‘Let the Line be Drawn Now’: Wilderness, Conservation, and the Exclusion of Aboriginal People from Banff National Park in Canada

Abstract

This essay elaborates upon the history of the removal of aboriginal people from national parks through a case study of the exclusion of the Stoney from Rocky Mountains (Banff National) Park in Canada between 1890 and 1920. It argues that the example of Banff National Park suggests that in Canada at least, and probably in the United States, aboriginal people were excluded from national parks in the interests of game conservation, sport hunting, tourism, and Indian assimilation, not to ensure that national parks became uninhabited wilderness.