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.

THE HISTORY OF THE REMOVAL of Indians from national parks in the United States has received a great deal of recent attention. Some scholars have argued that this Indian dispossession was rooted in Americans’ desire to create uninhabited wilderness. This essay is inspired by those studies. It examines a Canadian case in which aboriginal people were removed from parks in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century at a time when Canadian national park managers thought it was normal for national parks to have permanent inhabitants. Furthermore, those who pushed for the removal of aboriginal people in Canada defended their arguments without even using the word or idea of wilderness. This study also is inspired by the knowledge that the removal of resident peoples from national parks and preserves is an old and international phenomenon that continues to this day. In many cases, notions of wilderness seem to play a small part in decisions to remove people. Government officials perceived (and still perceive) serious threats to what we might today call ecological integrity, endangered species, and biodiversity. 1 Clearly, we need to understand the international phenomenon more completely. Our purpose is to contribute to that understanding by explaining the motivations of those who advocated the exclusion