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First Nations Stampede Guide

$10.00

This map highlights stories from the Calgary Stampede that are not often heard: stories that focus on the sometimes-controversial histories of the Stampede that are an important part of its legacy. The maps we are so familiar with are a symbol and tenet of colonialism. Single pictographs could hold an entire years-worth of stories. As well, the robes could be considered as maps; they were stylized, abstracted depictions that depicted geographic features and places.

In stock

SKU: MAPSTAMPEDE Category:

Description

Researcher: Erin Hryniuk
Artist: Adrian Stimson
Editor: Jim Ellis
Graphic Designer: Glenn Mielke
Photographer: Dave Brown

Calgary is the Stampede City. Since 1918, the annual celebration has brought together cowboys, fairgoers and First Nations to mark the high point of the summer.

The map describes in detail the First Nations participation in the Stampede and the ways that participation changed the nature of the event. It highlights stories from the Calgary Stampede that are not often heard—stories that focus on the sometimes-controversial histories of the Stampede that are an important part of its legacy.

The artist, Adrian Stimson, a member of the Siksika Nation, has mapped the events using Indigenous ways of knowing, using pictographs in spiral and linear arrangements painted on a buffalo robe. The map serves as much to inform and remember as it does to decolonize and reclaim.

 

About the Calgary Atlas Project

The Calgary Atlas Project seeks to recover crucial stories about Calgary’s past and present, stories that illuminate in surprising ways the character and diversity of the city.  Forgotten or overlooked stories from Calgary’s history are mapped onto the city’s geography, highlighting significant sites, events, and people in Calgary’s past. Ultimately the project will produce eighteen to twenty maps, spanning the earliest moments of habitation and settlement to the latest re-developments in the East Village.

The first two maps produced showcased Calgary’s LGBTQ2S+ history and First Nations participation with the Calgary Stampede. Newly completed maps explore the history of alternative art movements, labour activism and Calgary’s lost cinemas. Upcoming maps will illustrate immigration waves (as reflected in ethnic groceries and restaurants), Calgary’s architectural heritage, our connections with animals and the notable faces and places of Stampede Wrestling.

Each map has text written by local historians and images specially commissioned from Calgary artists, in most cases artists who have a relation to the history they are interpreting. The Atlas aims to bring a new vision of Calgary to Calgary; to show us how we got to where we are, and who we came to be.

The Calgary Atlas Project is an initiative of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, and is generously supported by the Calgary Foundation. Individual maps are available from Calgary’s fine independent bookstores including Shelf Life Books, The Next Page, Pages Kensington, Owl’s Nest Books, as well as Map Town and Lougheed House. The project is steered by a group of five professors at the University of Calgary: George Colpitts (History), Jim Ellis (English; CIH), Nancy Janovicek (History), Graham Livesey (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), and Charles Tepperman (Communications, Media and Film).

In Summer 2020, the Atlas Project was the recipient of a Calgary Foundation Grant. We are enormously grateful for this grant as it has allowed us to hire a project manager to oversee the production of the forthcoming maps and to work on effective distribution schemes for the maps, making sure that they are read by the communities that would benefit from them the most.

Additional information

Weight .5 kg
Dimensions 10 × 8 × 1 cm