blackfoot elders, authors and artists, including children, the children’s book shares Blackfoot language lessons and stories that convey traditional and contemporary Blackfoot traditions in full-colour pictures and evocative text in both English and Blackfoot. “Aakomimmihtaani anni a’pistotsipi niipaitapiiyssini ksikka’sini,” writes Sheena Potts, in “Love,” one of the many stories in the book. “Love is the life that builds you step by step.”
Alberta’s Cornerstone: Archaeological Adventures in Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park (by Shari Peyerl, Heritage House, 2022). Originally the name of a CPR water tank, then a sandstone quarry, a village and a sprawling ranch, “the story of Glenbow should not be hidden away in a government warehouse,” writes Shari Peyerl in this engaging history of primarily English settlement in what is now Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park. In 2017, after years of documentary research for the Glenbow Town and Quarry project, Peyerl, an archaeologist, directed a field season at the site. Dismayed that her report ended up “consigned to a shelf,” she’s drawn on her research to tell the stories of everyone from heiresses to stonemasons to an embezzler to Alberta’s first graduate nurse tending to a sick family in a tent as a winter storm blew the chimney away.
