Spirits of the Rockies: Reasserting an Indigenous Presence in Banff National Park by Courtney W. Mason (review)

The ideological tensions created by Canadian parks’ multiple purposes as tourist destinations, resource reservoirs, and locations of ecological preservation are well known to historians. Located in the field of Indigenous studies, Courtney Mason’s Spirits of the Rockies highlights another of these tensions. Mason examines how colonial discourse functioned to exclude the Nakoda people from their territory in Banff while simultaneously incorporating them into park traditions through the Banff Indian Days between 1894 and 1978. Mason draws on a considerable body of historical literature to make his case while keeping Nakoda perspectives front and centre in his narrative.

Mason carefully positions himself in relation to his subject by describing research methods and indicating personal connections to the Nakoda community. Chapter 1 establishes Michel Foucault as Mason’s theoretical foundation. The second, third, and fourth chapters describe the gradual marginalization of the Nakoda people as Banff emerged as a tourist destination, even as Banff Indian Days provided the Nakoda with occasional economic support, gave them a way of staying in touch with other local groups, and gave them (limited) access to traditional land. These ideas are interwoven with frequent references to the book’s Foucauldian framework, which Mason uses to explain the power relations inherent in the events that take place during Banff Indian Days. The climax of the book comes in Chapter 5, where Mason identifies the specific implications of the Banff Indian Days for the Nakoda people.

Mason acknowledges that, although some Nakoda acted as organizers, the annual festivities were largely governed by white tourism promoters. He argues that the festival homogenized the groups that took part and subverted Nakoda culture for the entertainment of (largely white) tourists. He indicates that tourists’ expectations of “Wild West Indians” dictated what was appropriate for the Nakoda to wear and how they should act. Colonial power structures enforced these expectations by denying them access to the event if they refused to conform.

At the same time, Mason argues that the Banff Indian Days provided an important forum for exchange between the Nakoda people and white tourists, sometimes resulting in useful political alliances. The event also gave the Nakoda a platform for exploring and shaping their own culture in an era when the potlatch and the sun dance were being actively suppressed in other parts of Canada. Occasionally, the Banff Indian Days provided an opportunity for resistance against colonialism, such as when Nakoda youth chose to wear modern cowboy hats and chaps instead of pre-colonial feathered headdresses, implicitly asserting a modern Canadian identity within an event that otherwise located First Nations in pre-history.

Although Spirits of the Rockies is chiefly a work in Indigenous studies, the Banff Indian Days was a historical event and Mason appropriately draws on historical literature. He occasionally reaches far afield to Africa and New Zealand, suggesting a kind of transnational Indigenous experience of colonialism in tourism, parks, and sports. However, he primarily relies on work from British Columbia, Alberta, and the United States to depict the colonial context in which the Banff Indian Days took place. He leans particularly heavily on environmental and national parks history, although one gets little sense of the field’s internal debates and central questions. For instance, to what extent were Indigenous people excluded from Banff to satisfy the needs of sport hunters? When, if ever, did park officials start to see the erasure of signs of human occupation as being necessary for the construction of “wilderness?” Although his sources differ on the answers to these questions, Mason gives the impression of historical consensus. As a result, Spirits of the Rockies glosses over a lively and potentially informative conversation surrounding the motivations for park creation in Canada and its implications for First Nations.

And yet by choosing not to engage with debates in parks historiography, Mason is freed up to focus more fully on Nakoda...