Lethbridge marks winter solstice with new Indigenous Winter Count

The City of Lethbridge held its anural Blackfoot winter solstice on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023.

The City of Lethbridge held its anural Blackfoot winter solstice on Thursday, with the unveiling and painting of a Winter Count.

The Winter Count is a historical record written on an animal hide using paint and pictographs capturing environmental details and significant events.

"Blackfoot history is all oral, so these Winter Counts are a way to preserve a lot of that, but it's also a way to preserve languages as well," said Indigenous artist Api’soomaahka (Running Coyote) William Singer III.

"The Winter Counts that were written back hundreds of years ago actually correspond with all of the western dates, so winter counts are a really old form of telling our time,"

The Blackfoot people do not organize the year into months, instead into moon cycles, with the winter solstice taking place during the cold moon, according to Elder Ninnaa Piiksii Mike Bruised Head.

Rather than a traditional calendar, a typical year would go from the first snowfall to the next year's first snowfall.

He says they also use different animals to help signal when the sun was about to set.

"In the winter, the birds that don't go south, they're all chirping to each other that it's time to go to bed, go to rest, go into the nest," Bruised Head explained. "They would hear that and advise each other that darkness is about to come."

Dec. 21 marks the shortest day of the year for sunlight. Starting Dec. 22, there will be a few more seconds of daylight each day.

The new Winter Count will be on display at the Cavendish Farms Centre for the public to see.

Singer III says more symbols will be added through the years to come.

"I encourage the community to come and witness it because in terms of our reconciliation, this is something that's really awesome to take part in," he said.