'Let the line be drawn now': Wilderness, conservation, and the exclusion of aboriginal people from Banff National Park in Canada

Environmental History

Volumn 11, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 724-750

  Binnema, Theodore ^a   Niemi, Melanie ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CONSERVATION; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; INDIGENOUS POPULATION; NATIONAL PARK; SOCIAL EXCLUSION; WILDERNESS AREA;

ALBERTA; BANFF NATIONAL PARK; CANADA; NORTH AMERICA;

EID: 33751185137     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/11.4.724     Document Type: Article

References (230)

1. The most influential and controversial critique of the wilderness idea is found in William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," Environmental History 1 (1996): 7-28;
2. and in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 69-90, which, when reprinted in 1996, was given the less provocative subtitle of Rethinking the Human Place in Nature.
3. Cronon also published these thoughts in The New York Times, August 13, 1995, 42.
4. In defense of his general argument that "far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, [wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation," Cronon wrote that "the removal of Indians to create 'uninhabited wilderness'-uninhabited as never before in human history of the place-reminds us just how invented, just how constructed, the American wilderness really is"; Cronon, Uncommon Ground, 69, 79.
5. A flavor of the immediate reaction in the scholarly community can be found in the responses by Samuel P. Hays, Michael Cohen, and Thomas Dunlap, and Cronon's rejoinder in Environmental History 1 (1996): 29-55, and the other articles in Uncommon Ground.
6. Char Miller reflected on the fallout of the debate in "An Open Field," Pacific Historical Review 70 (2001): 71-74.
7. Thomas R. Dunlap published a fine analysis of the debate (both among academics and non-academics) in Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), chap.3.
8. Cronon's article is best understood as a particularly effective and controversial articulation of what several scholars had already thought and said. For example, in 1989 Ramachandra Guha argued that "the [American] emphasis on wilderness is positively harmful when applied to the Third World," and criticized those "seeking to transplant the American system of national parks onto Indian soil": Ramachandra Guha, "Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique," Environmental Ethics 11 (1989): 75.
9. The argument that ideas of wilderness went hand in hand with aboriginal dispossession also predates Cronon. Two Canadian scholars made that argument in 1992. And Mark Spence began his research into the history of Indian removal from national parks in the United States before Cronon presented his critique. See Bruce W. Hodgins and Jonathan Bordo, "Wilderness, Aboriginal Presence and the Land Claim," in Co-existence? Studies in Ontario-First Nations Relations, ed. Bruce W. Hodgins, Shawn Heard, and John S. Milloy (Peterborough: Frost Centre for Canadian Heritage and Development Studies, 1992), 67-80;
10. Mark David Spence, "Dispossessing the Wilderness: The Preservationist Ideal, Indian Removal, and National Parks" (PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1997);
11. and Cronon, Uncommon Ground, 69, 79.
12. According to Spence, an "uninhabited wilderness had to be created before it could be preserved, and this type of landscape became reified in the first national parks." Examining the evolution of wilderness and preservationist discourse in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Spence argued that these popular nineteenth-century ideologies led to the removal and exclusion of Indians from America's constructed "wilderness" areas. Spence also argued that this history has global significance because "as the grand symbols of American wilderness, the uninhabited landscapes preserved in these parks have served as models for preservationist efforts, and native dispossession, the world over"; Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of National Parks, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4, 5.
13. Louis S. Warren's argument is also influenced by this assumption: see his The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), chap. 5, especially 136 and 151.
14. Recent literature on American Indians and national parks also includes Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998);
15. and Philip Burnham, Indian Country: God's Country: Native Americans and the National Parks (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000).
16. Useful historical studies outside North America include Jane Carruthers, The Kruger National Park: A Social and Political History (Pietermaritzberg: University of Natal Press, 1995);
17. and Thomas R. Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 231-39.
18. Useful more-contemporary studies of the issue outside North America can be found in Patrick C. West and Steven R. Brechin, Resident Peoples and National Parks: Social Dilemmas and Strategies in International Conservation (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991);
19. and Roderick P. Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998);
20. Sanjay Kumar Nepal and Karl E. Weber, Struggle for Existence: Park-People Conflict in the Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal (Bangkok: Asian Institute for Technology, 1993). China also provides an excellent present-day example. After one of the authors presented an earlier version of this paper at a conference in Tianjin, China, in November 2005, delegates informed him that China's Western Development Strategy, introduced in 2000, proposes to remove about 8 million people, mostly ethnic minorities, from ecologically sensitive, damaged, and sensitive areas including national parks (many of which are inhabited). For example, the government is considering removing several Tibetan villages from Jiu Zhai Gou National Park to protect endangered species. The park, a U.N. Natural World Heritage Site, sometimes referred to as China's Yellowstone, is in Sichuan province.
21. Rocky Mountains Park, often identified as the world's second oldest national park, was officially renamed Banff National Park in 1930, but it was often referred to as "Banff National Park" or "Banff Park" before that because there were several national parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains by 1930. Thus both names will be used in this article. "Game" refers to animals that humans hunted for sport. The term "wildlife" did not appear until the 1920s. Neither did the idea that nongame animals should be given particular protection. Indeed, many people advocated the control or extermination of predators to protect game. See Tina Loo, States of Nature: Conserving Canada's Wildlife in the Twentieth Century, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 4, 14.
22. The literature in Canada is small but growing. General histories of Banff and of Canadian national parks do not deal with this issue. The exclusion of the Stoney from Banff National Park is discussed briefly in John Snow, These Mountains Are Our Sacred Places: The Story of the Stoney Indians (Toronto: Samuel Stevens, 1977), 46, 68;
23. and Janet Foster, Working for Wildlife: The Beginning of Preservation in Canada, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 30, 84.
24. Ian MacLaren provides a sophisticated discussion of the "cultured wilderness" of Jasper National Park, including a brief discussion of the removal of resident people, in his "Cultured Wilderness in Jasper National Park," Journal of Canadian Studies 34 (Autumn 1999): 7-58.
25. An examination of Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba can be found in John Sandlos, "Not Wanted in the Boundary: The Expulsion of the Keeseekowenin Ojibway Band from Riding Mountain National Park," unpublished paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Conference, York University, May 31, 2006.
26. For a discussion of Prince Albert National Park, see William Waiser, Saskatchewan's Playground: A History of Prince Albert National Park (Saskatoon: Fifth House Publishers, 1989), 40-41.
27. Also see John Sandlos, "Federal Spaces, Local Conflicts: National Parks and the Exclusionary Politics of the Conservation Movement in Ontario, 1900-1935," unpublished paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Conference, University of Western Ontario, June 1, 2005.
28. The expropriation of nonaboriginal resident peoples in a later period is discussed in Alan MacEachern, Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935-1970 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001).
29. For a discussion focused on aboriginal people in Ontario's Algonquin Provincial Park and other wilderness areas in Ontario, see Hodgins and Bordo, "Wilderness, Aboriginal Presence and the Land Claim," 67-80;
30. and Jonathan Bordo, "Jack Pine-Wilderness Sublime or the Erasure of the Aboriginal Presence from the Landscape," Journal of Canadian Studies 27 (1992-93): 98-128.
31. For brief discussions of the exclusion (and the reversal of the exclusion) of aboriginal people from Ontario provincial parks in this period, see Gerald Killan, Protected Places: A History of Ontario's Provincial Parks System (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1993), 14-15, 25-26;
32. and David T. McNab, Circles of Time: Aboriginal Land Rights and Resistance in Ontario (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1999), 89-100.
33. In 1942, when the Canadian government created the Kluane National Park Reserve in response to game depletion related to the construction of the Alaska Highway, the local Southern Tutchone peoples were barred from the protected area. See Mike Walton, Paula Banks, and Robin Bradasch, "Healing Broken Connections: Kluane National Park and Reserve Traditional Knowledge and Regional Integration," in Interdisciplinary Research and Management in Mountain Areas, ed. Leslie Taylor and Anne Ryall (Banff: Banff Centre, 2005), 76-78.
34. Paralleling the history of the United States, however, resident and aboriginal people were allowed to hunt and fish (with restrictions) in some northern national parks. See Theodore Catton, Inhabited Wilderness: Indians, Eskimos, and National Parks in Alaska (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997);
35. Patricia A. McCormack, "The Political Economy of Bison Management in Wood Buffalo National Park," Arctic (December 1992): 367-80;
36. and John Sandlos, "Where the Scientists Roam: Ecology, Management and Bison in Northern Canada," Journal of Canadian Studies 37 (Summer 2002): 93-129.
37. For a useful survey that explores literature from the Third World and looks at more recent developments, see Lawrence Berg, Terry Fenge, and Philip Dearden, "The Role of Aboriginal People in National Park Designation, Planning, and Management in Canada," in Parks and Protected Places in Canada: Planning and Management, ed. P. Dearden and R. Rollins (Oxford University Press, 1993), 225-55;
38. and Barry Sadler, "National Parks, Wilderness, Preservation and Native Peoples in Northern Canada," Natural Resources Journal 29 (1989): 185-204.
39. Eleanor Georgina Luxton, Banff, Canada's First National Park: A History and a Memory of Rocky Mountains Park (Banff: Summerthought, 1975), 64.
40. Roger Byrne, Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area before 1911 (Calgary: University of Calgary, 1968), 126.
41. Leslie Bella, Parks for Profit (Montréal: Harvest House, 1987), 24-27; the quoted annual report is on 24.
42. The Oliver quote is from Frank Oliver, minister of the interior, to Mr. Rothwell, January 6, 1906, in Library and Archives Canada (hereafter LAC) RG 84 A-2a, vol. 653, f. B2, part 1. The town of Waskesiu (Prince Albert National Park), established in 1927, was probably the last town established in a national park in Canada. In 1930 the Canada's National Park Act was revised to permit the expropriation of land, including Indian lands, in national parks, "National Parks Act," Statutes of Canada (SC) 20-21 Geo. V, Cap. 33. It seems that expropriation of land in National Parks began immediately afterward. See Sandlos, "Federal Spaces," 23;
43. and Waiser, Saskatchewan's Playground, 38. The existence of the town site goes a long way to explaining why, by 1900, Banff Park was normally attracting at least twice the number of annual visitors as Yellowstone Park.
44. Those responsible for creating Algonquin Park literally forgot about aboriginal people until the park had been created: see Killan, Protected Places, 14-15.
45. In Québec (and in Ontario at the time) provincially owned and administered parks are called "national parks." For Stanley Park, see Jean Barman, Stanley Park's Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Rance and Brockton Point (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2005).
46. For a comparative study of wilderness ideas, see Roderick Nash, "Wilderness and Man in North America," in The Canadian National Parks: Today and Tomorrow, ed. J. G. Nelson and R. C. Scace (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1968), 84.
47. Luxton, Banff, Canada's First National Park, 49-50.
48. For the Kutenai, see Raoul A. Andersen, "Alberta Stoney (Assiniboine) Origins and Adaptations: A Case for Reappraisal," Ethnohistory 17 (1970): 48-61;
49. and Theodore Binnema, Common and Contested Ground: A Human and Environmental History of the Northwestern Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 81-82.
50. For the Blackfeet, see Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, chap. 5;
51. Brian Reeves and Sandra Peacock, "'Our Mountains Are Our Pillows': An Ethnographic Overview of Glacier National Park" (Glacier National Park, 2001);
52. Brian O. K. Reeves, Mistakis: The Archaeology of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (Bozeman: Montana State University Press, 2003);
53. and Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, chap. 2. The ancestors of the Stoney were among the Assiniboine who broke from the Sioux sometime before 1640. Some of their descendants were in the forests and foothills of the Rocky Mountains by the late 1700s, and in the area of present-day Banff Park by the mid 1800s.
54. See Hugh A. Dempsey, Indian Tribes of Alberta (Calgary: Glenbow Museum, 1988), 42-43.
55. Also see Luxton, Banff, Canada's First National Park, chap. 4
56. Alexander Morris, The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Including the Negotiations on which They were Based, and Other Information Relating Thereto (Toronto: Belfords, Clarke & Co., 1880), 303.
57. Ibid., 369.
58. Revised Statutes of Canada 1886, c. 43, S. 133.
59. W. N. Millar, Game Preservation in the Rocky Mountains Forest Reserve (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1915), 20.
60. See the following letters, all LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2:
61. J. A. Markle, Blackfoot agency, to Frank Pedley, December 22, 1903;
62. A. J. McNeill, Sarcee agency, to Frank Pedley, December 29, 1903,
63. J. H. Gooderham, Macleod, to Frank Pedley, December 18, 1903.
64. Edgar Dewdney, "Report of the Indian Commissioner," Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs (ARDIA), 1880, 80.
65. For environmental change generally, see Byrne, Man and Landscape Change, 87, 95-96.
66. The quoted passage is in W. F. Whitcher, "Report," Annual Report of the Department of the Interior (ARDI), 1886, part 1, 86.
67. John A. Macdonald, "Report of the Superintendent General of Indians Affairs," ARDIA, 1887, lii.
68. Michael Phillipps, Indian agent, Fort Steele, to A. W. Vowell, superintendent of Indian Affairs, Victoria, BC, September 30, 1891, LAC RG 10, Vol. 3855, f. 80,143.
69. Quoted passage is from Hayter Reed to L. Vankoughnet, May 20, 1893, LAC RG 10, vol. 3855, f. 80,143.
70. Compare "An Act to Set Apart a Certain Tract of Land Lying Near the Headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a Public Park," US Statutes at Large, 17 Stat. 32 (1872);
71. "Act Respecting Rocky Mountains Park of Canada," SC 50 Vic. Cap. 32 (1887),
72. W. F. Lothian, A History of Canada's National Parks (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1976), 24, 26.
73. Also see Alan MacEachern, Natural Selections, 29;
74. and William Pearce, "Establishment of National Parks in the Rockies," Alberta Historical Review 10 (1962): 12.
75. For comparable histories of national parks, see Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997);
76. and Bella, Parks for Profit.
77. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 108.
78. Also see Runte, National Parks, especially chaps. 1 and 2.
79. Luxton, Banff, Canada's First National Park, 54.
80. H. E. Sibbald, chief game guardian, to Howard Douglas, commissioner of Dominion Parks, June 2, 1909, LAC RG 84, A-2-a, vol. 653, f. B2, part 1.
81. Bella, Parks for Profit, 24.
82. Also see Foster, Working, for Wildlife, 16-26;
83. and Robert Craig Brown, "The Doctrine of Usefulness: Natural Resource and National Park Policy in Canada, 1887-1914," in Canadian Parks in Perspective, ed. J. G. Nelson (Montreal: Harvest House, 1970), 46-62.
84. For a more recent study that includes the significance of wilderness, see MacEachern, Natural Selections, 2001), chap. 2.
85. Curiously, the same sentence provided for the protection and preservation of "cattle allowed to pasture in the park." SC, 50 Vic. Cap. 32. For a discussion see Foster, Working for Wildlife, 26.
86. Both quoted passages are from Whitcher, "Report," ARDI, 1886, part 1, 92.
87. For more on Whitcher and native people, see Bill Parenteau, "'Care Control and Supervision': Native People in the Canadian Atlantic Salmon Fishery, 1867-1900," Canadian Historical Review 79 (1998): 16.
88. The quoted passage is from George Stewart, ARDI, 1887, parts 6 and 10.
89. Information about Stewart is drawn from Byrne, Man and Landscape Change, 139.
90. J. Burns with Mike Schintz, Guardians of the Wild: A History of the Warden Service of Canada's National Parks (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000), 3.
91. Both letters are found in LAC RG 10, vol. 3796, file 47441-2. The first is A. E. Forget, Regina, to P. L. Grasse, Morley, May 14, 1894, and the second is A. E. Forget, Regina, to P. L. Grasse, Morley, June 11, 1894.
92. Greg Gillespie, "'I Was Well Pleased with Our Sport among the Buffalo': Big-Game Hunters, Travel Writing, and Cultural Imperialism in the British North American West, 1847-72," Canadian Historical Review 83 (2002): 555-84, esp. 558, 561-62. The incident is described on 562.
93. The sportsman's code is quoted in Gordon Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1921), 298;
94. its history in Canada is described on pages 297-98. Bill Parenteau has explored the role of sportsmen in bringing about fishing regulations, including the exclusion of aboriginal people from the fisheries in Atlantic Canada, in his "Care, Control, and Supervision," 1-35;
95. and "A 'Very Determined Opposition to the Law': Conservation, Angling Leases, and Social Conflict in the Canadian Atlantic Salmon Fishery, 1867-1914," Environmental History 9 (2004): 436-63.
96. Tina Loo, "Of Moose and Men: Hunting for Masculinities in British Columbia, 1880-1939," Western Historical Quarterly 32 (2001): 308.
97. See "Indian Hunters Killing Off Game," Vancouver Province, February 24, 1906.
98. A clipping of this article is found in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
99. A. M. Burgess, to Hayter Reed, deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs (DSGIA), May 31, 1895, LAC RG 10, vol. 3796, f. 47441-2.
100. George Colpitts argued that sportsmen were among the first to object to this "headtrade": George Colpitts, Game in the Garden: A Human History of Wildlife in Western Canada to 1940 (Vancouver: UBC Press), 153. He suggested that John McDougall, one of the missionaries on the reserve, encouraged the Stoney to sell animal heads, much to the anger of sport hunters in the late 1880s. He went on to say that the Stoneys at Exshaw and Morley sold heads long after the provincial government banned their sale in 1905. He argued (p. 153) that "infractions reported in courts suggest that Amerindians were selling the pelts and heads of animals that they were probably hunting for food to travelers and urban businesspeople far into the 1920s." Unfortunately, Colpitts did not cite his sources.
101. A. M. Burgess to Hayter Reed, DSGIA, May 31, 1895, LAC RG 10, vol. 3796, f. 47441-2.
102. P. L. Grasse, farmer, Morley, to the Indian commissioner, Regina, June 15, 1895, LAC RG10, vol. 3796, file 47441-2;
103. and Hayter Reed, DSGIA, to A. M. Burgess, deputy minister of the interior, June 6, 1895, LAC RG 10, vol. 3796, file 47441-2.
104. Colpitts, Game in the Garden, 153. The Brewsters themselves were one-time poachers in the park.
105. See Burns with Schintz, Guardians of the Wild, 15. Burns and Schintz (p. 16) argued that local residents, including guides were "undoubtedly" the greatest threat to game in the park.
106. R. H. A., game guardian, to commissioner of agriculture, Regina, December 19, 1902, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2A.
107. Gillespie, "I Was Well Pleased," esp. 557-59;
108. Loo, "Of Moose and Men," 307;
109. Nancy B. Bouchier and Ken Cruikshank, "'Sportsmen and Pothunters': Environment, Conservation, and Class in the Fishery of Hamilton Harbour, 1858-1914," Sport History Review 28 (1997): 1-118;
110. Parenteau, "Care, Control, and Supervision," 7.
111. Brewster quoted in "Killing Off the Big Game," from a Calgary newspaper clipping found in LAC RG 10, vol. 3855, f. 80143.
112. Also see "Indian Hunters Killing Off Game," Province. A letter with almost exactly the same wording can be found in Philip Moore, Banff, to Frank Oliver, May 25, 1905, in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2. An official in the Department of Indian Affairs dismissed Brewster's complaints as rooted more in self-interest than in the interest of game conservation.
113. See J. A. Markle, Alberta inspectorate, to the secretary of the DIA, December 18, 1905, LAC RG 10, vol. 3855, f. 80143.
114. Many documents complaining of Stoney hunts can be found in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2. In 1903, Howard E. Sibbald, Indian agent at Morley, estimated that the Stoney killed at least nine hundred head of big game each year, and referred to an individual who took thirty-six big horn sheep in a season, twelve of them in one day.
115. Howard E. Sibbald to Frank Pedley, December 23, 1903, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-22.
116. The quoted passage is in Millar, Game Preservation, 20. Descriptions of hunting methods are found in Lieutenant-governor Mackintosh to T. M. Daly, May 2, 1894;
117. and H. E. Sibbald to Frank Pedley, December 23, 1903, in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
118. Also see W. N. Millar, "The Big Game of the Canadian Rockies: A Practical Method for its Preservation," in Conservation of Fish, Birds and Game (Toronto: Methodist Book and Publishing House, 1916), 113.
119. Gordon Hewitt's articulation of the recreational value of game, published in 1921, is telling for its masculine, urban, British, militaristic, and imperialistic emphases: "What man is there who, after months of unremitting toil, takes down his gun, rod, or camera, and, seeking the silence of the open air for a week or two, does not come back physically and mentally refreshed and remade?... Nothing can ever equal our wild life as a means of increasing human efficiency where the tendency of modern life is to work under the high pressure of city conditions. As our population increases the need will become greater, and unless every possible step is taken to conserve the wild life for the refreshment of the men of the future we shall gradually lose this unequalled source of national vigour....Nothing calls for resourcefulness so much as the quest of wild life, when the beaten tracks of a more civilized life, where everything is provided for one, are left and one has to return to the primal competitive habits.... Resourcefulness is a characteristic of all those called upon to conquer new lands. And on no occasion has resourcefulness of such men stood them in so good stead as when the Canadians barred the way to Calais in the second battle of Ypres, or when the Australians and New Zealanders held impossible positions in Gallipoli": Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, 15-16.
120. Ibid., 299, 298.
121. This is discussed in Tina Loo, "Of Moose and Men," especially page 308.
122. Also see Tina Loo, "Making a Modern Wilderness: Conserving Wildlife in Twentieth-Century Canada," Canadian Historical Review 82 (2001): 112
123. The Calgary petition (February 1893), and the other petitions are in LAC RG 10, vol, 6732, f. 420-2. On October 2, 1895, the Macleod Gazette stated that it "and the Lethbridge and Calgary newspapers repeatedly argued that the Stonies be made amenable to the game laws and the Gun Clubs of these places personally interviewed the Minister and the Indian Commissioner on the same subject."
124. A clipping of the article is found in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
125. For evidence that the proclamation was in response to the petition, see L. Vankoughnet to T. Mayne Daly, superintendent general of Indian Affairs (SGIA), February 18, 1893;
126. and A. Power, deputy minister of justice, to L. Vankoughnet, February 28, 1893, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2. Officials decided to delay issuing the proclamation to over forty bands so that agents could prepare them for the announcement. That proclamation was effective on December 31, 1893. The proclamation regarding the Stoney did not take effect until January 1, 1895, because the officials felt the Stoney needed more time to adjust. The game laws were applied to twenty-one more bands on July 1, 1903.
127. See Frank Pedley to Short, Cross, Biggar and Ewing, Barristers, June 15, 1906;
128. and T. Mayne Daly to lieutenant-governor Mackintosh, May 8, 1894. Both letters are in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
129. On the passenger pigeon, see C. W. Nash, "Passing of the Pigeons," The Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art and Literature 20 (February 1903): 315-17,
130. In 1912, Alberta's chief game guardian warned the DIA that without better protection Alberta's game "will have disappeared like the passenger pigeon and the buffalo." B. Lawton to Secretary, DIA, May 18, 1912, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2A.
131. The last captive passenger pigeon died in 1914. On George Brown, see John George Brown, Waterton Lake, October 15, 1902, LAC RG 10, v. 3855, f. 80143.
132. On Hornaday and Jones, see Colpitts, Game in the Garden, 128-29.
133. At times Banff outfitters and game guardians even suggested that the Stoney be removed to a reserve farther from the National Park. See "Killing Off the Big Game," (1905) as found in LAC RG 10, Vol. 3855, f. 80143;
134. and chief game warden to W. T. Finlay, minister of agriculture, November. 14, 1908, in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732 f. 420-2A.
135. Both letters are in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2. They are Madison Grant to Clifford Sifton, minister of the interior, December 2, 1903;
136. and J. D, Maclean, secretary, DIA, to D. Laird, March 20, 1906. After two Stoney were arrested in 1896 for killing sheep near Canmore, in Banff National Park, P. L. Grasse wrote that "when white men hire the Indians to break the law, you will realize how difficult it is for me to inspire them with respect for the laws made by white men." Grasse to Indian commissioner, Regina, February 24, 1896, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
137. Similar passages can be found in the following documents found in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2:
138. T. J. Fleetman, Morley, to Indian commissioner, Winnipeg, March 10, 1906;
139. J. A. Markle to Frank Pedley, December 22, 1903.
140. Fred White to Clifford Sifton, December 9, 1903.
141. Clifford Sifton to Frank Pedley, December 11, 1903, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
142. Lieutenant-governor Mackintosh to T. M. Daly, minister of the interior, May 2, 1894, in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
143. As quoted in Colpitts, Game in the Garden, 140.
144. For Douglas's connection with the CPR, see Byrne, Man and Landscape Change, 139-40.
145. See Millar, Game Preservation,
146. and the quoted passage in Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, 238.
147. Brown, "Doctrine of Usefulness," 58-59. Although "conservation" and "preservation" often have been used interchangeably, we agree with scholars such as Samuel P. Hays and Ramachandra Guha who emphasize the different ideological roots of utilitarian conservationism and aesthetic preservationism.
148. See Samuel P. Hays, Gospel of Efficiency (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959);
149. and Ramachandra Guha, Environmentalism: A Global History (New York: Longman, 2000).
150. Philip Moore, Banff, to Frank Oliver, DSGIA, May 24,1905, in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2;
151. undated newspaper clipping, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2A;
152. H. E. Sibbald to Frank Pedley, December 22, 1903, in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
153. Colpitts, Game in the Garden, chap, 3;
154. An Ordinance for the Protection of Game, 1898, Sec. 2 Cap 85, as quoted in Colpitts, Game in the Garden, 77.
155. A useful study of the conservation movement that includes attitudes toward aboriginal people and parks is found in John Sandlos, "From the Outside Looking in: Aesthetics, Politics, and Wildlife Conservation in the Canadian North," Environmental History 6 (2): 6-31.
156. Jean Friesen, "Grant Me Wherewith to Make My Living," in Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, ed. Kerry Abel and Jean Friesen (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1991), 141-55.
157. For an early defense of aboriginal hunting rights, in contravention of game legislation see, John Harlow, Indian agent, to SGIA November 20, 1876, in DIA Ann. Rep. 1876.
158. David Laird to T. J. Fleetham, February 7, 1907, LAC RG 10, vol. 5155, file 271
159. as quoted in Colpitts, Game in the Garden, 97.
160. J. D. McVicar, N.W. Mounted Police, to E. W. Jarvis, superintendent, NWMP, LAC RG 10, vol. 3796, file 47441-2.
161. Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, 12.
162. Millar, Game Preservation, 31.
163. Jack Ward Thomas and Dale E. Toweill, Elk of North America: Ecology and Management (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stockpole Books, 1982), 36.
164. James B. Harkin estimated that there were twenty-seven elk in Rocky Mountains Park in 1919.
165. See Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, 34;
166. and Millar, Game Preservation, 30-33.
167. Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, 12, 13, 118, 122.
168. P. Lewis Grasse, Indian agent, Morley, July 5, 1895, ARDIA, 1895, 92.
169. A. M. Burgess, to Hayter Reed, DSGIA, May 31, 1895, LAC RG 10, vol. 3796, f. 47441-2.
170. Similar opinions about Stoney hunting outside the park are reflected in an 1895 Macleod Gazette editorial quoted (but not cited) in Hugh A. Dempsey Indian Tribes of Alberta, 46.
171. SC 2 Edw. VII Cap 31.
172. Howard Sibbald, Indian agent's annual report in ARDIA, 1902, 173;
173. and H. E. Sibbald, Indian agent's annual report in ARDIA, 1903, 192.
174. Howard Douglas, "Report of the Superintendent of Rocky Mountains Park, 1903," ARDI, 1903, part 7, p. 6.
175. Sibbald also pointed to the need for a "game guardian." See Sibbald to Frank Pedley, December 23, 1903, in LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2.
176. Howard Douglas, "Report of the Superintendent of Rocky Mountains Park, 1904," ARDI, 1904, part 7, p. 6.
177. Burns with Schintz, Guardians of the Wild, 6, 8.
178. He was transferred to the Blackfoot agency on July 1, 1904, where he was an agent until February 28, 1907. Biographical data for Howard Sibbald were gathered from "Personal Narrative by Howard E. Sibbald, Banff," Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Howard E. Sibbald fonds, M281, and from ARDIA 1900, 184-6, 205;
179. ARDIA, 1901, Part J, p. 162;
180. ARDIA, 1905, 113;
181. and ARDIA, 1907, part 3, p. 20.
182. Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks, 51.
183. Burns with Schintz, Guardians of the Wild, 7.
184. Assistant secretary of the interior to secretary of the DIA, August 23, 1191, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2A.
185. Millar, Game Preservation. The last passage is from p. 20, the previous from p. 18. Millar wrote that the Stoney were an immediate threat to the elk (pp. 30-33) and the bighorn sheep (pp. 38-39), but that the mountain goats were common and increasing "because they are almost entirely disregarded by the Stony Indians" (p. 43).
186. Also see Millar, "The Big Game," 110-18.
187. Chiefs Peter Wesley and Moses Bearspaw, Morley, to the government of Canada, April 9, 1907, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, file 420-2. The difficulties were compounded by the fact that in 1901 the British Columbia game laws forbade out-of-province Indians to hunt in that province.
188. See E. M. Eberts, attorney general of British Columbia, to minister of Indian Affairs, November 5, 1901, LAC RG 10, vol. 3855, f. 80143.
189. Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, 80.
190. Millar, "The Big Game," 114.
191. Attitudes were evidently similar on both sides of the border. In January 1923, a park ranger in Glacier National Park in Montana wrote "Unless the Indians are curbed in their desire to kill everything in sight Glacier Park will soon have no game." Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks, 52.
192. Ironically, as early as 1942 the park wardens at Banff began slaughtering overpopulated elk and donating the carcasses to the Stoney at Morley, Burns, and Schintz, Guardians of the Wild, 103-04.
193. James A. Smart, DSGIA, ARDIA, 1900, xxx.
194. Aboriginal people also protested the restrictions there. See Antoine O. Bastien, Indian agent, ARDIA 1896, 42.
195. Parenteau also discusses the connection between the game laws and the government's goal of assimilation in his "Care, Control, and Supervision," 11-12.
196. The three Sibbald quotes come from H. E. Sibbald to Frank Pedley, December 23, 1903, LAC RG 10, vol. 6732, f. 420-2;
197. Howard Sibbald, Indian agent's annual report, ARDIA, 1902, 173;
198. and H. E. Sibbald, Indian agent's annual report, ARDIA, 1903, 192.
199. Tolly Bradford, "A Useful Institution: William Twin, 'Indianess,' and Banff National Park, c. 1860-1940," Native Studies Review 16 (2005): 88.
200. Bella, Parks for Profit.
201. "Report of the Commissioner of Dominion Parks," by J. B. Harkin in ARDI, 1913, p. 5.
202. Harkin often has been portrayed as an early preservationist. A useful corrective to this interpretation can be found in MacEachern, Natural Selections, chap. 2.
203. Colpitts, Game in the Garden, 160-61.
204. The quoted passage is in Whitcher, "Report," ARDI, 1886, part 1, p. 87.
205. On predator control, see Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora, 121;
206. Alan MacEachern, "Rationality and Rationalization in Canadian National Parks Predator Policy," in Consuming Canada: Readings in Environmental History, ed. Chad Gaffield and Pam Gaffield (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1995), 197-212;
207. and Alan MacEachern, Natural Selections for Canada.
208. Even Canada's 1930 National Parks Act, permitted the "disposal" of predatory or superabundant animals," SC 20-21 Geo. V Cap. 33, 7 (1)(c). Government scientist Gordon Hewitt wrote that "Any rational system of wild-life protection must take into account the control of the predatory species of mammals and birds." See Hewitt, Conservation of the Wild Life of Canada, 193.
209. Bradford, "A Useful Institution," 77-98;
210. Laurie Meijer Drees, "'Indians' Bygone Past': The Banff Indian Days, 1902-1945," Past Imperfect 2 (1993): 7-28, especially 8.
211. Also see Hugh A. Dempsey, Indians of the Rocky Mountain Parks (Calgary: Fifth House, 1998), 15-16;
212. and Luxton, Banff, Canada's First National Park, 117-18.
213. Outside the park it was acceptable for Indians to serve as hunting guides. This sort of transformation is discussed in Parenteau, "Care, Control, and Supervision," 3-4.
214. The quoted passages are in ARDIA, 1890, xxi;
215. ARDIA, 1911, 116;
216. and ARDIA, 1898, 55.
217. For similar other instances where the word "wilderness" implied forested land, see the following Annual Reports of the DlA: 1869, 6; 1874, part 2, 48; 1885, 8; 1890, xxi; 1891, 205; 1894, 36; 1896, 279; 1899, 59; 1904, 382; 1905, 348; 1907, 295; 1908, 343; 1920, 7. We have found one government document that seems to imply that wilderness was "unoccupied." In that case the superintendent of Banff implies that unoccupied sections of the park were "wilderness throughout." See ARDI, 1887, part 6, p. 10.
218. ARDIA, 1921, 7; 1945, 175.
219. Forest and Stream, February 3, 1894, 89,
220. as quoted in John F. Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation (Corvallis, Oregon State University Press, 2001), 103. Keller and Turek's American Indians and National Parks marshals more convincing evidence that Indians were removed from parks in the United States to manage game than Spence and Cronon presented that the exclusions was linked to wilderness: This suggests that the circumstances in the United States were similar to those in Canada.
221. Paul S. Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002);
222. Joe Paddock, Keeper of the Wild, The Life of Ernest Oberholtzer (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001);
223. Killan, Protected Places, 57-58;
224. George M. Warecki, Protecting Ontario's Wilderness: A History of Changing Ideas and Preservation Politics, 1927-1973 (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 20-22.
225. Millar, Game Preservation, 27.
226. Byrne, Man and Landscape Change, 34, 65-69, suggests that game was relatively scarce in the region in at least the last half century before the park was created.
227. Byrne, Man and Landscape Change, 126.
228. In this respect, the removal of aboriginal people in North America may be rooted in forces similar to those responsible for the restriction of people "generally not so civil" on lands that were marked for afforestation in Great Britain. See E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (London: Penguin, 1975).
229. The quoted passage is from John Evelyn, Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions (London: Royal Society, 1664), 108,
230. as quoted in Kevin Hutchings, Imagining Nature: Blake's Environmental Poetics (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002), 12.