The Niitsítapi — the Blackfoot people — have lived in relationship with the waters of the northern Great Plains for more than 18,000 years. In that time, they developed one of the most sophisticated water governance systems the world has ever known: not written in law, but carried in ceremony, in language, in the names of the rivers themselves, and in the living knowledge of the Elders and knowledge keepers who still hold it today.

Sacred Story of Water is a panel discussion that traces the full arc of that relationship — from creation to crisis to the vision of full restoration. It is a conversation about climate, yes. But it is also a conversation about memory, reciprocity, and what it means to truly belong to a place.

The journey begins at the beginning — with Napi, the creator, shaping the world from water. It moves through the sacred and everyday ways water sustained every dimension of Blackfoot community life: the Beaver Bundle ceremonies, the beaver pond water infrastructure, the protocol of take, share, and return. It confronts the wounds — the severing of the covenant at Treaty 7 in 1877, the industrial damage to the Bow, Oldman, and Belly rivers, and the accelerating climate crisis threatening the glaciers that feed them all. And it ends with a vision — not conservation, not management, not mitigation — but full reciprocal restoration. The ability to once again take from the water freely and with ceremony. To share it with all who come to the territory. And to return it as it was received: clean, alive, and sacred.