First Nations in Alberta are a group of people who live in the Canadian province of Alberta. The First Nations are peoples (or nations) recognized as Indigenous peoples or Plains Indians in Canada excluding the Inuit and the Métis. According to the 2011 Census, a population of 116,670 Albertans self-identified as First Nations. Specifically there were 96,730 First Nations people with registered Indian Status and 19,945 First Nations people without registered Indian Status. Alberta has the third largest First Nations population among the provinces and territories (after Ontario and British Columbia). From this total population, 47.3% of the population lives on an Indian reserve and the other 52.7% live in urban centres. According to the 2011 Census, the First Nations population in Edmonton (the provincial capital) totalled at 31,780, which is the second highest for any city in Canada (after Winnipeg). The First Nations population in Calgary, in reference to the 2011 Census, totalled at 17,040. There are 48 First Nations or "bands" in Alberta (in the sense of governments made up of a council and a chief), belonging to nine different ethnic groups or "tribes" based on their ancestral languages. Classifications There are a variety of ways of classifying the various First Nations groups in Alberta. In anthropological terms there are two broad cultural groupings in Alberta based on different climatic/ecological regions and the ways of life adapted to those regions. In the northern part of the province the Subarctic peoples relied on boreal species such as moose, woodland caribou, etc. as their main prey animals, extensively practised ice fishing, and utilized canoes, snowshoes, and toboggans for transportation. The Plains Indians of the south lived primarily in a prairie grasslands environment (but with access as well to the nearby Rocky Mountains) and relied on the plains bison (or "buffalo") as their major food source and used the travois for transportation. Peoples in the central, aspen parkland belt of Alberta practiced hybrid cultures with features of both the aforementioned groups. At the time of contact with Euro-Canadian observers, all of the indigenous peoples in Alberta belonged to several overlapping groups: lodges, bands, tribes, and confederacies. The smallest unit was the lodge, which is what observers called an extended family or any other group living in the same dwelling such as a teepee or wigwam. Several lodges living together formed a band. Bands were highly mobile small groups consisting of a