Located on the northern edge of the semi-arid Great Plains of North America, on the border between Canada and the U.S., this property is a sacred site in a mixed grassland-prairie region. The cultural landscape of the region is characterized by a concentration of pillars or hoodoos – columns of rock sculpted by erosion into spectacular shapes. The Blackfoot Confederacy, or the Blackfeet people, left engravings on the Sandstone walls of the Milk River Valley, where this property sits, bearing testimony to messages from Sacred Beings. These engravings are dated between 4,500 BP (Before Present) and 3,500 years BP.
Writing-on-Stone / Aisinai’pi is entirely protected and managed by virtue of the provisions of the Provincial Parks Act of Alberta. The three components of the serial property and the associated buffer zones are included in the provincial park of Writing-on-Stone. Industrial and commercial development inside the property is prohibited. More than 21% of the property is located in a restricted access zone, preventing unauthorized public access to the zones that are most sensitive in cultural terms, although the Blackfoot people are still allowed access for traditional purposes. All the property’s cultural attributes are subject to the protection provisions of the Historical Resources Act of Alberta, the highest level of protection in this Canadian jurisdiction.
Picture Credit : Google
