Most archaeologists of the Northern Plains recognize eight different classes or styles of medicine wheels.

“Lo-and-behold, the Blackfoot elders have routinely referred to one of these eight styles — although they don’t call it that — and they strongly indicate these were monuments to particular people, or events that happened in the past. I think there’s some consensus on that.”

Brace points out the most recent wheel was constructed in Alberta in 1938, as a memorial to a renowned Blackfoot leader.

Brace has come up with a medicine wheel definition that allows him to categorize the 12 to 14 Saskatchewan wheels, which range in diameter from 45 to 144 metres (160 yards), into four groups: burial; surrogate burial; fertility symbol; and “medicine hunting”.

Simon Kytwayhat, a Cree elder who lives in Saskatoon, says he learned his Cree perspective on the meaning of the medicine wheel from elders. Kytwayhat’s interpretation of the meaning of the medicine wheel associates the four directions represented on the wheel with the four races and their attributes — the circle and the number four are sacred symbols in First Nations’ spirituality.

Medicine wheels are disappearing at an alarming rate The Moose Mountain Medicine Wheel was first noted by Canadians of European ancestry in an 1895 report written by land surveyors. The report described the central cairn of the medicine wheel as being about 14 feet high, says Ian Brace, an archaeologist with the Royal Saskatchewan Museum […]

Layout of a medicine wheel Medicine wheels were built by laying out stones in a circular pattern that often looked like a wagon wheel lying on its side. The wheels could be large, reaching diameters of 75 feet (23 metres) or more.Medicine wheels were constructed by laying stones in a particular pattern on the ground. […]

All tribes have a form of medicine wheel. There is no single answer as to its meaning. The Anishnaabek often referred to the medicine wheel as the CIRCLE OF LIFE symbolizing the natural cycles of birth, growth, death, and regeneration.