"Where the rocks still teach and the spirits still speak through stone"
Petroglyphs Park
North Kawartha, Ontario, Canada
Deep in the boreal forest of Ontario's Canadian Shield, a crystalline marble outcrop holds the largest known concentration of indigenous rock carvings in Canada. The Anishinaabe call this place Kinoomaagewaapkong, the rocks that teach. Carved between 900 and 1400 CE, these are not relics of a vanished culture. They are living teachings, and the Anishinaabe still come here to listen.
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Quick Facts
Location
North Kawartha, Ontario, Canada
Coordinates
44.6256, -78.0564
Last Updated
Feb 11, 2026
Learn More
Kinoomaagewaapkong holds the largest known single concentration of indigenous rock art in Canada, carved by Algonkian-speaking peoples between approximately 900 and 1400 CE. Rediscovered in 1954, systematically studied by Joan and Romas Vastokas in the 1960s, and protected within a provincial park since 1976, the site is both a National Historic Site and an actively sacred place where Anishinaabe ceremony continues under the stewardship of Curve Lake First Nation.
Origin Story
In Algonkian cosmology, the rock surface was understood as a boundary between worlds. Spirits dwelled beneath the earth, preferring places near water. This outcrop of crystalline marble, with underground streams flowing through it and deep crevices opening into darkness, was recognized as a place where that boundary could be crossed.
The shamans who carved the petroglyphs were not creating art in any Western sense. They were enacting spiritual communication. Each figure incised into the marble was a gesture toward the world below, an invocation, a message sent through stone. The images they chose, shamans with radiating power, the horned serpent Mishikinebik who embodied medicine and wisdom, animals of land and sky and water, reflect a cosmology in which all beings participated in the exchange between worlds.
The Anishinaabe who carry this knowledge today understand the carvings as teachings that remain active. The rocks teach. That is what the name means, and it is meant literally.
Key Figures
Joan M. Vastokas
scholar
University of Toronto art historian who, with Romas K. Vastokas, conducted the first systematic recording of the petroglyphs from 1965 to 1968. Their monograph Sacred Art of the Algonkians remains the definitive scholarly interpretation of the site.
Romas K. Vastokas
scholar
Trent University art historian who co-led the systematic recording and study of the petroglyphs. His collaboration with Joan Vastokas produced the foundational academic analysis of the carvings' cultural and spiritual context.
Gimaa Keith Knott
community leader
Chief of Curve Lake First Nation who has advocated publicly for the community to become primary caretaker of Kinoomaagewaapkong, reflecting the broader movement toward indigenous stewardship of indigenous sacred places.
The Algonkian Carvers
original creators
The unnamed Algonkian-speaking shamans and spiritual practitioners who carved approximately 900 to 1,200 figures into the crystalline marble between 900 and 1400 CE. Their identities are unknown, but their work constitutes the largest single concentration of indigenous rock art in Canada.
Curve Lake First Nation Interpreters
contemporary stewards
The Curve Lake First Nation staff who operate the Learning Place visitor centre and deliver interpretive programming. They are the living link between the teachings encoded in the rock and the visitors who come to receive them.
Spiritual Lineage
The lineage at Kinoomaagewaapkong is unbroken. Algonkian-speaking peoples began carving figures into this marble outcrop around 900 CE, and the work continued for perhaps five centuries. The Anishinaabe, linguistic and cultural descendants of those carvers, have maintained a continuous relationship with the site. This continuity was not disrupted by colonization in the way that many indigenous sacred sites were severed from their communities. The remote forest location offered some protection. When three geologists stumbled upon the carvings in 1954, they found a site the Anishinaabe had never left. The institutional history that followed, the academic study by the Vastokases in the 1960s, the park designation in 1976, the protective building in 1984, the National Historic Site status in 1981, added layers of Western stewardship. But the decisive shift came in 2002 when Curve Lake First Nation opened the Learning Place and took responsibility for how the site's story is told. The interpretive voice at Kinoomaagewaapkong is now an Anishinaabe voice. The resolution passed by Chiefs-in-Assembly in 2025 to advocate for full indigenous caretaking represents the next step in a trajectory toward the community reclaiming what was always theirs.
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