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A medicine wheel is a stone structure built by Indigenous People's of North America for spiritual and ritual purposes.
They appear mostly in Alberta, Canada. They were built by laying out stones in a circular pattern. They often look like a wagon wheel laying flat. They could be large, reaching up to 75 feet across.
Medicine wheels are still used today in the Native American traditions. However, the meaning is usually not shared outside the tribe.
One famous medicine wheel is found at Wanuskewin near Saskatoon, SK. You can read more about that here. There are also medicine wheels across the western prairies. The closest one to Red Deer is at Rumsey near Three Hills. Explore and research the Rumsey medicine wheel here.
Living a Circular Life
Living a Circular Life
Dallas Arcand explains the significance of the circle to Indigenous people in the video here...
We live a circular life at Joseph Welsh School by learning aobut our own version of a medicine wheel, the Joseph Welsh Sacred Tree. It includes four directions represented by four words: Others/World/Learning/Self.
These four words make also represent an acronym, O-W-L-S. This is the way we've chosen to describe how we stay well and how we represent the best version of ourselves to the world.
Our Sacred Tree
Our Sacred Tree
Our Sacred Tree guides us as we do our best to respect ourselves, others, the world around us, and learning.
Each one of us is on a journey of living and discovery related to each direction of the wheel. We grow just like a tree reaching as high as we can to do our best and be our best.
You can read more about the concept of Sacred Tree here or by clicking the book cover below.
The image below is from Wanuskewin. Medicine wheels in nature are always located on high ground and from the center of one you can see for many miles in each of the four cardinal directions.
Medicine wheels of the prairies
Medicine wheels of the prairies
Click through the carousel to the right to see more images of natural medicine wheels on the western prairies.
Design your own personal medicine wheel...
Design your own personal medicine wheel...
Click this link for instruction on how to design your own personal medicine wheel.
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