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

In Spirits of the Rockies Courtney Mason sets out to explain how and why the Nakoda (Stoney) were excluded from their traditional territories in the Banff-Bow River Valley after the signing of Treaty 7 and the formation of Banff National Park, and how the Nakoda, through their participation in Banff Indian Days, were able to return to these important sites and reassert their cultural links to these landscapes. These are important topics in the history of national parks and the relations between the colonial state and Indigenous peoples in Canada, but Mason’s approach is uneven at best. On the one hand, historians will find little new in Mason’s treatment of how the Nakoda were excluded from Banff National Park. On the other hand, his treatment of Nakoda participation in Banff Indian Days and their intervention in the production of “Indigeneity” is more interesting and original.

Mason’s approach to these topics is heavily influenced by postcolonial and post-structural theories of how power is exercised. In particular, he relies heavily on the theories of Michel Foucault. While it is important to know where Mason is coming from, the repeated eruptions of Foucauldian theory serve more to distract the reader from Mason’s analyses than to enlarge them. He also claims to have engaged in archival and ethnographic research but this is more a gloss than reality, and he as much as admits this when he writes in the introduction that he is uncomfortable “locating my research and interests solely in history” (p. 20). He is most effective in his use of oral sources, and he positions his research strategy as privileging Indigenous perspectives centered on Nakoda experience.

Given this position it is not surprising that the weakest sections of the book are those dealing with Treaty 7, reserves, and the exclusion of the Nakoda from Banff National Park (chapters 2 & 3). These topics are explained largely in relation to secondary sources and framed by the concerns of postcolonial theory. Indeed, many of the secondary sources used do not deal with the Banff-Bow Valley region but are studies of Indigenous-colonial relations in other parts of Canada, the United States, and other parts of the world. There is nothing that is new in these chapters and Mason has made little effort to examine important archival sources related to Nakoda use of their traditional territories, their inter-ethnic relations and resource conflicts with the Kootenai and Shuwap, and how the colonial state tried to mediate these disputes. In examining the Nakoda exclusion from Banff National Park he also conflates the various explanations for removal of Indigenous peoples from national parks. In this process the debates about whether these removals were justified for the purpose of creating wilderness, to satisfy the needs of sport hunters, or for the purpose of wildlife conservation are resolved into a single discourse of dispossession. While this may serve his purpose in highlighting the Nakoda view of their history, it obscures the environmental and park history of the region.

As mentioned above, the book is more effective in examining Nakoda participation in the tourism economy of the Banff-Bow Valley (chapters 4 & 5). Here he argues that the Banff Indian Days, while fashioned on cultural representations situated within colonial power relations and the tourism economy, provided a space for Nakoda peoples to strategically manipulate these pre-colonial representations of indigeneity for their own socio-economic, political, and cultural purposes. Basing his analysis on oral histories and his personal collaboration with Nakoda communities, Mason effectively shows how Nakoda participation in Banff Indian Days provided not only financial remuneration during hard times, but an opportunity to build political bridges to influential Euro-Canadian communities, to raise awareness of their current concerns, and create a space for younger generations to celebrate and learn about their culture. Perhaps most important, the Banff Indian Days allowed the Nakoda to reassert a...