First Nations woman creates tourism app showing Blackfoot lands across Canada

A First Nations woman is creating a new tourism app highlighting all the Blackfoot land sites across Canada with the hopes of reconnecting Indigenous people to the land. (Courtesy of Indigenous Vision, Souta Calling Last)

TORONTO — Souta Calling Last says there’s so much about the land that makes up Canada that people don’t know about. And she says it’s time that changes.

The First Nations woman has spent four years tracking down historical Blackfoot land sites and the stories behind them all across Canada and the U.S. And soon, she’ll be showcasing her findings in a new tourism app that’ll alert people when they’re passing by landmarks.

“Historical sites, tribal stories, oral stories, origin stories, significant events in tribal history, it really is a huge community project,” Calling Last explains on CTV’s Your Morning on Thursday, noting that she hopes the app will also help to reconnect Indigenous people to the land.

“It’s such a crowded landscape out there, it was well used, activity was high and what I was feeling -- as a child -- is that those places were there, I just couldn’t see them.”

Calling Last, who’s from Kainai First Nation and Southern Piikani First Nation in Alberta, along with community members have tracked 108 important areas, representing 500 land sites which span Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Montana and Wyoming.

Some of them date back thousands of years.

So far, Calling Last says she’s documented nearly 20 medicine wheels, also known as sundials -- two of them are already being protected and one, she says, is 1,000 years older than Stonehenge, which was constructed between 3,000 BC to 2,000 BC.

To put everything together she used Smithsonian journal archives, archeological papers and other historical records, and elders stories.

Driving through the prairies as a child, she says she “always felt there was something more out there.”

And through the app, which is being created through Calling Last’s educational non-profit Indigenous Vision, she hopes to pass on her fascination with Indigenous landmarks to young students.

“I want to transfer this to younger kids in school. I want it to be something that can be studied at the college level, as well as helping our grassroots activists,” she said, noting that she also wants it to be used during environmental assessments and land development.

But Calling Last also mentioned that some of these sites won’t be listed because they’re sacred to local Indigenous communities.

“Some of these places just don’t have protection right now… there are some places that are just too important,” Calling Last says, noting that even sites with fences or other protections still get vandalized.

She hopes that as people use the app to travel around, it’ll drive up traffic for “native businesses to eat, sleep and entertain yourself.”

The app is scheduled to drop later this year. And, down the line, Calling Last hopes to expand the app to also have push notifications when people are near landmarks; an audio travel guide and even corresponding music by Indigenous artists.