Black Diamond is a small town located forty-five minutes south of Calgary. In a mutual decision by local councils to prioritize “cost savings,” it was recently merged with the nearby town of Turner Valley, Alberta, and the area comprising the two has, as of January 1, 2023, gone by the name Diamond Valley (clever!). We must not forget that these are all colonizer names—although youthful, punkish me had a fantasy that Black Diamond was named for the KISS/Replacements song, and not for the prevalence of coal in the area. The actual, earthy land of Diamond Valley ripples off to the east, shaking out into the prairies—which are not flat, if you are not familiar; they roll and undulate and sometimes drop off into breathtaking river valleys, house many small critters like mice and birds, and if you stop to inspect the ground, there is a tangle of plants (including cacti) as diverse as any forest. To the west of Diamond Valley is land that gathers together in larger formations until it becomes, rather suddenly, the Rocky Mountains. This is the traditional territory of the Treaty 7 people.