Walking With <scp>SAGE</scp> Clan Patrol: Practicing Empathy in the Indigenous Urban Landscape

ABSTRACT This article examines the work of a Blackfoot‐led, volunteer‐based outreach organization that patrols the urban core of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, providing support and connection to vulnerable community members. While settler colonialism maintains exclusionary racialized geographies which locate cities as spaces of “Whiteness” and reserves as places of “Indianness,” SAGE Clan challenges these divisions by patrolling the urban core and providing supports and aid to people experiencing homelessness and addiction. In so doing, it marks its presence on the landscape, asserting an enduring Indigenous connection to ancestral Blackfoot territory. Further, through their concept of Niitsitapiikimmapiiyipitssinni, which understands being Niitsitapi (the Real People) as not tied to blood or ancestry, but embracing a responsibility for mutual care, patrollers challenge neoliberal values of individualism and self‐reliance—values echoed in Western medicalized addiction treatment programs—and suggest that being or becoming Niitsitapi is open to all who choose to walk with SAGE Clan and embrace a way of life premised on care and empathy. We suggest that by asserting that all citizens have a role to play in assisting vulnerable community members, and framing Niitsitapi values as open to all, SAGE Clan challenges racial divisions which uphold settler colonialism, articulating a pathway to reconciliation [Urban Indigeneity; Settler colonialism; Addiction; Racialized Geographies; Reconciliation].