CA-K117Indigenous peoples & reconciliation

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site, Alberta, photographed in 2017. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump · Thomas Fuhrmann · Photo source · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized for display; item previews may be cropped. The image remains under the licence shown.

Factual accuracy review: No recorded challenge

No recorded challenge is not proof of accuracy. A challenge under review is not a finding that the item is false.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (estipah-skikikini-kots in Blackfoot), in southwestern Alberta, is the biggest, oldest and best-preserved buffalo jump in North America. Plains peoples drove bison over its cliffs for perhaps 5,700 years, until the mid-19th century; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.

Scope & context

The site and the communal hunting it illustrates, not the full history of the Blackfoot Confederacy or bison on the Plains.

Sources behind this record

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump ↗

Parks Canada (World Heritage Sites in Canada)

Date of Inscription; Justification; Full description