A new tourism corridor takes travelers across the “medicine line” and into four different Blackfoot nations spanning the US and Canada.

REBECCA STUMPF

High up on a ridge overlooking the rolling grasslands of northern Montana ’s Great Plains, the vast ancestral land of the Blackfeet Nation sprawls before me. To the west I can see the jagged peaks of Glacier National Park, and to the north, the steep limestone cliff faces of the Rocky Mountain Front.

The Blackfoot call this area Miistákis , or the “backbone of the world,” Lailani Upham, my guide for the day and member of the Blackfeet Nation, tells me. Today, the world’s backbone is a border.

Upham leads cultural hiking tours on public lands around Montana through her company, Iron Shield Creative , which weaves Blackfeet storytelling into outdoor exploration.…