Stoney Nakoda equine program empowering youth through rodeo, Indian relay

Scarlett Beaver, left, and Keera Ryder braid a pony's mane during Mountain Stone Equine's after-school program held at Star 6 Ranch in Exshaw on Wednesday (June 10). (Leah Pelletier, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)

Rodeo runs through the Crawler family’s veins.

Roping calves and whipping around barrels on the back of a horse, Îyârhe Nakoda cowgirl Lita Crawler and her siblings grew up in the saddle.

“We’ve always been a rodeo family,” said Crawler, as she looks out at the riding arena at Star 6 Ranch in Exshaw.

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Alongside her siblings, Crawler spent many days on the road to Tsuut’ina or Kainai Nation where indoor riding facilities and equine programs were more accessible than at home in Mînî Thnî.

“We grew up travelling an hour-plus just to ride,” said Crawler’s sister, Gracie Crawler-Jackson. “For some reason, it was really hard to access our own facilities [in Mînî Thnî].”

“Today, there’s a few more [equine] programs but none of them are consistent or work collaboratively with youth. Nobody was asking what we needed or what we wanted to see, it was always just programs or people coming in to give us what they think we needed.”

The need for more access and opportunity for youth stuck with Crawler and her sister and they knew that given the chance, so many other kids in the community would jump at the opportunity to learn to ride.

“Lita had lost two friends that always asked her, ‘can I come ride?’ and then we just noticed that we were losing our peers to overdoses and alcoholism, addictions to the streets and it just became personal,” Crawler-Jackson added.

Encouraged by their mom, the pair knew they wanted to be part of a change and leaned into what they know best: horses.

“[About] 90 per cent of Indigenous youth do not have access to riding horses, to sew, to bead, to even dance in full regalia at powwows or to travel, or to compete at rodeos or Indian relay, and so if you are privileged enough to be able to do those things it is your responsibility and your duty to have other youth have access to that,” said Crawler-Jackson.

With the goal of empowering Indigenous youth through equine-assisted learning, Indian relay and rodeo, the pair started Mountain Stone Equine with the help of their parents, Troy and Amanda Crawler. 

“There’s no other program like ours that’s created for Indigenous youth and made by people who have lived experience and grew up on the reservation, ” said Crawler-Jackson, who is the program coordinator for the organization.

“There’s a lot of equine-assisted learning programs in the area … and across Canada but we wanted to be different and use our skills to teach sport and discipline and athleticism, so we started off just doing rodeo and teaching them Indian relay.”

Running the program from Star 6 Ranch, Crawler and the team start with the basics – teaching kids the value of horsemanship before moving on to riding and eventually launching them into rodeo skills and the fast-paced sport of Indian relay.

“It’s not just all about the sport. It’s about you as a person and developing these skills that you can use in your daily lives,” said Crawler, noting she’s seen kids learn leadership, communication skills and gain confidence through the program.

“Rodeo is probably the hardest sport mentally because you can be at the top of your game, first place, winning all around a couple weekends, and then a couple weekends after that, you could miss your calf, you can knock a barrel. You have to have a really strong mind,” Crawler-Jackson added.

Starting an after-school program this year, every Wednesday night, Crawler cinches up her saddle, adjusts the stirrups and gives kids a leg up and into the seat.

“Some kids would come here kind of shy, intimidated, or they don’t want to come out of their bubble and then by the end of the program, just working with the horse, you can see the light in their face,” said the rider from Chiniki First Nation.

Crawler-Jackson remembers running a course with a group of high school students from Piikani Nation.

“The teachers that came with them, they said, ‘some of these kids here, we never see them smile. They’re very closed off and don’t talk to anybody.’ They said, ‘this is a win. This is a win seeing them all smile and talk with each other,’” she said.

Hopping in the saddle for the first time, many kids come away with new dreams of competing in rodeo or Indian relay, says Crawler. 

“We don’t have to be leaders, we don’t have to be the chief and council to make a difference or a change,” Crawler-Jackson added, noting they want the program to be open to youth of all Nations, not just Îyârhe Nakoda.

“We grew up with a lot of exclusivity, like, ‘you’re a part of your nation, you stay with your nation,’ kind of thing … We wanted a space where all Indigenous youth can come.”

Reviving rodeo 

For Crawler, all it took was one race and she was “bit by the relay bug.”

Sinking her teeth into competition after her first Indian relay race with a Mînî Thnî team in 2018, Crawler never looked back, going on to compete in relay, alongside barrel racing and rodeo events, around North America.

“Earlier in the year, I saw a poster that they had Indian relay, and they had lady warrior and I thought, ‘Oh, ladies can do this?’” Crawler recalled.

But what keeps her coming back to the track even more than the adrenaline rush of riding bareback, is Crawler’s heart for younger girls.

“I get a lot of comments from little girls, they would come and tell me like, ‘I wanna learn how to ride,’” she said. “Now that I’m getting older, I feel like I’m not just doing this for myself, but I’m wanting to do it for the youth and keeping the Lady Warrior event alive.” 

While the sport of Indian relay is steadily rising in popularity, Crawler-Jackson says involvement in rodeo amongst the younger generation in Stoney Nakoda First Nation isn’t what it used to be.

“We used to be like a whole rodeo community. We have the most world champions than any other nation and that’s just from the older people. Today, I don’t think there is a lot. I sometimes wonder what happened,” she said.

While relay races used to be a staple at Banff Indian Days years ago, Crawler-Jackson says there are only a couple of Stoney Nakoda families still passing on the tradition of rodeo and relay to their kids.

“One of our elders, Henry Holloway, he used to be a jockey. He used to race in Banff. He always says, ‘It’d be really cool if we can go back there and see our people race there again,’” said Crawler-Jackson.

“The elders say that horses are going to come back and heal our people,” she added. “Whether that be through Indian Relay or through programs like us. I always keep that in mind, like, we’re part of that. We’re part of healing our community and healing our people by bringing horses back to them.”

Funding hurdles

Operating Mountain Stone Equine since 2024, Crawler-Jackson says the initiative is still in its early stages and it hasn’t always been easy to keep things running while making sure the program remains free for kids. 

“Right now we’re volunteering ourselves,” she said.

While support from the Star 6 Ranch Foundation allows them access to a facility, Crawler-Jackson says access to horses and other resources can be tough to secure.

“We did an entrepreneur panel and [a panelist] was like, ‘It’s hard having a business but it’s 10 times harder if you’re Indigenous with a business,’” Crawler-Jackson said, explaining that securing a grant often requires a signature from the band chief.

“Sometimes they’re so busy we don’t get those in time, or we don’t get them at all.”

Working to get charity status for the organization, the sisters say their vision is to one day open their own riding facility where programming can run consistently and to start an Indian relay team.

“I feel like once we get the funding to do this weekly or monthly, there can be a difference made for the little kids, the youth,” said Crawler.

“We get a lot of that feedback from the kids that they wanna come back and that’s what we want for them to do as well but we also need the funding to do it.”

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. This position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.