#piikani

On a cold January day more than a century ago, U.S. troops massacred nearly 200 Piikani people on a Montana river bank. Most were women, children and old folks.

"It's hard to imagine," Chief Stanley Charles Grier of the Piikani Nation in Alberta, Canada said.

The people killed were his ancestors and accounts of the massacre are brutal. Soldiers killed a mother breastfeeding her baby. They shot sick people hiding under blankets.

"Survivors were basically executed by axes," Grier says. "That's pretty barbaric."

The man who helped perpetrate this massacre was Army Lt. Gustavus Doane. He later went on to explore parts of Yellowstone and his compatriots named Mount Doane after him. The name stuck, and Grier wants to change it.

"Lieutenant Doane led that attack and fully implemented the massacre," he says. "We feel that's an atrocity to humanity and it's essentially a war crime."

Massacres like this were a major part of what some historians call a forgotten genocide during the colonization and settlement of the American West. The perpetrators of these massacres were sometimes honored with mountains, valleys and towns.

Native Americans Propose Change To Yellowstone Landmark Names

“I struggled with accepting my life in Calgary, because all I wanted to do was live in my home community, the Piikani Nation. So for five years, the Nanton truck stop was the meeting place between two worlds.

The distance never bothered me. Every time I travelled that 2.5-hour drive home felt closer than the time before. The only thing that mattered to me was being in the arms of my Na’ah (grandma) and papa in the foothills of southern Alberta.

My family history doesn’t only lie in the traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation. My family history is also rooted in the ground beneath my feet.”