Naturalizing Race Relations: Conservation, Colonialism, and Spectacle at the Banff Indian Days

• Published in: Canadian Historical Review
• Main Author: Clapperton, Jonathan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2013
• Subjects: Religious studies; History; Nakoda; stoney
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/chr.1188; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/chr.1188

Abstract: The Aboriginal population around Banff National Park was in many ways restricted from its boundaries shortly after its creation. However, Aboriginal people – in particular the Stoney (Nakoda) – would return en masse once a year to participate in the Banff Indian Days. While ethnographic expositions and spectacles have received much attention from social and cultural historians, the Banff Indian Days differ in that they occurred within an atmosphere saturated by an ideology of nature conservation. Drawing on photographs, advertising posters, archival materials, and oral recordings, this article argues that the Banff Indian Days were a physical manifestation of a much broader (indeed ongoing) dialogue, renegotiated and performed annually, between Natives and newcomers over the conditions under which Aboriginal peoples would be included within Canada's burgeoning parks and protected areas. Ultimately, the relationships between Natives and Indian Days organizers, park staff, Banff residents, and spectators resulting from this discussion were ambivalent. For non-Native organizers and spectators, the Indian Days provided a means to show how Natives could be safely, though only temporarily, restored to the park's environ. Enclosing Aboriginal participants within outsider representations and restricting them to supposedly regimented schedules, non-Natives believed Aboriginals posed a threat neither to established social hierarchies nor to the environment. Yet Native participants proved autonomous and unpredictable. They consistently mocked and subverted many of the race, class, and gender boundaries that Indian Days organizers never envisioned them crossing. In doing so, they attempted to expand their role within the national park system specifically and within a settler-colonial society more broadly.