New Stampede First Nations princess aims 'to empower women'

Pacey Strangling Wolf is crowned 2025 Calgary Stampede First Nations princess on Nov. 17, 2024. (CTV News Calgary)

Pacey Strangling Wolf was crowned 2025 Calgary Stampede First Nations Princess at the BMO Centre Sunday afternoon.

Strangling Wolf is a 25-year-old jingle dress dancer from the Kainai nation. Her Blackfoot name is Otsskoiikitstakaii, which means "Blue Offering Woman."

For the past year, she has worked at Stathmore High School as the First Nations Indigenous liaison and aspires to be an educator, teaching the Blackfoot language or drama to our youth.

She entered the pageant after a friend tagged her in a Facebook post saying she is a good role model and should try for the title.

Over the next year, Strangling Wolf plans to encourage and inspire all women and girls to achieve their best.

“I'm a girl's girl, a woman's woman, I would love to empower women especially myself I would like to feel empowered myself so I would like to do the same for others as well and no woman is at the bottom every woman is at the top and I would love for her to reach her top.”

As part of her role, she will be speaking to the audience at the grandstand show where she will work to bring Indigenous and non-indigenous people together.

“I hope that we can build Reconciliation together. It’s something that I have been striving for over 10 years now,” she says. “I hope that my message will be clear with the others that I definitely want to build a stronger bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous and to continue that growth.”

As an ambassador of Elbow River Camp, presented by Enbridge, the First Nations Princess also speaks to the historic partnership between families from the Stoney Nakoda, Kainai, Piikani, Siksika, and Tsuut’ina First Nations and the Calgary Stampede.

Strangling Wolf and 2025 Calgary Stampede Princess Breanna Correia will bothact as ambassadors of the Calgary Stampede.

Next year's Calgary Stampede runs from July 4 to 13.