Cliff Jumping

The first half of this week I was supposed to go to Lethbridge with my kids to spend some time with my parents, but my mom broke her clavicle, and my dad said don't come. I know this sounds backwards like I should be there helping my mom, but my dad works from home so he's with her, and if I showed up right now she'd put on her hostess face and wear herself out by our sheer presence.

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If we'd gone to Lethbridge we would have hit Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump on the way home, but with our change in plans we made the trip down to the Jump and back today.

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I was working on a self-portrait when someone offered to help me out by taking my picture, and I'm glad I accepted because I hadn't noticed that the shrub behind us was trimmed to resemble a bison, and that wouldn't have turned out in my arm's length photo.

The first thing we did was settle ourselves down for the native dancing that is done on Wednesdays. It was highly entertaining. Our host first talked to us about how Natives have been misrepresented in old Westerns. I thought okay, here we go, a little sensitivity training. But I was wrong. So very wrong.

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He had everyone do the Warrior-Chasing-John-Wayne-Indian-Call. What????

I couldn't believe it.

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Then he explained that the warriors yip and yell but it's the women who do the "Shrill" (to express their approval in some way) and that it isn't done with the hand, rather, with the tongue. There you go.
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We were then treated to some dancing - this was the Shawl Dance.
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This one was really called the Chicken Dance.
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The kids and I all joined in when we were invited to participate, but I got to hold hands with the Bustle Dancer.
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After the dancing we checked out the interpretive centre and climbed up to check out the jump.
We'd already seen the movie indoors about how the buffalo would go over, and Chloe was a little afraid to follow our interpreter to the actual jump. I assured her that we wouldn't go right up to the edge, and we didn't, but I like that my picture makes it look like we did.
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A storm was rolling in over the canola fields on our way home and was probably the prettiest sight of the day. At least for me.
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Some of the kids thought this was the prettiest sight of the day and wanted me to buy them Slurpee's, taquitos, fried chicken & potato wedges (only at Claresholm's 7-11). I reminded them of dad's rule about no food in the new van and then they told me that last time they drove through with dad he bought them all that food. It seems that we break the rules for food that Ken wants himself.
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So though Ken was downtown working today, he was with us in spirit as the kids shimmy-shaked their Slurpee's (to keep the syrup evenly distributed) and ate their chicken (heavy on the napkins).