A place of unity and healing: Man who helped bring and dedicate Saamis Tepee organizing healing round dance

By COLLIN GALLANT on July 24, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

A man who helped bring and dedicate the Saamis Tepee in Medicine Hat says the site should be re-energized as a place of unity and healing.

Longtime Hat resident Ross Cross Child, a Blood Tribe member who attended Day School at Standoff, was an original member of the Saamis Tepee Association that helped bring the structure to the city in the early 1990s.

He is now organizing a healing round dance and gathering community support in Medicine Hat and the Blackfoot Confederacy for a grand entrance with full regalia at the Tepee as part of a television event set to be filmed here next week.

“It’s something we need to do – get all the First Nations, all immigrants, everybody together and start healing,” Cross Child told the News. “Elders don’t want to see this negativity. It’s tearing this country apart.”

Cross Child says his event will honour children whose gravesites are being discovered at former residential school facilities, and help the community.

It will be emotional and perhaps painful, he adds, but the process is ultimately positive.

He will tell one of the Medicine Hat origin stories, known as Eagle Birth, at the July 30 event which will be filmed for broadcast on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

Cross Child says the event, and more like it, are needed to increase understanding, and the venue is appropriate.

“This place is so important for the Blackfoot people,” he said.

Cross Child advocated for day school survivors in the early 2000s when a $2 billion federal compensation plan related to residential schools included only those who lived at facilities.

He walks to the Tepee every morning from his home in Medicine Hat to pray, and is now organizing next week’s gathering, to which all members of the community are welcome.

The early-evening event will start with a ceremonial smudging and grand entrance. Cross Child will tell a Medicine Hat origin story from the Blackfoot Confederacy and speak about the Tepee’s beginnings in Medicine Hat and its benefactor Ric Filanti, who passed away in 2013. It will conclude with a healing round dance.

Origin stories

Jeannette Hanson, the executive director of the Miywasin Friendship Centre, said there are at least 13 unique legends about the creation of Medicine Hat in Indigenous culture.

She’s encouraged that Cross Child’s event and another like it on July 30 are taking place.

“It’s so important, because it is our history,” she said. “The oral tradition of story telling keeps that alive and shares it with the broader community.”

Television producers will also interview Nelson Hogg, of the local Metis Nation, to discus the legends related to the Seven Persons Creek.

The footage will be used by the documentary show “Red Earth Uncovered” which “investigates Aboriginal linkages and relevance to both archaeological discoveries, and ancient myths and legends.”

There is no immediate date of broadcast.

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