"The Cypress Hills, An Island By Itself" by W. Hildebrandt and B. Hubner

The Cypress Hills is a beautiful spot for certain. You can feel that it is special as you rise in elevation, ever getting closer. It should, for it sits about 600 metres above the prairies. It is withing these 600 metres that everything changes. What was once prairie is now an ancient forest, a left over from the last glaciation. It is a place that was occupied at least 10-12,000 years ago, and has ever since drawn the attention of all who have travelled in its shadow.
This new volume, The Cypress Hills, is a dry documentary of primarily the last 200 years or so of life on the Cypress Hills. Repeatedly, the voices echo, the documents show systemic greed, racism, and inhumanity by the intruders. Of people, in some cases the Nakoda people who suffered the 'Cypress Hills Massacre' in 1873, were falsely guaranteed rights and resources. The forced turn from nomadic hunters to agricultural based living, allocated in reserves far away from their traditional lands provided only humiliating and deadly results.
It was through these white pre-21st century eyes that we learned the half-truths and lies about a culture quite alien to westerners. Overlooked was the unique relationship with the land and the pivotal role women played in their cultures and lives. The Cypress Hills remedies some of this by examining the records of American and Canadian trappers, explorers, the Hudson Bay Company and early settlers, and later the North West Mounted Police, but also the scant voices of the First Nations and Metis peoples, and boldly records history as it is, and was.
We have stretched our dignity as a species far too much to have history repeat itself. The injustices served should not be relinquished to past memories. These stories, of a place,...of a island once called "The Thunder Breeding Hills" should be clearly in front of us as paths mistakenly chosen.