Embedded Files
Experience the Sweetgrass Bear AR Stories
Experience the Sweetgrass Bear AR Stories
2025 Update:
We regret to say that the augmented reality platform hosting the AR stories, awe, is no longer available. We remain open to other options to host the AR stories in the future, but they are unavailable at this time.
This AR story trail was co-created to challenge colonial narratives that privilege settler perspectives and to prompt reflection on Indigenous-settler relationships. We encourage you to visit the statues as they embody deep cultural knowledge and continue to prompt reflection on treaty responsibilities and relations.
Previously, you could experience Knowledge Keeper stories at Treaty 6 marker sculptures through augmented reality (AR) on your phone or mobile device by visiting one of the four Treaty 6 marker sculpture sites included in the AR story trail. Sites included
UAlberta North Campus
UAlberta Campus Saint-Jean
UAlberta Enterprise Square
UAlberta Augustana Campus
Each Treaty 6 marker sculpture hosted four stories. Two of the stories, tānisi and Oral Understanding of Treaty, were included at each site along with two additional stories unique to each location.
About the Sweetgrass Bear Treaty Markers
About the Sweetgrass Bear Treaty Markers
The Sweetgrass Bears were carved by Stewart Steinhauer in response to a vision from his cousin, Dr. Diana Steinhauer. The marker bears are designed to embody Cree knowledge and teachings, and to act as physical expressions of treaty relationships.
Video produced by MACE 501 graduate students Billy Smale and Amanda Almond.
About the Sweetgrass AR Project
About the Sweetgrass AR Project
The We are All Related Augmented Reality or Sweetgrass AR project sought to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods in post-secondary education, encouraging processes of critical, reflective, and reciprocal relationship-building though the co-creation of AR content. Augmented reality layers digital information over a view of the “real-world” on a mobile device, offering an innovative approach to engage faculty, students and Indigenous peoples to share insights and knowledge beyond what is first observed. Cree teachings in digital narrative form, created and presented in AR platforms, can share location-based knowledge, history, and language in engaging ways that reveal settler and Indigenous histories, present activities, and potential futures co-present in shared spaces.
Our AR ‘learning by design’ project involved a guided pedagogical process where students and instructors from the University of Alberta worked with Cree Knowledge Keepers from Saddle Lake Cree Nation to co-create AR content. We used the HP Reveal (formerly Aurasma) platform to share AR stories about treaty at Sweetgrass Bear, a Treaty 6 marker bear sculpture carved by Stewart Steinhauer, inspired by a vision received by Knowledge Keeper Dr. Diana Steinhauer. The sculpture is located in the Enterprise Square building, a former Hudson’s Bay Company site. It is a concrete expression of the relationships between Cree and settler peoples of the area, and serves as a physical reminder of treaty.
Working through a series of learning resources, students followed an AR design process through conversations on topics such as settler-colonialism, respectful relationship-building, traditional and contemporary forms of information governance (including OCAP® principles), ownership of cultural knowledge, language revitalization, and other considerations. The result of these relationships and this process are co-created AR stories that are retained (owned, controlled, accessed and possessed) by Knowledge Keepers and shared with the public.
Sweetgrass Bear
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