CALGARY—The wrestler long known as Hit Man can now take up the moniker Courageous Chief.
On Thursday morning, Calgarian and wrestling legend Bret Hart had bestowed on him the traditional Blackfoot (Siksika) name.
Elder Clarence Wolfleg Senior, whose Siksika name is Elder Miiksika’am, did the honours, performing a traditional naming ceremony for Hart at Mount Royal University’s T-Wing Courtyard.
“I’ve won world titles and had a lot of different things bestowed upon me; and I appreciate all of them. But this is one that goes right to the heart … being a Calgarian and being a Canadian, I appreciate this a lot,” Hart said.
The Siksika word for Courageous Chief is Iyiikitapinaa (pronounced Ee-yuh-ka-ta-bee-na), Wolfleg said.
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“In the way back, the responsibility of all warriors, grandfathers and grandmothers was to name their grandchildren and also warriors who have been in battle many times. They would bestow names on a young warrior who has achieved success,” Wolfleg said of the ceremony’s cultural and historical importance.
He underscored the work Bret Hart and his late father Stu Hart did in promoting wrestling and sports involvement among First Nations youth in Alberta.
In that regard, Wolfleg said Bret Hart’s naming ceremony represents him carrying on his father’s legacy.
“Being compared to my father — he was a strong guy in the community and he had strong ties with First Nations people across Western Canada,” the younger Hart said of his father.
Mixed martial arts fighter Regan Running Rabbit can attest to that first-hand.
Growing up on the Siksika Nation east of Calgary, the 31-year-old MMA fighter said Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin were his favourite wrestlers.
“I was a huge fan when it was WWF (the World Wrestling Federation, which has since changed to World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE) … before I went into MMA, my original plan was to get into wrestling,” he said.
“I did backyard wrestling. There’s actually quite a few kids who did backyard wrestling back in the day, just on our trampolines,” he said.
It was his segue to MMA, he said.
Bret’s father, Stu Hart, was born in Saskatoon, Sask.; he used his Prairie connections throughout Western Canada to work with and promote wrestling events in First Nations communities in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, Bret said.
“I feel like (the naming ceremony) is one of those things left undone from years ago that meant a lot for my father. To be here today, I feel like I’m representing my whole family,” Hart said.
In southern Alberta, Running Rabbit said Stu Hart’s Calgary-based wrestling school and promotion agency, Stampede Wrestling, was a big draw, especially during the 1970s and 1980s.
“That’s what my dad went to, and there was a lot of people who went to Stampede Wrestling back in the day, before even WWF was around. There was even a bunch of people from the reserve that would go to Calgary just to watch the wrestling there,” he said. “It brought the whole community together.”
Running Rabbit emphasized that Bret, his late brother Owen, and other Hart family members were always accessible, easy to meet and speak with.
Having locals like Bret and Owen Hart make it big in the wrestling world inspired him, he said.
“One of the biggest inspirations is to actually see someone who you know make it big, and that gives you a really huge impact on your life,” he said.
