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7 Chapter 1 Background: Stories of Place The modern-day reserve of the Aapátohsipikáni, or Northern Piikáni, is within sight of the Livingstone Range in southwestern Alberta,a range they know as Panihtatsis,‘theTipi Liners.’ In an interview conducted for this study (for full text,see Appendix A),Piikáni ceremonialist Allan Pard, Mikskimmisukahsim (‘Iron Shirt’), explained the meaning of the term: Allan Pard (AP): If you look at that area, the range kinda just looks like the tipi curtains. Gabriel Yanicki (GY): Symbolically, what do you think that means? AP:Well it’s basically..they call it that because of the chinook winds that we get.When you use tipi liners in a tipi it helps keep the tipi warm.So theTipi Liners of course help, with the chinooks, you know, keep us warmer in the wintertime.That’s why this area that was chosen by.. our leaders at the time of treaty preferred this area, because it was a favourite wintering area for our people, because of the chinooks, and the easy access to the wood and whatnot for fuel. For warmth.You can’t get that way out in the prairies, you know, so our people always camped closer to the mountains and the foothills so they had access to wood and whatnot for the winter. December 1792,the time of Peter Fidler’s visit to the Oldman River and the Livingstone Range, was one such typically mild winter: the river was not frozen, and the ground had no significant snow cover.Travelling with a band of the Piikáni, Fidler dutifully recorded what bits of traditional knowledge that he could about the land he was being introduced to; perhaps he even heard the story of the Tipi Liners.The story he recorded about the name of the Oldman River is the inspiration for the present study. There are few other First Nations heritage sites in Canada for which traditional knowledge has been recorded in four different centuries.Traditions about Old Man’s Playing Ground exist in the literature from the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s; ancient by the time they were first written by Fidler,these stories are still being told today.The wealth of information preserved in these stories is the key to understanding the site’s significance, in terms of the groups who share this knowledge and the sacred connotations of the stories’ association with Old Man, the Creator and Trickster. Changes in First Nations peoples’ access to traditional territories are evident in the stories, first through the geopolitical upheavals that accompanied European contact, and then through outright prohibition against access in the reserve era.The variations in these stories are perhaps best viewed in chronological order from when they were first recorded, beginning with Fidler’s account. 8 BACKGROUND: STORIES OF PLACE Peter Fidler’s journal Peter Fidler has been described as Canada’s forgotten explorer—a contemporary of David Thompson who, despite having surveyed similar extents of North America, never found the renown that has since come to his peer. Historian James MacGregor attributed this to Thompson having had a publicist (MacGregor 1966: xvii): Joseph Burr Tyrrell came into possession of the unfinished manuscript of Thompson’s Narrative around the turn of the last century and saw it through to publication (Thompson 1916).Fidler,on the other hand, never had the opportunity to compose his memoirs. He passed away in 1823, a short 18 months after retiring to the Red River Colony from a long and eventful service with the HBC (MacGregor 1966: xvii-xviii). Fidler was born in Bolsover, Derbyshire, in 1769 and signed on as a labourer with the HBC in London at the age of 19 (MacGregor 1966: 1). Little is known of his early years, but there are indications that he had a sound education. He arrived atYork Factory in the summer of 1788, and by December of 1789 had progressed to the position of writer for the South Branch House; the post journal for that winter (HBCA B.205/a/4) is written in his“beautifully legible hand”(MacGregor 1966:20).By the following spring,his aptitude had stood out enough for him to be selected as a pupil of Philip Turnor, the HBC’s chief surveyor.Turnor’s only other student at the time was David Thompson (MacGregor 1966: 21-26). It was only shortly after the completion of his apprenticeship, while stationed at Buckingham House on the North Saskatchewan River and still very...

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