From a high ridge above northern Montana’s plains, the Blackfeet ancestral landscape stretches toward Glacier National Park and the Rocky Mountain Front. The Blackfoot name for this place—Miistákis, the “backbone of the world”—captures its centrality to identity, says Lailani Upham, a member of the Blackfeet Nation who leads cultural hikes for Iron Shield Creative. Today, that backbone is bisected by an international boundary.
Upham’s walks blend Blackfeet stories with the land. She asks visitors to picture the vast herds of buffalo that once moved here—animals regarded as spiritual kin and essential to life. Those relationships survive in place names like Nititawahsi, “the land where the iinii (buffalo) live,” and Niitawahsin-nanni, “the people of the land where the iinii live.” Recent cross-border work among Blackfoot communities has helped bring buffalo back to lands near Browning, Montana, a restoration Upham says makes the area “really feel like our home.”
The Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksikaitsitapi) today counts roughly 40,000 people across four nations split by the U.S.–Canada border: the Kainai (Blood) and Siksika in Alberta; the Piikani in Alberta; and the Aamskapi (Southern) Pikuni in Montana, federally recognized in the U.S. as the Blackfeet Nation. Each nation governs itself, yet families, ceremonies and histories flow across the line imposed in the 19th century.
That line—sometimes called the medicine line—meant something different to Plains peoples. While it was a colonial border on maps, it often served as refuge: in the 1800s U.S. troops were less likely to follow people into Canada, and Canadians were less likely to pursue those who crossed south. Today, Blackfoot leaders are treating the international boundary as secondary to shared homeland and culture.
In 2018 the Blackfoot Confederacy Tribal Council formed a coordinating body to strengthen Blackfoot-led networks across the border, including tourism. Destination Blackfoot is building a transnational tourism corridor that deliberately treats the boundary as if it weren’t a divider—Kimmy Shade, CEO of the Tribal Council, frames it as “not looking at the border as a barrier [but] looking at it as ‘this is our land.’” The initiative maps eight self-guided routes and highlights more than 100 operators from all four nations, from Montana guides like Upham to Alberta accommodations run by Piikani entrepreneurs. Travelers still must follow border rules and present documents at crossings such as Del Bonita or Piegan–Carway, but the corridor encourages people to experience the region as connected Blackfoot territory.
On the Blackfoot Immersion Route, a five-day loop from Calgary to Glacier and back, the cross-border perspective is immediate. In Calgary I visited Melrene Saloy’s studio, where Native Diva Creations adapts Blackfoot designs for contemporary fashion. Under her guidance I beaded a traditional geometric pattern onto a deerskin medicine bag. Driving from city to prairie, the land opens; in the Siksika Nation I visited Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park, where a tipi-shaped museum interprets the Confederacy’s story.
Grant Many Heads, a senior interpreter there, showed a map of traditional territory that once reached across present-day Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana. He put Treaty 7, signed in 1877 between three Blackfoot nations and Canada, into context: it was struck amid crisis—collapsing buffalo herds, alcohol-related disruption, and social upheaval. Many Heads emphasizes that the agreement was meant as a peace arrangement, not surrender of land. He also pointed out the oddity of a 1977 commemorative reenactment that included Prince Charles smoking a pipe now exhibited in the museum. As the treaty’s 150th anniversary approaches in 2027, Blackfoot Crossing is expanding exhibits and performance spaces; Many Heads says they intend to commemorate, not celebrate, the treaty.
Crossing into the United States, the landscape is framed by Ninaistako (Chief Mountain). A uniformed border guard sat in a booth below its face; a herd of buffalo grazed nearby—an emblem of cultural resurgence against the backdrop of split territory. But the boundary still shapes daily life. Derek DesRosier, general manager of Sun Tours in East Glacier, told me the border “plays a major role in disconnecting communities.” What was once fluid movement is now constrained by paperwork and the limited hours of rural checkpoints.
Sun Tours, in operation for more than thirty years, remains the only firm offering Blackfeet-led tours of Glacier National Park. Founder Ed DesRosier battled park authorities in the 1990s over the right to operate on traditional Blackfeet land; he prevailed, and his son Derek now interprets the park through a Blackfeet lens. Derek hopes to expand routes to connect Glacier with Waterton Lakes National Park across the border and deepen collaboration with Canadian Blackfoot relatives as the corridor grows.
At Waterton Lakes I met Marjie Crop Eared Wolf, an artist and cultural liaison from the Kainai Nation who works with the park. As a youth she saw little of her people reflected in park programming; now, through partnership, Blackfoot language and perspectives appear in the visitor center, trail signage and public programs. She runs the Paahtómahksikimi Cultural Centre, which sells art made by Blackfoot artisans and hosts cultural events—from storytelling to traditional games. “My priority is us being seen back in that space that we occupied,” she says.
Destination Blackfoot and related projects underscore a larger reality: many national parks and public lands sit on Indigenous territories. By restoring buffalo herds and asserting cultural presence in parks and cultural sites, Blackfoot nations are reclaiming identity and visibility across a landscape divided by an international line. The tourism corridor invites visitors to reframe crossings not only as movement between two nation-states but as passage from Blackfoot nation to Blackfoot nation. Centering Indigenous sovereignty, storytelling and stewardship, the Confederacy is turning cross-border travel into a way to recognize and reconnect with a shared homeland rather than reinforce separation.
