On July 31, 2026, Valerie Fortney wrote a glowing account of Roy Bear Chief’s activities at Mount Royal University. Bear Chief has been an aboriginal “helper” at Mount Royal University for several years, and he is one of its chief Indigenizers and Decolonizers.
Fortney is a journalist with several decades of experience.
The opening photograph of Fortney’s piece shows Bear Chief in front of the sacred “buffalo robe” that is displayed in the hallway leading to MRU’s Recreation Centre.
In discussing Bear Chief’s contributions to MRU, Fortney starts off by recounting Bear Chief’s amazement that he has been welcomed into an academic institution.
Fortney goes on to state that Bear Chief has made great contributions to academe by “advancing reconciliation” and “providing wisdom, insight and greater understanding” to the university.
Fortney refers to Bear Chief’s “academic knowledge” – a master’s degree in social work – and how this has helped him “integrate Indigenous perspectives” and “aid in decolonization and Indigenization”.
Fortney also points to a number of awards and honorary degrees that Bear Chief has received as evidence for his contribution to the university.
Fortney also makes the obligatory references to Bear Chief’s allegedly traumatizing residential school experience. The only hardships Bear Chief recounts is being away from home so that he missed his family, his mother’s cooking, and wasn’t able to be socialized in his culture (although he presumably could return home in the summers, as it was “less than a kilometre away”). Bear Chief does assert that unnamed people said the following: “They tell you, ‘you’re not going to amount to anything, you’re stupid,’ ” but it is not clear if this is an interpretation he is making or if someone actually said this.
Fortney also describes Bear Chief’s family relationships, and how this has helped him to become “better, not bitter”.
Fortney then describes Bear Chief’s main accomplishment – the “Spiderweb”. The article Fortney references can be found by clinking on this link:
You can hear Bear Chief describing how he designed the “buffalo robe” here (at 10:28-22:55):
Frances Widdowson also has examined Roy Bear Chief’s “spiderweb” contribution to Mount Royal University in a previous post and video.
