The Town of Okotoks is hosting a pipe ceremony as part of National Indigenous Peoples Day this weekend.
This is the fourth year they are hosting this ceremony, which will take place at the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Residential Schools Survivors Memorial site behind Bow Valley College in Okotoks.
According to the Indigenous Relations Advisor for the Town of Okotoks, Desmond Jackson, this pipe ceremony will honour and celebrate National Indigenous Peoples' History Month.
"Everyone is welcome. It's open to everybody, Indigenous and non-Indigenous," Jackson explains. "So, the ceremony is going to take place from 10 a.m. to noon, and we'll have berry soup and Bannock to serve afterwards. And we have two Blackfoot ceremonialists who will be leading us through the ceremony."
Jackson says that as part of the pipe ceremony, they offer the pipe to the ceremonialist and to ask for prayers for our community, for Indigenous peoples, everybody who lives here, that we can get along and we can be good neighbours, as well as be good stewards of the land.
"That's what we're praying for, that's what we're asking for is this harmonious balance in life."
This Blackfoot Pipe Ceremony will happen at the Town's teepee at the Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women and Residential Schools Survivors Memorial site, on Saturday (June 21), which is also National Indigenous Peoples Day.
"It's the National Heritage Day here in Canada, and it has its place. And this is the day that we make room for that day."
June is National Indigenous Peoples History Month, and the Town of Okotoks has a few events to help celebrate, such as their powwow, artisan market, and teepee camp they held at the beginning of June.
If the weather acts up on Saturday, they will move the ceremony to the Okotoks Public Library.