The Grand Opening of the Bear Gulch Pictographs Visitor Center is set for Saturday, June 28th in Fairgrove, Montana and you are officially invited to join this historic occasion! Indigenous Vision and some wonderful friends, community members, and volunteers have been tirelessly working to bring this historic visitor center to life and we couldn’t be prouder to have the day set where you can share this experience with us!
Tickets to the event are available to anyone wanting to be apart of Indigenous history in Montana; admission is free for all community members with Tribal ID. Together we’ll gather on the land for a Pipe Ceremony, the official ribbon cutting, a look at the visitor center, a BBQ feast, and of course the announcing of the winner of the Dream Tipi Raffle Fundraiser.
The Bear Gulch Pictographs are located in central Montana on land owned by Macie Ahlgren and her family for the past 100 years. IV has been working with Macie who lovingly opened her land to us to collaborate on the construction of the visitor center giving us the lead with the narrative and stories of the land. There are thousands of well preserved pictographs to explore and we’re passionate about keeping them that way and educating visitors on the history of the people who created them.
Souta Calling Last along with other Blackfoot community members have been diligently creating the exhibit that will feature life-sized Bear Brave replica along with the arrows and weapons used by the warriors. Marty Heavy Head, Blood Tribe, is helping to assemble the weapon exhibit. The two mannequins, one named Heavy Shield, will be exhibited and travel to other museums throughout the winter to share what ancestral Blackfoot warriors and game rangers looked like 5-10,000 years ago.
According to the 5000 pictographs, of which about 1000 of them are heavy shields, this place was well used throughout the 23,000+ occupancy of the area. There is also a small buffalo jump and kill site complete with roasting pits at the pictograph site.
Our event gets underway at 3:00 pm MDT so don’t be late! We’ll have exclusive postcards for purchase, make sure you bring cash as there will be no cellular service in the area.
If you’d like to support our efforts and the Bear Gulch Pictograph Visitor Center please donate today.
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