C Magazine

A Rock Isn’t Always a Rock

I first visited Iniskim Umaapi, the Majorville Medicine Wheel, in 2017. I had recently dropped out of graduate school and moved back home from Vancouver, homesick for the wide open Prairie. Moonlighting as a chauffeur for the day, I borrowed my sister’s Pontiac Montana and picked up a group of Niitsitapi youth and their caseworkers and my mom in Standoff, AB. Thanks to my infallible, GPS-like sense of direction we got lost twice, only.

The site isn’t particularly difficult to find; we headed east on the highway from Lethbridge, then hit some gravel stretches and, finally, winding dirt roads carved in crown land. The ruts hunting.

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