Chapter 3
Mountains as Homelands
Co-Lead Authors: Dani Inkpen, Megan Dicker
Contributing Authors: Leon Andrew, Dawn Saunders Dahl, Goota Desmarais, Karine Gagné, Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson, Linda Johnson, Pnnal Bernard Jerome, Rosemary Langford, Keara Lightning, Lachlan MacKinnon, Brandy Mayes, Hayden Melting Tallow, Charlotte Mitchell, Tim Patterson, Rachel Reimer, Gabriella Richardson, Daniel Sims, Chris Springer, Yan Tapp, Gabrielle Weasel Head, Nicole J. Wilson, Matthew Wiseman
Chapter Review Editor: PearlAnn Reichwein
“For the mountain is one and indivisible, and rock, soil, water, and air are no more integral to it than what grows from the soil and breathes the air. All are aspects of one entity, the living mountain.”—Shepherd, 1977, p. 48
3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Homelands and homes
Mountains can elicit strong feelings of connection to place (Bernbaum, 1997). People of virtually all backgrounds, from many walks of life, have expressed experiences of profound love and feelings of belonging in mountains; many have found solace and healing in mountains. Scholars steeped in Western philosophical traditions have sought to explain the pull of mountains through such concepts as the sublime, the frontier, and the wilderness (Cronon, 1996; Fletcher et al., 2021). But these historically and culturally bounded concepts, the progeny of European modernity, cannot account for the diversity of ways that people can be at home in the mountains. They are predicated on a division between nature and culture which places things like human-made buildings or art and non-human creations, such as beaver dams, into distinct ontological categories (or realms of reality), that are not universal. In this chapter, we strive to move beyond these dichotomies in our assessment of what we know, what we don’t know, and what we need to know about the ways mountain regions in Canada are cultivated as particular kinds of places and about people’s experiences of these places. Taking a relational approach informed by Indigenous scholarship in anthropology, history, science and technology studies, geography, and other disciplines (Chan et al., 2018; Hunt, 2014; Liboiron, 2021; TallBear, 2015; Todd, 2016; Watts, 2013), we contextualise spaces of use within larger cultural landscapes to better understand how “people develop senses of place and attachments to place that motivate, structure, and transform their interactions with the material world” (Zedeño & Bowser, 2009, p. 5).
Mountain regions in the land now called Canada have been Homelands to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit since time immemorial (Sterritt, 2016). These Homelands—with a capital “H”—are more than just homes in beautiful landscapes. Homelands are imbued with a deep sense of belonging to a place, which is grounded in multi-generational interconnected and reciprocal kin relationships among humans, and with non-humans such as mountains, waters, glaciers, animals, plants, and spirits. Connections to land are maintained through practices, language, and stories, and are diverse and specific to community and place. We capitalise ‘Land’ when referring to its sacred or sentient qualities. However, this enriched sense of the word may not always be clear from context or muddled by the fact that in practice land supports a variety of overlapping uses, sometimes simultaneously. Where uncertain, we have opted for “land” so as not to assume knowledge we do not possess. These uncertainties emphasise the difference between mountain Homelands and mountain homes. They point to opportunities to know more about the specific land practices of individual Indigenous communities. Mountain Homelands, then, are more than just physical geographies, habitats or ecosystems; they are a network of place-based relationships in which mountains actively participate in and shape relationships among beings of different types. These relationships have ethical structures informed by inter-species treaties and agreements (Watts, 2013).
Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson, Lhu’ààn Mân Dań, 2022, LC 3.1
Hayden Melting Tallow (Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, 2022, LC 3.2
Leon Andrew, Nȩ K’ǝ Dene Ts’įlim, 2022, LC 3.3
Pnnal Bernard Jerome, Micmacs of Gesgapegiag, 2022, LC 3.4
In sharing their thoughts on mountain Homelands, Indigenous Knowledge Holders working with the Canadian Mountain Assessment (CMA) highlighted the diversity and depth of meaning of Homelands. Elder Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson (Lhu’ààn Mân Ku Dań) spoke of Homelands as “where you are between your relations, between people,” a place for sharing bounty with family that exceeds geographical boundaries (LC 3.1). Hayden Melting Tallow (Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy) spoke of Homelands as a place where his people have been since time immemorial. He explicitly contrasted this with the homes made by people from away who settle on the land (LC 3.2). Leon Andrew (Nȩ K’ǝ Dene Ts’įli) described beautifully the Homelands of the Mountain Dene as being made and sustained by trails carved in the earth by humans and non-human people. “We call it our Homeland,” he said, “because of our grandfathers’ trails” (LC 3.3). Several Indigenous Knowledge Holders emphasised the relations and responsibilities that undergird the idea of Homelands. Pnnal Bernard Jerome (Micmacs of Gesgapegiag) described Homelands as places of sharing and giving back—places of responsibility and caretaking (LC 3.4). Brandy Mayes (Kwanlin Dün First Nation) stressed the importance of sharing, caring, and being respectful for understanding and cultivating Homelands (LC 3.5). This understanding and cultivation of Homelands involves ongoing learning and receptivity. Whenever you go into mountains, observed Anne York, a Nlaka’pamx Knowledge Holder and author who is not affiliated with the CMA, “You stay there and learn all there is to learn in that place. Next time you go somewhere else and talk to all the plants in that place. You get knowledge and grow strong. K’ek’áwzik is the place our young people went to learn. They might stay up to ten days. Not eating or drinking. Learning on that mountain” (York et al., 1993, p. xvii). To have a Homeland is to be a steward. Yan Tapp (Gespeg First Nation) spoke with moving passion about his Homelands in the Chic-Choc mountains. Encroached upon by private land—“everywhere there are signs”—Homelands, he maintained, are worth fighting for (LC 3.6). Indeed, many Indigenous Peoples in Canada are today fighting on behalf of their mountain Homelands (Moreton-Robinson, 2015).
Settler-colonialism—defined briefly as a set of active relations that aims to destroy or replace Indigenous Peoples and their relations—has dispossessed Indigenous Peoples or separated them from their mountain Homelands in ways that change what is possible on the land. Indigenous Peoples did not historically think of relationships to land in terms of “ownership” or “property” (Liboiron, 2021; Nadasdy, 2002). Relationships based on ideas of ownership—whether through private property or “public” lands such as “crown land” or parks—are key aspects of how colonialism has impacted Indigenous land relations in the mountains. As we shall see, they continue to severely limit how they are able to access and interact with their Homelands (Liboiron, 2021; Yang, 2017). “The power of these colonial systems,” observes Knowledge Holder Gabrielle Weasel Head (Kainaiwa First Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy), “is really to instil in us this sense of disempowerment that we can’t move forward” (LC 3.7). The historical and ongoing changes to mountains resulting from settler-colonialism are a central concern of our chapter.
Brandy Mayes, Kwanlin Dün First Nation, 2022, LC 3.5
Yan Tapp, Gespeg First Nation, 2022, LC 3.6
Gabrielle Weasel Head, Kainaiwa First Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, 2022, LC 3.7
When we refer to mountains as home with a lower-case ‘h’, we gesture toward the many ways that non-Indigenous people have made homes and felt at home in mountains. These, too, are varied and may be long standing and deep, emotional or even spiritual. For our purposes, stories of mountains as home have been largely captured in peer-reviewed literature on place-making in the mountains, in documentary and biographical literatures, in creative expressions like visual art, and in work that seeks to understand the specifics of colonial encounters and change in Canada (Harris, 1996, 2004, 2021). Much of the scholarly work considered here falls under efforts to understand “place-making”; that is, how peoples’ understandings and experiences of a place are made through social and material practices, representations, and forms of knowledge (Low & Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003; Malpas, 2018; Tuan, 2001).
In this chapter, we strive to weave together stories of specific Indigenous knowledge of mountains as Homelands and stories of mountains as homes for non-Indigenous people as they are found in peer-reviewed academic literatures and grey literatures. We have attempted to be as thorough as possible in our assessment of the stories captured in the peer-reviewed literature, but we have been limited by the bounds (both geographical and topical) of our individual areas of expertise, and the limited ability of the systematic review process to capture certain literatures relevant to this chapter.
3.1.2 Conceptual underpinnings
This chapter has been influenced by two scholarly approaches: multispecies ethnography and ontology studies. Multispecies ethnography, described by Eduardo Kohn (2013) as an “anthropology beyond the human,” examines entanglements among humans and non-humans (Haraway, 2013; Mathur, 2021; Tsing, 2015). Multispecies work challenges ways of thinking that overemphasise human agency and dominance over non-humans. It aims to show how humans are shaped by and are co-evolving with beings other than themselves. This conceptual shift has spread well beyond anthropology, and aligns, if imperfectly, with how some Indigenous communities regard their relationships with the land.
An ontology may be understood as a way of being and knowing the world. Ontology studies take seriously the possibility that we do not all know or occupy the world in the same way. Take, for instance, a foundational case for the genre: the dichotomy between nature and culture. Not all communities adhere to the nature/culture divide central to Western thought (Descola, 2013; Kohn, 2013). While epistemologies (theories of knowledge) and ontologies (theories of being) are separate branches of Western thought, Indigenous worldviews do not separate the two—conceptualised as onto-epistemologies or Indigenous place-thought (Hunt, 2014; Watts, 2013). The notion of ontology has been mobilised in the context of Indigenous studies in Canada (Kakaliouras, 2012; Nadasdy, 2007; Wilson & Inkster, 2018). However, as Métis scholar Zoe Todd (2016) argues, the ideas at the heart of ontology studies—long present in Indigenous knowledge systems—have often gone unacknowledged by non-Indigenous scholars in the field. Together, multispecies and ontologies studies provide us with ways of thinking beyond a strict nature-culture divide. While we may not always reference them directly, these ideas have shaped our thinking in this chapter.
We have found in our assessment that the relevant multispecies literature and ontologies studies on mountain regions in Canada is linguistically and geographically limited. References to multispecies work in French language scholarship are scarce. Moreover, most English language scholarship focuses on mountains in western Canada (British Columbia and Alberta) and northern Canada (Yukon and Northwest Territories). We found few studies relevant to the Atlantic Maritime and Boreal Shield, Eastern Subarctic, Arctic Cordillera, and Interior Hills regions. Throughout this chapter, ontology studies have been productive for illustrating and understanding how mountain Homelands bypass and exceed ways of being in the world built on a divide between nature and culture. However, pertinent literature on cultural landscapes, spirits, deities, narratives, and beliefs about or involving mountains in Canada remains limited. What is available focuses on northern and western Canada, and on Indigenous ways of knowing and being in mountains. We believe there is an opportunity to expand both the geographical scope and cultural scope of this body of scholarship to include investigations concerned with Interior, eastern Arctic, subarctic areas, and Maritime mountain regions and with non-Indigenous ontological relationships to mountains understood as one of many ways of perceiving and acting in the world, rather than assumed to be a “given” or “normal” way.
This chapter begins by considering the ways that mountain Homelands are constituted as more than human geographies through stories about the creation of mountains and their features (Sec. 3.2.1). We then consider how mountain Homelands are understood and experienced as places of spirit (Sec. 3.2.2). These two sections help illustrate what we mean when we state that mountain Homelands are more than just landscape—they are lively and spiritual places. We then turn to the formative role that place names play in building and maintaining mountain Homelands (Sec. 3.2.3) before assessing the role archaeology has played in establishing the longevity of mountain Homelands (Sec. 3.3). Multispecies literature on human-animal relations (Sec. 3.4.1) and human-plant relations (Sec. 3.4.2) make up the next two sections, which help establish the groundwork for understanding the historical and ongoing changes in the land wrought by settler-colonialism (Sec. 3.5). This is examined through scholarly work on early forms of colonialism (Sec. 3.5.1), the mobilisation of science (Sec. 3.6.2), and treaties and private land (Sec. 3.5.3). Parks and protected areas have had far-reaching impacts in shaping mountains in Canada (Sec. 3.5.4). We then look at the literature on how recreation (Sec. 3.6) and labour (Sec. 3.7) shape mountain places and the people who use them before turning to that on governance systems as formative forces in mountain regions (Sec. 3.8). The chapter concludes with an assessment of the state of knowledge about Homelands and homes. Briefly, we highlight opportunities for better understanding of mountain homes and Homelands outside of the Boreal Cordillera, Montane Cordillera, and Pacific Maritime regions of western Canada, call for more nuanced studies of Indigenous resistance and perpetuity on mountain Homelands, and encourage more scholarly attention to be paid to intersectional experiences of mountain places that attend to the ways race, gender, and class can shape mountain places and experiences of them.
3.2 Stories of Homelands
3.2.1 Stories of creation
Indigenous creation stories can provide insight into the origins of mountains and describe the Land in ways that show it to be more than physical, but rather a place of knowledge, memory, and spirit, and equally home to non-human kin. There are many different creation stories that tell of how mountains came to be and we cannot document them all here. We will confine ourselves to a selection of illustrative examples, inviting readers to look further at Blackfoot (Bastien 8–9) and Ktunaxa creation stories among others.1
There is a story told by Ronnie Georgekish (Eastern Cree) about a mountain that was formed and shaped by a cooking pot that a giant dropped on the land after being killed by a Shaman (Reid et al., 2020). Dogrib oral traditions from along the Idaa Trail in the Northwest Territories (Interior Hills West mountain region) relate the formative agency of a mountain, Kwe?ehdoo, also known as “blood rock.” Kwe?ehdoo is described as an old man with psychic abilities (Andrews & Zoe, 1997). Gille (2012) reports that for Coast Salish Peoples, the rocks, animals, and all non-humans, including mountains, are ancestors whose form was stabilised by a Transformer (beings of mythical time, often half-human, half-animal) named Khaals. Similarly for Cheam Peak, in the south-west Coastal Mountains of the Pacific Maritime region near Chilliwack: the mountain’s three peak structure suggests, as the stories tell, that the Transformer petrified a giant woman and her three children there (Gille, 2012). The literature documenting stories such as these illustrate conceptions of mountains as storied, social, spiritual and living Land—much more than scenic landscape or the two-dimensional topography of cartographic maps. Much of this literature was written by non-Indigenous scholars who collaborated with Indigenous Knowledge Holders. The nature of the collaboration was unclear in many cases. The literature focuses on western and northern mountain regions, inviting further studies into creation stories about mountains in eastern regions.
3.2.2 Stories of mountain spirits
Studies of Indigenous understandings of mountain places in Canada describe mountain spirits. This literature further emphasises the ways in which mountain Homelands are more than mere topography. For instance (Heyes, 2011), considers how an Inuit community in northern Quebec believes the Torngat spirit resides in the Torngat mountains and has for over one thousand years. Peter Freuchen, who was part of the Fifth Thule Expedition from 1921–1924, noted the behaviour of “Eskimo [sic] dogs” and how they bark at the mountain spirits (Freuchen 1935 as cited in Laugrand & Oosten, 2002). Duchesne and Crépeau (2020) and Duchesne (2022) describe how the ethnographic literature on Algonquin culture demonstrates how master-entities—beings who control and protect the animals—are organised hierarchically according to different domains. Among the Innu, Papakassiku, the master of the caribou, occupies a similarly preeminent position. The master of the caribou lives on a mountain called Atiku-mitshuap (the dwelling of the caribou) in which the caribou are contained as well as the masters of other species. It is from this mountain that the caribou are released and given to the hunters. Mountain spirits are described in the oral histories of many Indigenous traditions, mediating people’s relationships with mountain places and offering protection. Elder and Learning Circle participant and Elder Pnnal Bernard Jerome, of the Micmacs of Gesgapegiag, shared a story of the Little People, tricksters and protectors who dwell high on a peak in the Chic-Choc mountains and warn the Micmac People if strangers are coming to their territory (LC 3.8).
Pnnal Bernard Jerome, Micmacs of Gesgapegiag, 2022, LC 3.8
In western Canada, too, mountains serve as spiritual places. Chief John Snow tells of the Stoney Nakoda practice of going on a vision quest, a journey into “the rugged mountains, seeking wisdom and divine guidance” (2005, p. 16). People prepared for these journeys in ceremonial lodges on the plains, thereby linking through practice the lowland and highland Homelands of the Stoney Nakoda. Hayden Melting Tallow (Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy) spoke poignantly at the CMA Learning Circle about Blackfoot sacred mountain sites. “Waterton Lakes,” he said, “those mountains there, are very sacred.” He continued, “we’ve been cut off from there, relegated to the reserve” (LC 3.9) In The Story of the Blackfoot People: Niitsitapiisinni, a story is related about the Waterton Lakes area in which a boy named Scabby-Round-Robe was given powers and sacred objects that he kept in Beaver Bundles by Old Man Beaver (The Blackfoot Gallery Committee, 2013). Bastien (2004) is another source of information for learning about Blackfoot relations to their mountain Homelands and their understanding of land relations.
Hayden Melting Tallow, Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, 2022, LC 3.9
Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson, Lhu’ààn Mân Ku Dań, 2022, LC 3.10
It is worth noting that mountains may not be sacred sites for all Indigenous groups who live near them. Even for those for whom mountains are spiritual, it may be that such stories are not appropriate for general circulation. While far from comprehensive, at the very least, those documented in the literature and shared by Indigenous Knowledge Holders reveal mountains as much more than just rocks, water, plants, and animals. While acknowledging that not all stories may be shared in published venues, we believe nonetheless that there is a room for scholarship that goes beyond documenting the spirituality of mountain Homelands and investigates how sacred mountain places have been altered or intersected with other forces in Canadian society. For instance, in Unama’ki (Cape Breton Island, Atlantic Maritime and Boreal Shield region), the mountains are sacred sites for the Mi’kmaq. As Mackenzie and Dalby (Mackenzie & Dalby, 2003) show, this fuelled opposition to a proposed super-quarry on an island with complex histories of community, nature, and culture. More studies of this kind, which probe the ways sacred sites have been desecrated and may fuel Indigenous resistance, should also be a scholarly focus.
We also note that, aside from important general studies (Bernbaum, 1997, 2006), we found very little scholarly work on the ways that non-Indigenous people experience mountains as spiritual or religious places. Studies of Mary Schäffer and Mary Vaux note the important role that Quaker beliefs played in their experience of the Rocky Mountains and nature (Cavell, 1983; M. G. Jones, 2015; Skidmore, 2017). More generally, Christianity was a prominent feature of Victorians’ experiences of nature and what they perceived as wilderness (Berger, 1983). We also note that mountains as spiritual places is a prominent theme in much mountaineering literature (Tabei, 2017). Further, as we will see in Sec. 3.6, there is a grey literature that covers spiritual experiences of mountain professionals. Nevertheless, it seems that critical scholarly work on exactly how senses of spirituality or religious practices of non-Indigenous people shape mountain places and how they are experienced in the Canadian context would benefit our understanding of mountains as home.
3.2.3 Mountain place names
The stories and names given to mountains by Indigenous Peoples are important for delineating and maintaining Homelands. On the second day of the CMA Learning Circle meeting, Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson (Lhu’ààn Mân Ku Dań) shared songs about her Homeland that showed how knowledge of mountain places in her people’s Traditional Territory is embedded in language, story, and song (LC 3.10).
Indigenous place names, as scholars such as Keith Basso (1996) have noted, are more than just nominal labels: they describe places and embed them in rich cultural geographies imbued with history, memory, and the knowledge required to live on the land. For instance, Cruikshank’s (1998, 2005, 2007) relating of stories about glaciers and the names of places around the Saint Elias Mountains demonstrates how Southern Tutchone communities are tied to mountains through their cultural history and stories. Thornton (2019) describes how Tlingit place names form an important element of their social life. They referred to a prominent peak on the BC-Alaska border as Waas’eita Shaa or Yaas’eita Shaa (Mount Saint Elias), meaning “Mountain at the Head of the Icy Bay” (Cruikshank, 1991; Thornton, 1997). The importance of place names is more than just historical. Yaas’eita Shaa’s name locates the mountain within a lived-in geography that contains information about the land and thus continually reinforces connections to it. The Tahltan refer to a particular peak as “Stingy Mountain.” This designation originates from hunters who report seeing animals on the mountain while others do not; it is stingy because it provides food to only some hunters. McIlwraith (2012) discusses Talhtan meanings of place and connections to the land as reasons for why their hunting camps, at least one of which is on the side of a mountain, cannot be moved.
Based on fieldwork conducted in the Algonquin community of Kitcisakik in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of Quebec, Leroux (2003) reports several stories of local summits in oral traditions. One of which refers to Nanipawi Pokwatina, a summit which, Leroux conjectures, corresponds to Mont Chaudron/Mount Cheminis. While the mountain does not play an active role in the narrative, which centres on Northern Pike, its name, Nanipawi Pokwatina, which translates as “staying awake,” alludes to a key episode in the story. According to Leroux (2003), the episode incorporates important elements of Algonquin filial relations.
The names given to mountain places by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples in Canada illuminate how meaning is inscribed onto the land through language and living, provide information about how to live well on that land, and articulate the long-standing historical presence of Indigenous Peoples in the mountains. The inscription of non-Indigenous names overtop Homelands with their own typonomies (geographies of names) was and remains a way of asserting colonial presence upon a place through non-Indigenous geographic and historical understandings (Robinson & Slemon, 2015).
There is some documentation and circulation of Indigenous place names for mountain regions in Canada, such as the Stó:ló-Coast Salish Historical Atlas (Carlson et al., 2006), which details the 15,000-year history and territory of the Sto:lo, upon which settlers would erect the cities of Vancouver, Chilliwack, and other communities. But this level of detailed historical and geographical knowledge of Indigenous place names is not always achievable. As Fromhold (2010) notes in the introduction to 2001 Indian Place Names, not all traditional place names were known by all Peoples, different tribes knew different names for the same place, or the same name could apply to different places among Peoples who did not have much contact with one another. The use of slang, difference in word use between men and women, and errors of translation when documenting place names bring additional hurdles to collecting this knowledge (Fromhold, 2010).
Indigenous place name knowledge may be successfully gathered and yet still difficult to access. For instance, there is a book about Stoney Nakoda place names for areas around Morley, Eden Valley, and Kananaskis: Ozade Mnotha Wapta Makochi: Stoney Place Names (1980), by the Chiniki Research Team and the Stoney Elders for the Chiniki Band Council. This resource, made in the 1980s, is difficult to access. The only copy we know of is held at the Archives of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. Yet, it contains knowledge of the land, such as the location of blue soil for painting and decorating (1980). The Ktunaxa, Cree, and Blackfoot also have typonomies that cover these mountain regions, of which we learn some from Hart (1999), who states that the Ktunaxa also used ochre from the Paint Pots which they would convert into a red oxide to trade with the Blackfoot.2
While we recognize that not all place names should be shared, for those names that may be more widely circulated, there remain difficulties in finding and translating knowledge. Nevertheless, when Indigenous place names are available to be shared, they can be used effectively on multilingual signage, such as that on the Sea-to-Sky Highway running from Vancouver to Whistler, to remind non-Indigenous people that they are in Indigenous Homelands and to “re-story” the land.
3.2.4 Summary: Stories of Homelands
In stories of how mountains were created, stories of spirits in the mountains, and through place names, we see land revealed as sentient and active, and as part of a social order. Turner and Clifton (2009) note how members of the Gitga’at (Coast Tsimshian) and neighbouring communities believe pointing at a mountain or mountain range shows disrespect and will therefore cause storms and bad weather. Similarly, Nadasdy (2021) discusses how mountains in the Yukon are perceived as sentient beings, part of the natural landscape, and possessing unique personalities. These ideas of mountain sentience and their social significance are discussed in Julie Cruikshank’s (2005, 2012) work, where she relates how glaciers and mountains in Southern Tutchone territory are perceived as sentient entities, “shape-shifters of magnificent power” demanding respect, abhorring hubris, who will respond when provoked (2005, p. 69). These stories demonstrate the spirituality, agency, and sentience of non-human mountain denizens such as glaciers, underlying the need for reverence and respect for Homelands.
The already-noted geographical emphasis on the west and northwest characterises much of the literature on these topics, and we observed a difficulty in accessing information that was documented. Given what we found, we judge that there is room for scholarly work that goes beyond documenting and instead investigates how Indigenous stories, place names, and spiritual Lands intersect with colonial structures in specific cases. Such work could be mobilised in Indigenous efforts to protect their lands and lives and promote greater knowledge of complex land relations in mountain regions of Canada (see Sec. 3.4.1).
3.3 Mountain Archaeology and the Longevity of Homelands
Mountains have long been significant features for Indigenous Peoples world-wide (Bernbaum, 2006; Reimer, 2011, 2018; Reinhard & Ceruti, 2010; Ruru, 2004). As described in Sec. 2.1.4, scientific understandings of human migration patterns into North America after the Last Glacial Maximum emphasize the importance of mountain corridors. In the past, mountains were integral to the daily lives of Indigenous Peoples, as travel and trade corridors, areas for procuring resources such as ochre and medicines, and spiritual places (Pitblado, 2017; Reimer, 2011; Todd, 2015). In Canada, the material evidence of this is found archaeologically in the form of short-term habitation sites, lithic scatters (stone tools and the debris from their manufacture), resource processing sites, and, more recently, Ancestral remains and organic material culture (e.g., clothing, bows, arrows, etc.) that typically decays at lower elevations (Dixon et al., 2014; Hebda et al., 2017; Reimer, 2003, 2014, 2018). Despite the richness of the archaeological record in high-elevation places across North America generally, with some exceptions (Fladmark, 1984; Reeves & Dormaar, 1972), it is only since the late 1990s that focus has moved upwards from the lowland areas along coastal shorelines and the lower reaches of river systems where the remains of large ancestral settlements are typically located (Sullivan & Prezzano, 2001). This relatively recent emphasis in archaeological research has produced a new sub-discipline—glacial archaeology (Andrews & MacKay, 2012; Dixon et al., 2014; Helwig et al., 2021; Lee, 2012; Pilø et al., 2021; Thomas & MacKay, 2012)—which, in many ways, is a response to a rapidly changing climate causing widespread glacial recession and permafrost thaw, both of which are revealing an ancient human presence previously unrecognised by archaeologists.
Many descendant First Nation Communities’ oral histories record their ancestral use of mountains and glaciers (Champagne and Aishihik First Nations et al., 2017; Cruikshank, 2005; Kennedy & Bouchard, 2010; Reimer, 2003; Teit, 1906). Archaeology complements these histories, most commonly through toolstone provenance studies that seek to connect lithic artefacts found at archaeological sites to toolstone sources (Conolloy et al., 2015; Kendall & MacDonald, 2015; Mierendorf & Baldwin, 2015; Reimer, 2014; Rorabaugh & McNabb, 2014). This partnership of Indigenous culture and science was most dramatically demonstrated following the discovery of the frozen remains of a young adult male eroding out of a glacier at approximately 1600 m above sea level in the Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, British Columbia (Hebda et al., 2017). The individual was given the name Kwäday Dän Tsʼìnchi, a Southern Tutchone phrase meaning “long ago person found.” Through various analyses, Kwäday Dän Tsʼìnchi was determined to have spent most of his life on the coast but during his last months had been living inland (Corr et al., n.d.; Dickson et al., 2014; Hebda et al., 2017). He was about 20 years old when he died while travelling from the coast to the interior sometime between CE 1670 and CE 1850 (Richards et al., 2007). Through an agreement with First Nations representatives, a DNA analysis was conducted on Kwäday Dän Tsʼìnchi and more than 200 volunteers from the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the results of which showed that he was related through the maternal line to 17 living members of the community (Greer et al., 2017).
The discovery and subsequent analyses of Kwäday Dän Tsʼìnchi exemplify the importance of high-elevation places for Indigenous Peoples of Canada. He connected past and present and anchored his descendants to the high and low places of their Traditional Territories. As alpine glaciers continue to recede, it is certain that more evidence of the deep relationship that Indigenous Peoples had, and continue to have, with high elevation places will come to light and serve to enrich our understanding of mountains in Canada beyond consideration as sites of resource extraction and alpine sports.
Archaeology also provides insights into Indigenous Peoples’ long-standing multispecies relationships with mountains in Canada. Reeves (1978) found archaeological evidence of bison killing amongst communities in the southwest Alberta Rocky Mountains between 10,000–8000 years ago, and Zedeño (2017) describes bison hunters and the Rocky Mountains as having a historical partnership. Driver (1982) provides archaeological evidence showing that bighorn sheep were also hunted in the southeastern Rockies around 8500 years ago. Allan (2018) presents evidence of Hummingbird Creek archaeological site’s significance as a specialised hunting camp used by the Stoney Nakoda on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains approximately 2500–1000 years ago. The site was used to plan hunts into areas with known animal presence (Allan, 2018). Archaeological evidence dating back 8000 years ago indicates Indigenous caribou hunting took place in southern Yukon alpine ice patches (Greer & Strand, 2012; Hare et al., 2004). The available archaeological evidence, then, demonstrates vital relationships with animals in mountains in Canada. Animals were killed and consumed to sustain life in mountainous regions. The movements and population fluctuations of animals influenced humans’ movements within mountain Homelands and their lowland counterparts, illustrating the power and agency of animals in these long-standing relationships.
Hayden Melting Tallow, Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, 2022, LC 3.11
As of 2011, there were more than 2000 known archaeological sites in the mountain national parks alone (Langemann, 2011). These sites are revealing mountains as cultural crossroads since time immemorial. However, here, as elsewhere, we noticed a tendency for the literature to gravitate westward; archaeology of non-western mountain regions could be better represented. Moreover, as Hayden Melting Tallow (Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy) reminds us, the value of archaeology is specific. The Blackfoot do not have burial sites in the mountains because they do not bury their dead. “But if there was gravesites, if we dug up Mother Earth and buried our people,” he said, “there would be a lot of change, we could claim that” (LC 3.11). While archaeology can aid land claims and access for many, it cannot be the only basis upon which such work is established. Given the state of the literature, we believe there is opportunity for scholarly efforts to improve our understanding of how archaeology in mountain places is conditioned by historical cultural practices, and by land use. Studies that investigate what it is possible to know about mountain archaeology, given constraints such as difficult terrain, private land ownership, or by the materials used by specific mountain-dwelling communities would be welcome additions.
3.4 Multispecies Literature
3.4.1 Human-animal relationships in mountains
Literature discussing human and animal relationships in mountains in Canada tends to focus on Indigenous Peoples and highlights the importance of animals to how they create, know, and move about their mountain Homelands. Johnson (2010) explains how hunters in mountain regions look for mineral licks, as these are frequented by moose, mountain sheep, goats, caribou, and other species. The caribou is significant to many, but not all, Indigenous communities that call mountains Homelands. Wray and Parlee (2013) note the ways in which the Teel’it Gwich’in hunt and respect caribou living in and near the Richardson and Ogilvie Mountains in Yukon, while Johnson (2010) describes the path and presence of caribou herds in this region. Homelands, according to Indigenous Knowledge Holder Leon Andrew (Nȩ K’ǝ Dene Ts’įli), are shaped by the paths traced through them by human and non-human alike. “You mention bear,” he said, “they’ve got their own markings everywhere. And my people always respect that, you know, that’s their territory, they’ve got their own Homeland to protect” (LC 3.12).
Leon Andrew, Nȩ K’ǝ Dene Ts’įli, 2022, LC 3.12
Goota Desmarais, Inuit, Kinngat, Nunavut, 2022, LC 3.13
Relationships with animals are constitutive of Homelands. Goota Desmarais (Inuit, Kinngat, Nunavut), shared her childhood experiences of her summer home in the mountains and the variety of generative relationships she and her community had with the animals on the land: birds that chased her off mountain tops, geese that provided eggs for eating (LC 3.13). The work of Daniel Clément (1995; 2012), based on extensive fieldwork conducted among the Innu of northeastern Québec (Côte-Nord), provides information on the relationships between human communities and the local fauna. In the Innu context, animals are prominent in stories and oral narratives, and they are central to how people engage with the environment (Clement, 1995; Clément, 2012). Clément’s work showcases Innu knowledge of animals. In particular, the volume “Le bestiaire innu,” organised into 20 chapters, each covering a species, reports a rich terminology concerning not only animals, but also their movements, and the component parts of their bodies (Clément, 2012).
Other species are singled out in the literature as culturally important to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples and illustrative of the ways that Homelands are created and maintained in conjunction with other creatures. Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis), for instance, are a critical part of the cultural landscape for the Coast Salish of British Columbia; and the Kluane Peoples in southwest Yukon have extensive knowledge of Dall Sheep (Ovis dalli dalli) (Cross, 1996; Nadasdy, 2003). Wolverine (Gulo gulo) are described by Dene and Métis trappers in the Northwest Territories as admirable, strong creatures but also as dangerous tricksters and thieves (Bonamy et al., 2020). Johnson (2010) relates a story in which an Elder saved two sisters from a wolverine, and its bones remain buried atop a mountain in the Cassiar region of British Columbia (Montane Cordillera).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their importance to many Indigenous cultures and charismatic appeal across non-Indigenous cultures, bears are prominent in the multispecies literature. Entanglements with bears go back generations; Henson et al. (2021) have found correlations among the genetics of grizzly bear populations and Indigenous language groups along the coasts of BC. Clark and Slocombe (2011) examined the Indigenous terminology, stories, rituals, and practices of respect and reciprocity towards bears in the southwestern Yukon. Spiritual significance can motivate action. For the Ktunaxa First Nation in the Kootenay region, BC, the spirit of the grizzly bear residing in Qat’muk fuelled a fight against the development of a ski resort on the Jumbo Glacier that went to the highest court in the nation (“Ktunaxa and Qat’muk,” 2015) (see Sec. 3.5.3). Grizzly bears, D.A. Clark and others (2021) find, are central to the livelihoods and cultural identities of several Indigenous Peoples in British Columbia, including the Haí~Izaqv (Heiltsuk), Kitasoo/Xai’xais, and Nuxalk First Nations. Relations with polar bears are at the heart of Torngat National Park where Innu guides and bear-monitors are the backbone of the park’s tourist industry (Lemelin & Maher, 2009).
Bear-human relationships are also examined in non-Indigenous contexts. Skiers’ encounters with grizzly bears in the mountains of British Columbia were studied by Stoddart (2011b). The experiences of Charlie Russell, an Alberta naturalist and wildlife photographer, have been examined as forging relationships with bears that teach trust, love, and respect for others (Bradshaw, 2020). While Charlie’s experiences are well-known, those of his then partner, Maureen Enns, are not. Enns also cultivated an intimate, empathetic understanding of mountain grizzlies and produced art that sought to gaze through the “Eyes of the Bear” (Thomas & Enns, 1995). This imbalance in the record suggests that there is room for analyses of the ways that gender inflects relations with other animals, and how those relations are remembered or not.
More broadly, human-bear relations may illustrate how multispecies relations can be shaped by economics, media, and conservation. This is sug-gested in the case of Boo,3 an orphaned grizzly bear on Kicking Horse Mountain in south-central British Columbia. Boo is both a protected animal who lives in a 8 hectare refuge on the mountain, and a social media star inadvertently advertising for Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Boo’s situation, and the lack of studies we found treating the complexities of human-animal relations in relation to commodification and social media, suggests an opportunity for more studies examining the overlapping and sometimes competing narratives that human-animal relations can take in the mountains.
Yan Tapp, Gespeg First Nation, 2022, LC 3.14
Charismatic mammals are generally well covered in the multispecies literature. Salmon, although of cultural, spiritual, and economic importance for Indigenous Peoples in both the east and west, including but not only the Ktunaxa, Secwempc, and Mi’kmaq, are less well represented in that body of literature. However, there is a growing literature on the role that Indigenous knowledges and practices ought to play in the management of salmon fisheries (Adams et al., 2021; Atlas et al., 2021; Massey et al., 2021; Taylor III, 1999). We know from Yan Tapp (Gespeg First Nation) that salmon is critical to the Mi’kmaq on the East Coast and ties into land access issues for which the Gespeg First Nation have been fighting for years (LC 3.14). However, we found fewer studies of salmon on the East Coast than the more studied West Coast.
Given our assessment, we believe that there may be an opportunity to apply a multi-species ethnographic lens (as opposed to, for instance, an ecological or biological lens) to investigate relations among animal species without applying a human versus non-human dichotomy. In many Indigenous traditions, people and animals of ancient times have been understood as belonging to the same domain, rather than relegated to separate ontological categories. For instance, people and animals may be indistinguishable or change between forms, with non-human animals sometimes described as people wearing animal clothing (Brightman, 1993; Hanna & Henry, 1996). Thus, multi-species ethnographies in which humans are distinguished from animals may unnecessarily promote a culture-nature dichotomy which constrains the scope of inquiry.
3.4.2 Human-plant relationships in mountains
The literature describing people-plant interactions in mountains in Canada captures well how knowledge of plants can shape how people move through and shape mountain places. According to Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2017) and Pacini-Ketchabaw and Taylor (2015), in mountain forests people develop intimate knowledge of plants. Northwestern boreal montane forests (Taiga Cordillera and Boreal Cordillera regions) have been historically and contemporarily important habitats for Indigenous Peoples such as the Dene, Wisuwet’en (Wet’suwet’en) and Gitksan/Gitxsan to collect culturally important botanical specimens for subsistence and medicinal uses (Johnson, 2006, 2008; Joseph et al., 2022; Turner, 1988; Turner et al., 2011; Turner & Clifton, 2009; Uprety et al., 2012). Mountain huckleberries (Vaccinium membranaceum) receive special treatment in the literature and are known for their sustenance value year-round (Johnson, 2010; Shelvey & Boyd, 2000; Trusler & Johnson, 2008), and several sources note how Indigenous groups burn huckleberry patches in autumn to improve their production and predictability (Shelvey & Boyd, 2000; Trusler & Johnson, 2008; Turner et al., 2011). One of our authors, Dawn Saunders Dahl, has been developing a seasonal tea walk at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies that seeks to show how knowledge of plants is a knowledge of land and movement through it. In consultation with Ktunaxa and Stoney Nakoda Elders, she has learned that wolf willow, berries of various hues, including silver and red-orange, and prairie turnips are used for tea and for making jewellery.
Overall, the multispecies literature we considered reveals how relations among humans, animals, and plants create meaningful connections across species that shape how mountain places are experienced and known as Homelands and homes. Generally speaking, there tends to be a northern and western geographical focus, and critical masses of literature around certain species or types, which opens possibilities for geographical and topical extensions by other scholars and knowers.
3.5 Changes to Mountain Homelands
The coming of non-Indigenous people to mountain regions, and their encounters with those who lived there (human and otherwise), catalysed massive rearrangements of relations. Certainly, Indigenous Peoples had always altered their Homelands through daily, seasonal, and non-regular practices, such as prescribed burning. However, the changes brought by the coming of non-Indigenous people modified relationships on new geographical and temporal scales. These rearrangements persist today, though contested by many Indigenous communities. They are discernible in the ways that mountains are represented in science and art, reflected in built environments, engaged within mountain recreation, and often fossilised and reinforced in the legislation governing their use. The effects of these changes and how they have been refused, resisted, and appropriated for their own purposes by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples throughout the mountain regions of Canada are the concern of the next four sections.
3.5.1 Early colonial presence
Colonialism in Canada did not take a single form. The extractive colonialism of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries (e.g., the cod fishery and fur trade) was soon joined by missionary colonialism, and then settler colonialism. Whereas fur traders were primarily focused on the business of the fur trade, and missionaries on “saving souls,” settlers arrived seeking land. It is important to remember that the hallmark of settler colonialism was the replacement of Indigenous populations with non-Indigenous ones. How each of these forms of colonialism arrived and how they played out differed across mountain regions. We do not have the expertise or space to describe the details for all mountain regions. However, a brief discussion of early colonial presence in what is now British Columbia can provide a sense of the major forces and players at work. Even within the context of the western mountains of the Boreal Cordillera, Montane Cordillera, and Pacific Maritime regions, colonial influences reached different areas in different ways at different times.
Europeans reached the coast of what is now British Columbia in the late-18th century, almost three hundred years since they had arrived in the east (Harris, 2008). They did so by two routes: the Pacific Coast, with early arrivals coming from present-day Russia, Spain, and Britain, and overland as an extension of the fur trade by way of the northern Cordillera and the Peace River. Yet, through the long arm of disease, effects of their presence in eastern North America preceded the actual coming of European individuals. After crossing the Rocky Mountains in 1811, geographer David Thompson met the Ktunaxa who had been subject to at least two smallpox epidemics late in the preceding century; a common experience on the west coast and Haida Gwaii (Harris, 2008). Early colonial presence was violent and shaped by the movement of capital dictated by both distant markets and on-the-ground encounters with Indigenous Peoples and the presumed “resources” (Harris, 1996, 2008). Indigenous people responded to the new economic opportunities and concomitant disruption of trading patterns and alliances. They bargained with newcomers to their advantage and countered aggression with aggression. The mountains and their distance from eastern metropolises (the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, which merged in 1821, were based in Montréal and London respectively) made colonial administration virtually impossible (Harris, 2008). For most of the first half of the 19th century, fur traders operated largely beyond the reach of British law (Harris, 1996). Only later, with settlement by non-Indigenous peoples, did a locally specialised version of British law emerge.
By 1850, despite the establishment of several colonies of varying size, most people in what would become British Columbia were Indigenous (Harris, 2008). Settler incursion did not begin in earnest until after the 1846 Oregon Treaty which settled the southern border with the United States. After this point, European-Indigenous relations became more land-based. Settlers assumed that their notions of private property and British common law applied universally, though there was initially little colonial oversight to enforce it (Harris, 2008). In 1858, a gold rush brought miners with experience from the California rush of 1849 into the Fraser Valley, flooding what had been a colonial economy that was diversifying into forestry, mining, and agriculture but still based largely in the fur trade (Mackie, 1997). The virtually unregulated placer mining wreaked havoc on the waterways and hillsides and introduced brutal paramilitaries against Indigenous Peoples who contested the miners’ assurance that they were free to extract gold however and wherever they pleased (Harris, 2008).
In the context of what would become the colony and later province of British Columbia we can see that early colonial incursions by Europeans and Euro-Canadians were, in part, shaped by the ruggedness of mountain geographies and their distance from eastern centres of colonial administration. Although many populations were lessened by earlier attacks of diseases such as smallpox, First Nations Peoples were numerous in comparison and effectively manoeuvred evolving economic and geopolitical situations. Not everyone did so in the same way or to the same degree, which generated new social and economic practices within Indigenous communities (Harris, 2008). Even when settler projects sought inroads to the western ranges, these factors continued to inhibit colonists’ goals. Their ideas about what these mountain spaces ought to be were resisted by geography and the people who lived there. We might, then, see this as evidence for geographer Cole Harris’ assertion that the settler colonial project in Canada has been a “bounded” one in which the geographical reach of settler colonialism has, in fact, been quite limited (Harris, 2021).
There is undoubtedly much more literature dealing with the ways that early colonial presence in mountain regions altered the relations that constitute mountain Homelands and generated new mountain homes for non-Indigenous people. Hart (1999) contains information about this period for the Rocky Mountains but, as noted above, it is a work that we treat cautiously for its tendency toward casual judgement of individuals and peoples as “ferocious” or “amazing.” Additionally, (Murphy & MacLaren, 2007) offers a selection of articles dealing with the fur trade, homesteading, and early colonial exploration and art in the Athabasca River watershed. Detailed studies about specific mountain regions during early colonial incursions were not captured by the systematic review process, and so our engagement with this material has relied on authorial research, but it should be noted that none of our authors are experts in this area. This is an area upon which future iterations of the CMA can productively build; particularly, we note, by considering Indigenous perspectives on this period.
3.5.2 Science as colonial tool
Knowledge making was a critical tool in European efforts to exploit and assert control over mountain Homelands. Historians have considered how natural history was a tool of empire through which governments and companies like the Hudson’s Bay Company achieved colonial economic and political goals in western mountainous regions (Braun, 2000; Krotz, 2014; Payne, 2009; Schefke, 2008; Zeller, 2009), how scientific surveying shaped mountain spaces in the west (MacLaren, 2005, 2007), and, later on, how science and technology were used to cultivate mountain spaces into industrial spaces that served international markets (Mouat, 1992) and domestic markets through “internal colonialism” (Peyton, 2016; Zeller, 2009). Some scholars have noted how both landscape (Skidmore, 2017) and repeat photography (Inkpen, 2018) were used by colonial knowledge-makers to generate and reinforce ideas about mountains as wildernesses for exploring and investigating with the tools of Western science.
The literature on science as a colonial tool in the mountains, while not overly large, and tending toward the western regions, is detailed and specific and fits with the more general literature on the topic. We note, however, that many studies of scientific activities in mountains, such as botanical collection or glaciology, with a few exceptions (Inkpen, 2018), tend not to examine these practices as tools of colonialism. This may be because much of the work we found was documentary or biographical in nature (Cavell, 1983; Jones, 2015). More comprehensive studies of how scientific activities relied upon and promoted colonial incursions in the mountain regions of Canada would be welcome additions to the existing literature. As would work that explicitly investigates the roles First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples played in the generation of scientific knowledge, such as the Secwépemc guides who led surveyors like Walter Moberly through their Homelands. Elsewhere, it has been shown that the generation of scientific knowledge in colonial settings was based on knowledge shared by Indigenous Peoples who were themselves experts (Camerini, 1996; Montero Sobrevilla, 2018). There are some studies that touch on this topic in Canadian contexts (Skidmore, 2017; Zeller, 2009). More investigation of this issue in mountain regions in Canada would greatly enhance our knowledge of mountain regions and the history of science.
3.5.3 Treaties and land access
Mountain regions in Canada are covered by many different treaties. We have neither the space nor the expertise to delve into the details of every treaty and how it influenced land access and exclusion. Instead, we consider some of the ways that treaties do and do not impact mountain Homelands through a selection of examples.
First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples’ Homelands span large overlapping areas encompassing different ecological regions. Historically, this would allow Indigenous Peoples to travel between different sites based on availability of food sources, seasonal weather patterns, and cultural practices (Mason, 2014). Different Indigenous Nations could gather for trade, sharing of knowledge and resources, and ceremonies. Nakoda Elder Lenny Poucette is recorded saying:
Over many generations we had become good friends with the Kootenay [Ktunaxa] and the Cree … We even had relationships with the Blackfoot too … who at times were our traditional enemies … We would learn from each other … hunt together, share knowledge about the mountains and … also get together to celebrate our cultural practices … These interactions were important for many reasons. (Mason, 2014, p. 44)
These relationships among Nations were formed over many generations and are regarded as sacred. Cree-Blackfoot relations are discussed in an informative webinar on Indigenous knowledges of mountains recorded for Keepers of the Water.4
Indigenous Peoples largely viewed the numbered treaties as peace treaties and agreements to share resources in this same tradition, not as a surrender of land (Mason 2014, 28). During the signing of Treaty 7, which covers a geographical area on the southeastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the Stoney Nakoda leaders were assured that although they would be allotted reserve lands on what they knew to be their Traditional Territory, they would be able to continue their traditional land uses and ways of life (Mason, 2014; Snow, 2005). Within decades, the pass system would be used to confine them onto the reserves under intensifying surveillance and restrictions. Confinement onto reserves, which operated most acutely in western Canada and the Prairies, separated Indigenous Peoples from accessing Homelands for food and medicines and for ceremonial practices, and hindered communication among Indigenous Nations. The isolation of the reserve system, Gabrielle Weasel Head, Kainaiwa, Blackfoot Confederacy explained, also inflicted deep psychological damage on Indigenous Peoples with lasting consequences for Indigenous ways of knowing and guardianship of the land (LC 3.15).
Gabrielle Weasel Head, Kainaiwa First Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, 2022, LC 3.15
Hayden Melting Tallow, Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, 2022, LC 3.16
Daniel Sims, Tsay Keh Dene First Nation, 2022, LC 3.17
A variety of tactics, which included forcible removal from the land and the establishment of parks, displaced a network of relations among Indigenous Peoples and non-humans, and it interrupted kinship among Indigenous Nations (Government of Canada, n.d.). Despite the recognition of Indigenous rights to subsistence hunting and fishing in Treaty 7, within decades the use of the pass system, along with the creation of mountain parks and conservation areas, effectively made these subsistence and cultural practices illegal (Mason, 2014). Access to mountain land remains difficult. Elder Hayden Melting Tallow (Siksika Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy), spoke of the pilgrimages the Blackfoot people would make to the mountains for ochre and to the Paint Pots, which for them were ceremonial places, from which they are now cut off, despite it being part of their territory (LC 3.16). Chief John Snow (Stoney Nakoda) relates the challenges that private land ownership posed for the establishment of the Wesley Band (now called Goodstoney) of Stoney Nakoda in the Kootenay Plains—part of their Traditional Territory, but an area that was not covered in Treaty 7, to which they were party (Snow 2005).
The stories and experiences surrounding Treaty 7 do not hold across all Indigenous mountain communities in Canada. Indigenous Knowledge Holder and CMA author Dr. Daniel Sims (Tsay Keh Dene First Nation) reminds us that not all First Nations are party to treaty agreements (LC 3.17). Of the approximately 200 First Nations in British Columbia, many of whom have mountain Homelands, relatively few have signed historic or modern-day treaties, and about half have yet to show any interest in negotiating one. Even for those who do, there is the example of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, in the Rockies and Interior Plateau (Montane Cordillera region), which twice negotiated a modern comprehensive treaty only to reject it when it came to vote in the community. The Tsilhqot’in Nation, in the Chilcotin Range (Montane Cordillera region), in 1864 were betrayed at a “truce meeting” with the colonial governments against whom they had been waging war, leading to the wrongful hanging of leaders and decades of colonial assault through land grabs, residential schools, the Indian Act, and the abduction of children. In 2016, the Tsilhqot’in Nation achieved legal recognition of their ownership of land in their Traditional Territory. Following this victory, rather than sign a treaty, they negotiated an accord (the Nenqay Deni Accord)5 with the province of British Columbia, which guides their interactions with the province and is renewed and potentially revised every five years. Explicitly not a treaty, the Tsilhqot’in approach to Indigenous-Crown relations has inspired other Nations in the province to pursue similar agreements instead of treaties.
Pnnal Bernard Jerome, Micmacs of Gesgapegiag, 2022, LC 3.18
Yan Tapp, Gespeg First Nation, 2022, LC 3.19
Moreover, we must also bear in mind that existing treaties operate differently across contexts. There are treaties among Indigenous Peoples. For instance, the Buffalo Treaty,6 signed by 31 Indigenous groups, recognizes the “keystone” role played by buffalo in life ways grounded in “cooperation, kindness, renewal, and sharing amongst and between people.” Elder Pnnal Bernard Jerome (Micmacs of Gesgapegiag) reminds us that not all mountain Homelands are covered by treaty agreements that make land claims. The Mi’kmaq of eastern Canada are party to Treaties of Peace and Friendship, which did not mention land. “Homelands,” he observed, “would be the unceded lands,” and “there are no boundaries where we are at” (LC 3.18). Far more relevant to how they negotiate land access are the barriers erected by private land ownership and bureaucracies set up to protect it. Both he and Yan Tapp (Gespeg First Nation) spoke at length at the Learning Circle of how their communities meet challenges of access and exclusion in seeking to hunt and fish on their Homelands in the Chic-Choc Mountains when “there is private land everywhere” and “consultation” is done in bad faith (LC 3.19).
The impact of private land ownership on mountain Homelands is a vast and under-investigated topic. This may be in part because concepts such as binding written deeds (1677) and their management by the state—the Torrens system (1858)—emerged while European Nations were colonising the world and so have been assumed by many non-Indigenous people as simply “given” (Taylor, 2008). Certainly, early colonisers simply assumed that British law applied in lands claimed by the British Crown, irrespective of the laws of the people already living there (Harris, 1996, 2008). While there is considerable literature on the impacts of parks and protected areas (see Sec. 3.5.4), we found that in the systematic literature review private land or private interests came up most frequently in studies of conflicts between “public” lands (like parks) and private uses in the development of mountain parks (Lundgren, 1984; Orr, 2011; Reichwein, 1995, 2014).
There is an opportunity for studies on the unique, situated, and ongoing effects that private land ownership has on mountain Homelands of First Nations, Métis, and Indigenous Peoples. One notable illustration of such work is at the intersection between commercial ski hills and unceded Indigenous Homelands, as was the case for the Ktunaxa First Nation and Jumbo Glacier Resort (see Sec. 3.4.1). While the Ktunaxa First Nation was able to halt construction of the proposed resort on Qat’muk, other ski hills such as Sun Peaks Resort were pushed through. Sun Peaks (the resort and municipality) was constructed on Skwelkwek’welt, a spiritual and traditional site for the Secwépemc, despite growing concern, protests, and advocacy by the community (Manuel & Derrickson, 2015). These two developments are part of larger, ongoing colonial efforts of land dispossession and the criminalization of Indigenous Peoples who stand in opposition (Gobby et al., 2022; Manuel & Derrickson, 2015). Lisa Cooke (2017) analyses Sun Peaks Resort as “settler-colonial moral terrain” and challenges settler-colonial understandings of “progress” that underpin these developments. Preliminary findings from Dr. Daniel Sims’ (Tsay Keh Dene First Nation) ongoing Tri-Council-funded research project “A Forgotten Land: Development in the Finlay-Parsnip Watershed of Northern British Columbia, 1860–1956,” indicate that in at least the Finlay-Parsnip watershed this apparent oversight may be an example of narrative forgetting stemming from the perceived failure to establish a settler population in the area (Sims, 2021).
Comprehensive land claim agreements—negotiated after 1973—also shape the governance of mountain regions as they seek to more clearly define Indigenous Peoples’ land, resources, and self-government rights. For instance, the 11 Yukon First Nations who completed comprehensive Final and Self Government agreements under the Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement (Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement, 1993) have retained title to approximately 10% of their Traditional Territories (“Settlement Lands”) and have the right to shared decision-making (co-management) in the remaining 90%. Kluane National Park, discussed in detail in Sec. 3.5.4, is an example of co-management, but there are many other co-management boards. Co-management in this context has also been the subject of significant critique (e.g., Clark & Joe-Strack, 2017; Nadasdy, 2003; Natcher et al., 2005). Later in this chapter we also discuss the Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement (LILCA) (2005) (Section 3.5.4.4).
3.5.4 Parks and protected areas
The Rocky Mountain National Park
In 1885, an officially completed Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) opened up the Rocky Mountain Cordillera to non-Indigenous people to a greater degree than ever before. The railway was a joint project of eastern and European capitalists and the Canadian federal government. It was a political vehicle for linking the disparate parts of the emerging nation and a physical vehicle for altering who had access to and use of the Montane Cordillera and Pacific Maritime regions. One of the most dramatic effects the coming of the railway had on these regions and the subsequent history of land use in the country was the establishment of Canada’s first national park.
Rocky Mountains National Park (renamed Banff National Park in 1930, Fig. 3.1) was established in 1886, covering a small area around hot springs near Banff townsite. The hot springs were already used by the Stoney Nakoda for healing and spiritual renewal (Snow, 2005), but their “discovery” was nevertheless claimed by two CPR employees, who were swiftly divested of their claim by the railway and the federal government. A national park was established to control access to the springs and surrounding area. Hot springs were very popular, and lucrative, tourist attractions in the late 19th century, and CPR executives sought to profit from tourism as well as money generated from settlers travelling by rail (Hart, 1983).
Much of the early infrastructure in the mountain parks, including hotels and businesses to cater to tourists, was developed under the auspices of the CPR. Ideas of sublime wilderness, rooted in European Enlightenment and Romantic thought, impacted how the first mountain parks were perceived by promoters and their target audiences. From the early stages of construction, the railway hired painters and photographers to document the laying of the tracks, with the understanding that the art produced would portray the process as a heroic endeavour in beautiful wilderness landscapes (Hart, 1983). Under the patronage of the CPR a school of art developed that shaped the way mountains in Canada were perceived for decades to come, often underlining the idea of mountains as wilderness and as scenery. Art continued to play a formative role in producing representations that sculpted notions of what mountains were for and who belonged there, as Reichwein (Reichwein, 2004) and Wall (Reichwein & Wall, 2020) have argued in their histories of the Banff School of Fine Arts. Visuals, including photographs and postcards, continue to promote ideas of mountain parks as wildernesses and homes for charismatic wildlife (Colpitts, 2011; Cronin, 2006, 2011). Yet, landscape art has also been a medium of expression for Indigenous artists such as Sitting Wind-Frank Kaquitts (Stoney Nakoda) (Fig. 3.2), as well as a point of connection between Indigenous people and settlers like Catherine Whyte, founding patron of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies (Mayberry, 2003) (Fig. 3.3).
Figure 3.1: Map of Banff and Jasper National Parks and overlapping Indigenous territories. Data from Native-Land.ca; Natural Resources Canada (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/522b07b9-78e2-4819-b736-ad9208eb1067); U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (https://doi.org///doi.org/10.5066/ F7DF6PQ).
Science was also a tool used in the forging of the vision of mountain spaces as parks. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was used as a tool for cordoning off mountain spaces (Gardner & Campbell, 2002; Loo, 2006; Reichwein, 2004). For instance, early conservation science, and glacier study, were underwritten by ideas about mountain spaces as unpeopled “wildernesses” and sanctuaries for certain kinds of charismatic large animals like moose, bear, elk, and sheep (Colpitts, 2010; Inkpen, 2018; Reichwein & McDermott, 2007). These ideas, legitimised by the science of the day, played a role in how Canada’s first national park would be understood and administered.
Indigenous people were not immediately banned from hunting within park boundaries; this came later as non-Indigenous public opinions about wilderness and wildlife changed in the final decade of the 19th century, following the precipitous decline of species like bison and elk across the continent driven predominantly by market hunting pressure. The first wildlife regulations in Canadian national parks were designed to maintain a sporting playground, prioritising trophy hunting over subsistence practices (Mason, 2014). In These Mountains Are Our Sacred Spaces, Chief John Snow (Stoney Nakoda) explains how non-Indigenous popular sentiment about wildlife pressured the federal government to enact laws in 1893 that banned his people from hunting on the eastern slopes of the southern Rockies: “In 1893 public attitudes and government goals combined to lead to the first outright, straightforward breaking of the treaty: the Indian Affairs Branch firmly and specifically committed itself to a policy of restricting the hunting of game” (2005, pp. 79–80).
Figure 3.2: “Bow Lake,” 1969, Sitting Wind (1925–2002), oil on canvas board, 30.5 x 40.4 cm WiS.02.08. Image courtesy of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. Gift of Catharine Robb Whyte, O.C., Banff, 1979.
This, coupled with contradictory government policies aimed at rendering Indigenous people “self-sufficient” and confined to reservations, amplified the effects of food shortages, lack of access to health care—both traditional and government provided—and disconnection from traditional practices and territories that were already being experienced by the Stoney Nakoda.
Despite these harsh measures, the Stoney Nakoda and other Indigenous Peoples risked fines and imprisonment to continue to gather, hunt and fish. As one Nakoda elder states, “Even while the governments tried to change how we lived with their rules … when there were opportunities … or a need to do so … many of us continued to hunt in the mountains like we’d always done” (Mason, 2014, p. 46). Snow (2005) describes the history of the Bighorn Reserve on the Kootenay Plains as a place where some Nakoda went so they could continue to hunt and fish in the Eastern Ranges. Mason (2014) documented how the Nakoda strategically built relationships and used involvement in tourism and the Banff Indian Days festival to reassert their culture and presence in the region.
Figure 3.3: “Crowfoot Glacier,” 1945–55, Catherine Robb Whyte (1906–1979), oil on canvas. 22.8 x 28.0 cm WyC.01.202. Image courtesy the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.
These stories are important reminders that government and colonial institutions do not determine life for Indigenous people in the mountains. As long as there has been settler-colonialism, there has been Indigenous resistance and refusal. Given the narrow geographical and temporal scope of the studies we were able to find, we believe that this is an area that needs further investigation. We note that an event as significant as the Smallboy Camp—set up in the 1960s on the Kootenay Plains by members of the Cree Ermineskin Nation, led by Apitchitchiw (Robert) Smallboy—is little known and virtually undocumented in an otherwise sizable literature on the eastern Rockies. The Smallboy Camp is described in the Keepers of the Water webinar on Indigenous knowledge of the mountains, but it was found nowhere in the scholarly literature we reviewed, despite having given rise to Kisiko Awasis Kiskinahamawin (the Mountain Cree Camp School) on Muskiki Lake, which continues to occupy what is considered provincial land and ran until 2021.7 That such a significant instance of Indigenous Peoples taking back land in the mountains is virtually unmentioned in scholarly literature is a prime example of narrative forgetting and colonial erasure (Wolfe, 2006): a community is conceptually and historically erased as part of the colonial project through the narratives of non-Indigenous peoples which either overwrite or simply fail to acknowledge Indigenous stories.
Cape Breton Highlands National Park
Rocky Mountains Park was but the first of many instances in which the establishment of parks and protected areas entailed the eviction or relocation of communities of people to make way for wildernesses “unimpaired for the enjoyment” of contemporary and future generations (The National Parks Act, 1930, Sec. 3.4). Cape Breton Highlands National Park (Fig. 3.4), established in 1936, illustrates this discordant approach to land in the Maritimes. While the Unama'ki (Cape Breton) Highlands did not offer the same vertiginous terrain as other mountain parks, the contrast between its heights and the coastal waters invited what Alan MacEachern describes as “the coastal sublime” (MacEachern, 2001, p. 48). Foreshadowing later expropriation campaigns in the Maritimes (Rudin, 2016), the methods employed to achieve this sublimity involved moving whole communities to make way for the importation of unspoilt wilderness.
As Ian McKay has argued, the transformation of the mountainous terrain of northern Unama’ki into the Cape Breton Highlands represented one plank in a broader construction of “tartanist” Nova Scotia; packaging Cape Breton as a quaint, pre-modern isle full of dull-witted but hardworking “Highland folk” (McKay, 1992, p. 24, 1994, p. 9). Yet, the rolling back of modernity faced a variety of stumbling blocks, from the presence of timber lease held by the Oxford Paper Company to settled communities such as Cap Rouge, Pleasant Bay, and Ingonish. In establishing the park, this required state actors to think carefully about which pre-existing communities conformed to the desired pre-modern sublimity and which could be summarily dispensed with. This was emphasised by the decision to expropriate the community of Cap Rouge–an Acadian fishing village–while allowing the ethnically Scottish farming settlement of Pleasant Bay to remain within the boundaries of the Park (MacEachern, 2001).
The expropriation of the Acadian community at Cap Rouge and the cessation of expropriation against the ethnic Scots at Pleasant Bay was not only about reorienting the geography along tartanist lines; it was, as Catriona Sandilands reveals, an articulation of hierarchical whiteness in Canadian society. She writes:
With the Acadians safely elsewhere […] the fantasy of whiteness as unity was not only sustained in the space of the park but also given added vigour by contemporary naturalising discourses of pristine, untouched wilderness in which CBH’s (originating) whiteness could now be planted (Sandilands, 2011, p. 73)
The transformation of mountains in northern Unama’ki during the 1930s was yet another iteration of a much longer history of colonial settlement and transformation that mobilised notions about sublime wilderness in the colonisation of Indigenous mountain Homelands. It also carefully treats the discordances and hierarchies embedded in what is often treated monolithically as “settler colonialism” or “whiteness”. This kind of critical attention to detail, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Reichwein, 2014; Robinson, 2005), is generally absent in the literature we found treating non-Indigenous incursion on mountain Homelands; we believe more of it would be a welcome intellectual contribution.
Figure 3.4: Map of Cape Breton Highlands National Park boundaries and overlapping Indigenous territories. Data from Native-Land.ca; Natural Resources Canada (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/522b07b9-78e2-4819-b736-ad9208eb1067); U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (https://doi.org///doi.org/10.5066/F7DF6PQ).
Kluane National Park and Reserve
The processes involved in establishing national parks evolved over time and played out in subtly different ways in other mountain areas. For instance, Neufield (2011) suggests that the impetus behind Kluane National Park and Reserve (1973) (Fig. 3.5) began as an expression of the “Canadian ideals” of wildlife and wilderness protection, and built upon earlier efforts in the region to cordon off and exploit game, develop mineral extraction, and pursue scientific research in the Homelands of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations (CAFN), the Kluane First Nation (KFN), and White River First Nation (WRFN), at their expense. He notes, however, that these intentions did not alone determine how the story would go. In 1943, the Kluane Game Sanctuary (KGS) was established in southwest Yukon, restricting these First Nations from accessing the portions of their territories by making it illegal to hunt and trap or otherwise occupy their Homeland (e.g., building cabins) by fining people and confiscating meat and other possessions from those who did harvest in the area (Nadasdy, 2003; Nakoochee, 2018; Zanasi, 2005). In 1973, First Nation organisations, including the Yukon Native Brotherhood and the Council for Yukon Indians, fiercely opposed the creation of a National Park until land claims were settled. As a result, the KGS became the Kluane National Park and Reserve. These events, their myriad and still resonating effects, and their relation to the building of the Alaska Highway, are explored in greater detail in Sec. 3.7.4.
Figure 3.5: Map of Kluane National Park and Reserve and overlapping Indigenous territories. Data from Native-Land.ca; Natural Resources Canada (https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/522b07b9-78e2-4819-b736-ad9208eb1067); U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (https://doi.org/// doi.org/10.5066/F7DF6PQ).
While land claims for Kluane First Nation and White River First Nation—who, to date, do not have settled claims—were not reached prior to the establishment of the National Park, the responsiveness of the federal government to Indigenous land claims marked the beginning of a shift in understandings of parks and protected areas. They were not to be regarded as simply wilderness places to be protected from resource extraction (Neufield, 2011; Roberts, 2023).
Even so, First Nations citizens were displaced from the region for over 50 years as harvesting continued to be banned, according to the Government of Canada’s interpretation of the Parks Act (Nakoochee, 2018; Zanasi, 2005). This displacement has significant impacts on First Nation connections to their Homelands, including implications for spiritual and cultural wellbeing, food security, knowledge transmission, and more. Healing First Nation relationships with the park was the focus of initiatives starting in the early 2000s including the “Healing Broken Connections” initiative (2004–2008) which, through partnership between CAFN, KFN and Kluane National Park and Reserve, offered opportunities to reconnect on the land and to determine how Indigenous Knowledge could be used in the co-management of the park (Nakoochee, 2018). Efforts to re-engage with lands inside the park are ongoing, including culture camps, interpretive programs led by Elders, and other joint initiatives. As Elder Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson (Lhu’ààn Mân Ku Dań) told those gathered at the CMA Learning Circle, Parks could learn from the rotational-burning practices that people like her grandfather practised on the land now encompassed in the National Park and Reserve (LC 3.20). (The related topic of the Peel Watershed Planning Commission will be treated in Sec. 3.8)
Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson, Lhu’ààn Mân Ku Dań, 2022, LC 3.20
Torngat Mountains National Park
The case of the Torngat Mountains National Park in Labrador is another illustrative case of the evolution of parks policies and Indigenous rejoinders to national parks in mountain Homelands. The park itself is a symbol and product of Inuit self-determination and resistance. In the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government, the provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the International Grenfell Association (a group founded by settler Wilfred Grenfell who practised medicine, led religious and social services, and was involved in the removal of Indigenous children to residential schools) evicted northern Labrador Inuit from their Homelands north of Nain (Marcus, 1995).8 These Homelands covered a 468-kilometre span of coastline, including what is now known as Torngat Mountains National Park. Inuit lived in sod houses and tupet (tents) during the summer months and illuvigait (not “igloo”—the correct word is “illuvigak”) during the winter months. Inuit travelled by kajak (not “kayak”) in the summer, and by Kimutsik (dog team) during the winter months. They also travelled by foot when need be. Land and sea are often mentioned as one, omitting the distinction between the two. When referring to the land, Inuit could be talking exclusively about the terrestrial land, or the land and sea combined. Inuit from the north were often referred to as “Avanimiut,” or people of the north, by Inuit further south. The Avanimiut and their descendents now live in the five Inuit communities of Nain, Hopedale, Makkovik, Postville, and Rigolet. These communities make up the Inuit region of Nunatsiavut. Between the 1970s and the early 2000s, Nunatsiavut Inuit united to create the Labrador Inuit Association (LIA). The work of the LIA included negotiations with the federal government to secure land claims agreements, which would outline and honour Labrador Inuit rights in northern Labrador. Negotiations also led to the legitimating of the Labrador and Inuit Land Claims Agreement (LILCA),9 signed by Labrador Inuit, the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial government, and Canada in 2005. Torngat Mountains National Reserve then became the Torngat Mountains National Park.
The signing of this agreement initiated the Nunatsiavut Government, the first Inuit self-government in Canada, and established Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve.10 With the signing of the Nunavik Inuit Land Claim Agreement (NILCA) in 2008, the region became Torngat Mountains National Park. These agreements protect the rights of Inuit living in Nunatsiavut and Nunavik to hunt, fish and harvest (among other things) within the park boundaries. Both groups are involved in the co-management of the park.
It is important to understand that the borders of the park were delineated to serve a political purpose, rather than reflecting meaning in the geography as understood by Inuit. The creation of these borders did secure and protect the land and sea from extraction and exploitation, which is one of the reasons why Inuit in the region were supportive of the park. The protection of the park ensures their livelihoods, protection, and sustainability of their Homelands. As Inuit who live in and continue to value the Torngait and surrounding areas, the only legitimate borders are determined by seasonal hunting areas and campgrounds. Inuit still hunt seals year-round, either in the open ocean or at seal breathing holes in the ice. Almost all animals are hunted at different times throughout the year depending on migrations. Examples include those of Canada geese, snow geese, caribou, whales, and char and salmon runs. Berry picking is also best after the first frost in the fall, and enough berries are picked to last the year.
One of our authors and Indigenous Knowledge Holders, Megan Dicker (Inuit, Nunatsiavut), shared some of her experience of these mountains as a person whose grandparents were displaced from the region, but who, nevertheless, has a strong connection to the Torngait as her Homelands.
Summary: Parks and protected areas
The scholarly literature treating the role of parks and protected areas in mountain regions is substantial and varied. While the tendency toward studies of western mountain regions is still present, it is far less acute than in other cases. The establishment and characteristics of mountain parks in the north and east have been treated in the peer-reviewed literature, though to a lesser degree than those of the parks in the Montane Cordillera region. We note that the topic of mountain parks has been a relatively fertile place for place-specific studies that consider how changing land use policies impact Indigenous Peoples in diverse ways. Indeed, this topic can be used as an entry point for thinking about how land use practices have changed over time and how they have remained the same. We note, finally, that there seems to be less literature on mountain places designated “protected” but not as parks.
3.6 Recreation
3.6.1 Place-making through recreation
Questions about what parks are for have been around as long as parks, and historians have written about how they have been negotiated in mountain regions (Chen & Reichwein, 2016; Reichwein, 1995, 2014). One of the most influential voices in discussions of mountain parks has been that of recreationalists (Reichwein, 2014). With the establishment of parks and protected areas, mountain lands became places for a host of recreational activities including mountaineering, climbing, canoeing and kayaking, hiking, skiing, and motorised sports (Steiger et al., 2022). Such pursuits continue to shape how mountain regions in Canada are understood and managed, with impacts for who calls them home and those who call them Homelands and how the land is used (Clayton, 2016; Colpitts, 2011; Héritier, 2003; Heritier, 2010; Kariel & Kariel, 1988; Kulczycki & Halpenny, 2014; Lam, 2016; Lemelin & Maher, 2009; Nepal & Jamal, 2011; Pavelka, 2017, 2019; Toth & Mason, 2021). The popularity of mountain outdoor activities and the diversity of those participating in them is growing rapidly. Efforts are underway to better comprehend recreationists’ experiences in the mountains, the evolving relationships they have with high places, and the sense of connection to mountains that recreational activities can engender (e.g., Kulczycki & Halpenny, 2014; Reid & Palechuk, 2017). Diverse and ever-changing ideas about recreation—what types are suitable, who ought to pursue them, and how they ought to be pursued—have shaped mountains into particular kinds of places, both materially and in people’s imaginations.
For instance, mountaineering was integral in shaping perceptions of what western mountains in Canada were for and who had access to them. Historian PearlAnn Reichwein has documented how the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) was instrumental in imagining and forging a nationalist vision of “Canada’s mountains” best captured in the words of ACC founders who imagined, “a nation of mountaineers, loving its mountains with a patriot’s passion” (Parker, 1907, p. 7). Early ACC top brass regarded western mountains as playgrounds for tourists, as places for scientific research, and spaces for the conservation of wildlife and, later, ecosystems, and opposed them as places for industrial development, Indigenous Peoples, and ostensibly “ethnic” people. Early club policies enabled ACC oligarchy to “blackball” membership applications and thereby police the ethnic and racial demographics of the club and so access to the mountains (Reichwein, 1997; Reichwein, 1995, 2014). Historians have also investigated how ideas about recreation inscribed themselves on lands and communities elsewhere, as in the case of Revelstoke, BC, where ski tourism was promoted during the First World War, largely by immigrants of Scandinavian descent seeking to enliven the local economy through tourism and sport modelled on reminiscences of the “old country” (Clayton, 2016). This heritage remains written on the cultural and physical landscape surrounding Revelstoke, much as the legacy of Swiss mountain guides can be felt in the Canadian Rockies.
In the case of Rocky Mountains Park, the Canadian Pacific Railway aspired to recreate the western mountains as a space for wealthy, white tourists. To this end, they targeted Victorian mountaineers and emphasised the Alpine-like qualities of the Rockies and Selkirks, particularly their large glaciers. They advertised the Canadian Rockies as “50 Switzerlands in 1!” and likened Mount Assiniboine to the Matterhorn. The legacy of this period is written onto the built landscape of many mountain parks in the form of Swiss-influenced architectural styles (Hart, 1983), and into their cultural histories. The CPR hired European-trained mountain guides to live and work at the trackside hotels to assist tourists getting up and down the mountains (Fig. 3.7).
A body of scholarly work is emerging that seeks to understand the experiences of these migrant guides in the mountains of their new homes (Robinson, 2014; Stephen, 2021), and there is a growing body of grey literature (Costa & Scardellato, 2015; Kain, 2014; Sanford, 2001; Scott, 2015; Stephen, 2021). There is also work that considers more recent experiences of Japanese mountain workers and guides (Satsuka, 2015). However, there is room for more work in this arena, particularly critical work that investigates immigrant experiences and encounters in mountains understood as Indigenous Homelands. Guide Pat Morrow relates the reminiscences of Shelagh Dehart, granddaughter of Shushway Chief Pierre Kinbasket:
I was a teenage girl when he came to visit my Auntie Rosalie Kinbasket in Stoddard Creek (directly across the Rocky Mountain Trench from Wilmer). Rosalie broke many horses for him over the years. He had to have many horses, pack and saddle, that were sure-footed and gentle. He was always talking about horses, brands, horse thieves, medicine, mountains, and stupid climbers, etc. He was a friend of my mother’s and when lunchtime would come around well here comes Conrad, always at lunchtime! (Morrow, 2009)
This quote suggests a rich body of stories about mountains as Homelands for Indigenous people and homes for immigrant guides beckoning for more scholarly attention.
Figure 3.7: Canadian Pacific guides Edward Feuz and Christian Hasler at Glacier House, 1899. Photo courtesy of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Vaux Family Fonds, V653/NG-584.
3.6.2 Recreation and gender
Critical studies of recreation practices in mountain regions have paid special care to how gender intersects with mountain recreation, particularly mountaineering. Mountaineering has long been regarded as a bastion of heroic, heteronormative masculinity. However, recent scholars have treated this subject with care and nuance, revealing that many forms of masculinity and femininity operate within the worlds of mountain recreation (Deslandes, 2009; Dummit, 2004; Erickson, 2003; Frohlick, 2005; Robinson, 2005; Stoddart, 2011a). There is also a substantial body of historical grey literature that documents the first-hand experiences of women in the mountains. Much of the earlier work focuses on local celebrity figures in the western ranges such as Mary Schäffer, Mary Vaux Walcott, Catherine Whyte, and Phyllis Munday (Beck, 2006; Mayberry, 2003; Reichwein & McDermott, 2007; Skidmore, 2006; Smith, 1989; Squire, 1995) and is documentary or celebratory in nature. It tends to underscore the uniqueness and fortitude of these women navigating both rugged mountains and restrictive gender norms. The sentiments of Mary Vaux Walcott, a Quaker woman from Philadelphia who frequented the Rockies in the years after the CPR was built, is often quoted as representative of this class of women in the mountains:
Of course golf is a fine game, but can it compare with a day on the trail, or a scramble over the glacier, or even with a quiet day in camp to get things in order for the morrow’s conquests? Somehow when once this wild spirit enters the blood, golf courses and hotel piazzas, be they ever so brilliant, have no charm, and I can hardly wait to be off again. (Mary Vaux to Charles Doolittle Walcott, 1912, quoted in Skidmore (2006, p. xvii))
This quotation underlines her experience of the mountains as a wilderness playground. It was both a rejection and an embrace of contemporary white bourgeois culture which valued both invigorating wilderness and women who stuck to golf. This balancing act can be seen in the visual legacy of these women. Watercolour painting was deemed an appropriated pastime for their demographic, but several, including Vaux and Schäffer, used the medium to enter both mountains and scientific circles, usually the domains of men at this time.
While there is excellent work on gender in mountain recreation, in light of the predominance of grey literature in the area of women’s experiences specifically, we believe there is room for more critical, intersectional studies of gender and place making in mountains. Studies that consider the class- and gender-inflected relationships among women and guides, and those that take a more fulsome look at the colonial conditions and implications of white women’s finding freedom in mountains in Canada. Colleen Skidmore’s recent work is a welcome step in this direction. Her study of Mary Schäffer attends to the ways Schäffer used gender stereotypes of her time to challenge and transgress them through her photographic and written work about her travels in the Canadian Rockies and Japan. In her analysis, Skidmore points to the colonial conditions for Schäffer’s work and how it was made possible by her own socio-economic position and background, noting how these make her less of an extraordinary instance and more of a representative of her times (Skidmore, 2017). Another notable exception to the general trend in this topic is Schaefer’s (2021) recent study which highlights the social injustice and microaggressions that are taking place along gender lines among rock climbers on the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario.
We did not find any work dealing with Indigenous women’s experiences and knowledge of mountains specifically, though we note the importance of recreational groups and social media platforms such as Indigenous Womxn Climb,11 which are providing venues for their stories and experiences to be shared and to generate opportunities for mentorship.
We did not find many peer-reviewed studies on how Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, plus (2SLGBTQI+) communities (Indigenous or non-Indigenous) engage with mountain places through recreation in the Canadian context. Current research focuses primarily on the intersections of 2SLGBTQI+ communities and rural tourism. For example, Toth and Mason’s (2021) work examines the experiences of gay men travelling to rural British Columbia for vacation. The mountains and access to outdoor recreation were indicated by participants as motivations for travel, however, “perceptions of rural homophobia” and safety were identified as potential concerns (Toth & Mason, 2021, p. 86). The convergence of mountains, tourism and the creation of gay spaces is also highlighted through local sporting events, such as Whistler’s gay ski week (1992–2012). The annual event utilised the pull of the mountains to bring together gay skiers and snowboarders in events that fostered competition, community, and gay activism (Herbert, 2014). The 2019 avalanche and guiding industry study in Canada amplified the voices of 2SLGBTQI+ people who work in the guiding and avalanche industry. One individual shared, “I am transgender. I am not ‘out’ to my co-workers. I fear that I would not be treated equally due to the comments and jokes I hear on a daily basis” (Reimer & Eriksen, 2018, p. 158).
In concert with a growth in organisations supporting 2SLGBTQI+ persons’ access to mountain space, there are academic and grey literatures that look at 2SLGBTQI+ youth and wilderness experiences (e.g., Litwiller, 2018), but we found none that focus on mountains specifically. Moreover, we found no scholarly work that considers non-binary experiences of mountains for people whose very languages push back against binaries, such as Inuktitut, in which individuals are often referred to as “them” rather than “he” or “she”. Queerness, language, and mountain life are interconnected. Identities are influenced by languages and languages are influenced by identities. For individuals residing in mountainous areas, these languages relate to the environment around them. Pronouns in language indicate binaries, or in some cases, the lack thereof. These distinctions express how gender, sexuality, and identities are viewed, and call attention to the nature of sexuality and gender as fluid and informed by cultural and linguistic norms. This, again, indicates a need for more intersectional studies.
While we have noticed gaps in the scholarly literature treating topics of gender and sexual orientation in studies of recreation in mountains in Canada, we note that artists have contributed to a critical understanding of gender and sexuality in mountain places, offering representations that push us to rethink what, say, a “mountaineer” or “park ranger” might look like. In this regard, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s 1997 performance art piece, Lesbian National Parks Services12 and the accompanying handbook, Junior Lesbian Ranger were early efforts to make “visible [a] homosexual presence in spaces where concepts of history and biology exclude all but very few” (Dempsey & Millan, n.d.). As detailed in Section 3.7.5, studies of mountain-based professions are another notable area where questions of belonging in mountains have been explored through the lens of gender.
3.6.3 Race and recreation
Just as ideas about gender shape who is likely to engage in particular recreational activities and how they do so, so, too, do notions of race and ethnicity. Scholars have considered how ideas about race and ethnicity play out in experiences of mountain recreation outside the context of mountains in Canada (Coleman, 1996; Ortner, 1999). There is some social sciences work that considers race in the mountain-based professions. For instance, in a 2019 study of the avalanche and guiding industry in Canada, 5% of participants identified as black, Indigenous, or people of colour. People who identified as Indigenous reported having higher rates of mental health challenges due to their work environment, and higher rates of suicide-related thoughts than their white peers (Reimer & Eriksen, 2022). This work is joined by conversations outside of peer-reviewed literature calling for expanding our assumptions about who “belongs” in the outdoors and what adventurers look like (Barr & Mortimer, 2020; Youssef, 2021) and by organisations working toward making mountain recreation more racially inclusive and diverse (e.g., Indigenous Womxn Climb, as well as Inkluskivity, and Colour the Trails).
Based on the systematic review, we found that this is an area that offers opportunities for scholars to contribute to ongoing discussions in the public sphere about the role of race in shaping mountain places and people’s experiences of them in the Canadian context. Specifically, intersectional studies that consider how race and mobility (physical and economic) shape who has access to mountain recreation, studies on how invisible racialized labour plays out in mountain regions, and investigations into how recreational practices and cultures are altered and grow from changing racial inclusions would be welcome contributions.
3.7 Labour
3.7.1 Extraction labour
With the exception of mountain professionals (guides, avalanche specialists, etc.), our chapter has felt the limitations of our collective expertise acutely on the subject of labour. The ways that labourers in extractive industries, for instance, shaped mountain spaces and carved homes for themselves within these spaces is a topic considered in the work of historical geographers (Gardner, 1986; Harris, 1996) but could be expanded upon by historians and other scholars with other disciplinary lenses. Early scholarly work on how labour shapes experiences and perceptions of place often juxtaposed labour to recreation or environmentalism. We have found, based on the literature we located, that historical work on mining industries in mountains tends to focus on disasters (Buckley, 2004; Hinde, 2003). This may contribute to ideas of heroic labour heritage (Arenson, 2007) in mountain places that underlines dualistic thinking about labour and other activities such as recreation, conservation, or traditional Indigenous practices. However, we caution this assessment is based on limited expertise.
3.7.2 Incarcerated labour in mountains
Labour can quite literally make a place. The western mountain parks would not look the way that they do today without a history of forced labour that spanned the first half of the 20th century. During the First World War, “internment camps” at Castle Mountain, Yoho, Cave and Basin, and Jasper put “enemy aliens”—mostly non-combatant men of ethnic heritages from central and southern Europe—to work constructing roads, bridges, and tourist attractions. In Revelstoke, the Scandinavian-descended immigrants who promoted skiing in the area were interned to build a park road (Clayton, 2016). During the Depression, relief camps served similar purposes of providing cheap labour for projects such as the Banff-Jasper Highway. During the Second World War, internment camps were set up for Conscientious Objectors (e.g., Mennonites, Hutterites, Doukhobors, and Jehovah’s Witnesses), and for Japanese men evacuated from the West Coast (Waiser, 1995). While these camps within the parks have been well documented in peer-reviewed literature, little has been written about Camp 133 at Ozada, on Morley Flats, just outside the park boundary but within the bounds of Stoney Nakoda Reserves 142, 143, and 144. We have found grey literature that suggests this camp would be a rich topic for investigating cross-cultural encounters and connections during unique historical circumstances. Michael O’Hagan’s blog, POWs in Canada,13 considers some of the visual art produced by prisoners of war depicting tipis flying swastika-emblazoned flags with the front ranges of the Rockies as a backdrop (Fig. 3.8). We see, again, the western mountain parks are well represented in the literature while instances outside their bounds, though interesting for their complex social relations, are less covered in the peer-reviewed work.
Figure 3.8: “K.G. Lager 133, Ozada Canada,” 1943, Richard Schädler. Image courtesy of Michael O’Hagan.
3.7.3 Military labour
Beyond the striking and historically significant example of the Alaska Highway (see Sec. 3.7.4), the mountainous landscapes and high-latitude regions of northern British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska (Boreal and Taiga Cordillera regions) attracted and enabled a wide array of military activities. During and after the Second World War, military personnel and equipment from southern Canada and the United States were transplanted temporarily and semi-permanently at various northern locales deemed strategic to bolster continental defence. The Soviet-Finnish Winter War of 1939–1940, the Japanese invasion of Aleutian Islands in 1942–1943, and the new reality of total war that encompassed environments as well as troops signalled the military necessity of understanding and preparing for conflict in extreme environments (Lackenbauer & Farish, 2007). In waging the Cold War, military and defence officials in Canada and the United States approached the sub-Arctic and Arctic regions of North America as both a strategic weak point and a natural training ground (Farish, 2010). Geography, terrain, environmental conditions, transportation, and other obstacles to military operations became focal points for research and analysis, as did the challenges of acclimating and acclimatising machines and bodies to the climatic rigours of the continent (Godefroy, 2014).
Within this context, mountain warfare did not receive special attention as an actionable military consideration for officials in Ottawa. The military training exercises that occurred in northern Canada and Alaska at mid-century revealed the important distinction between winter warfare and Arctic warfare, but military officials and strategic planners approached mountain warfare as analogous to jungle combat (Lackenbauer & Kikkert, 2016). The distinct topographical features of the Rocky Mountains (Montane Cordillera region)—wooded ranges, frozen ground, lakes, valleys, and snow—represented an extreme environment which, although challenging, it was believed could be overcome by science, engineering, and human will. Soldiers received training in cold-weather survival, often appropriating and adapting traditional skills from Indigenous guides and knowledge keepers. Skiing, snowshoeing, and ground and celestial navigation were equated with training for operations in mountainous locales, but so, too, was the critical importance of overcoming the human challenges of positioning soldiers in an extreme environment. Some grey literature documents the experiences of soldiers and researchers in 20th-century military-sponsored endeavours (Jackson, 2022). Mountain ranges in North America attracted considerable military activity in the mid-20th century, but the full extent of the human and environmental consequences of that activity remains largely unclear. Isolated studies of specific regiments and individuals who trained in the Canadian Rockies (Reichwein, 2014; Smythe, 2013; Taylor, 1994) are an invitation to scholars to expand upon their beginnings and the excellent work that focuses on the Arctic and sub-Arctic.
3.7.4 Built infrastructures
Built infrastructures shape how land is used and experienced. For instance, see the literature on the ways that infrastructures installed for the 1988 and 2010 Olympic Winter Games can have lasting impacts on mountain places and the ways people engage with them (Kariel & Kariel, 1988; Sant, 2015).
3.7.5 Mountain professionals
One of the strongest assessments we can make of how labour operates as a place-making tool is the case of mountain professionals—guides, avalanche technicians, researchers, surveyors, and professional athletes. Two of our authors are mountain professionals and have shared their knowledge of how this group of people know mountains as home.
The morning was crisp on the darkened valley road, the rising sun just illuminating the tops of Hermit range off to the north, winds are barely tracible to us in the valley but seems to be coming from the SSW, yet at upper levels the clouds are wispy towards the east …. The smell of earth from the dew indicates that cooler nights are starting, and it might be a wet walk into our camp. The ruffed wing swallow (Stelgidopteryx rufkollis) songs and the all-pervading croak of ravens (Corvus corax) are all around, the mosquitoes attack behind our ears and wherever skin is exposed, nonetheless our woollies will be coming off once we get into the sunny avalanche paths of open sections of Arnica (Arnica cordifolia) and Mountain Heather (Phyllodoce empetriformis) with cool shadows of Alder (Alnus incana), Devils Club (Oplopanax horridus) small trickling streams. The path is rooted by stands of Hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), Yew (Taxus brevifolia), and cedar (Thuja plicata) with open rocky in places where ancient rockslides occurred…. Our packs are hardly noticeable except for the odd creaking noise from our hip belts and the slower pace on the steeper hills. Cool air fills our lungs in the shadows, and warm dust coats our throats in the open. As we ascend, the elevation is notable by the sweet smell of Fir (Abies lasiocarpa) with pockets of strong sour smell of Valerian (Valeriana sitchensis) …. As the snow melts rocks from their peccaries’ ledges, we hear rock fall from higher areas across the valley. (Tim Patterson, 1979)
This is a segment from a trip log, detailing minute observations made during a hike into camp and capturing the writer’s sense of being embedded in a complex, layered, and dynamic place (Duncan & Agnew, 2014). Mountain professionals develop a strong, often emotionally charged sense of place as they move through the mountains for their work. This connection is built through practice, language, and learning, cultivating strong attachments to mountains as more than a worksite or playground, but intimately as a home (Bachelard et al., 1969).
Exposure to the dangers of moving in environments characterised by snow and ice, exposed terrain, extreme weather, and risk of avalanches or rock falls imbues mountain professionals’ sense of home with raw emotional power. Many, especially those working at high elevations have lost colleagues and friends. For some, this adds to their depth of feelings for mountains, as emotionally charged memories further feelings of being at home in the mountains. There is a body of grey literature dealing with how professional and amateur mountain athletes deal with the give and take of mountains (e.g., Roberts, 1968), some of which considers the differential stakes for women and parents (e.g., Mort, 2022; Tabei, 2017), but, with the exception of recent films (Mortimer & Rosen, 2021; Mosher, 2021), we found none that did so for mountains in Canada. We judge this to be a worthwhile topic for further scholarly investigation.
Deep senses of place and feelings of being at home in the mountains develop through practices of hiking, skiing, climbing, and working among mountains over days, months, and years, they develop a layering of experience. Professionals must understand and familiarise themselves with the characteristics and qualities of mountain landscapes, as is evident from the above excerpt. In the process of doing so, they become intimately connected with the places they frequent. Such practices orient mountain professionals to dwell in mountains as places of experience and meaning—what Edward Casey identifies as ‘thick places’ (2001)—rather than experience them as venues merely for exploration and consumption.
This process is further developed through language. Mountain professionals typically speak about their experiences subjectively, informed by years of experience. This is best seen in morning briefings where weather, snow, or route conditions are outlined and discussed with reference to knowledge of past circumstances of particular places. Their stories are situated in the landscape (Basso, 1996). Anthropologists have examined how matrices of stories extend and deepen experiences of place (Cruikshank, 1998). Frequent use of anecdotes, metaphors, and jokes in mountain professionals’ narratives demonstrates the lived experience of their knowledge. This is captured well in Métis mountaineer and guide Barry Blanchard’s The Calling: A Life Rocked by Mountains (2014). Blanchard’s stories reveal a deep, intimate knowledge of mountains.
The acquisition and transmission of knowledge of place plays a formative role, in conjunction with movement through mountain spaces, in developing professionals’ intimate relation to mountain places. Mountain professionals are, by necessity, students of mountains. Knowledge of snowpack, terrain features, ecology, and weather is necessary for successful forays into the mountains. The knowledge acquired through observation, practice, and experience are among the gifts mountain professionals receive from working and being in the mountains. For guides, avalanche specialists, professional athletes, and the like who make their living out of moving through mountains, their montane homes are places of layered meaning and identification.
With the proliferation of adventure travel and social media, more people are coming to the mountains. The increase in popularity of mountain activities is both a blessing and a curse for mountain professionals and their communities. Those seeking mountain experiences will look to hire professionals and thereby support the guiding industry, and they will unknowingly rely on the services of avalanche specialists, researchers, and others to ensure they stay safe. While the mountains have been commodified since at least the advent of railway tourism, the increased volume of traffic and the greater commodification of experiences in the mountains impact mountain denizens and the landscapes themselves (Taylor, 2007; Zezulka-Mailloux, 2007). These changes can alter the relationship between mountain professionals and the places they work, sometimes challenging the sense of home they find within the mountains.
Although our understanding of these topics is informed by first-hand author experiences, we note that there is little peer-reviewed social sciences literature on the topic of mountain professionals’ experiences of place in mountain regions in Canada. Notable exceptions are recent, generally critical, studies concerning gender in mountain professions. Women comprise approximately 10–15% of the Canadian guiding and avalanche industry workforce. A 2019 study amongst industry associations found that gender discrimination affects 1 in 2 female guides, and that this is primarily centred on perceptions of their competence as compared to male peers (Reimer & Eriksen, 2022). Guiding and avalanche work, it seems, carries with it colonial legacies of mountains as White cis-male spaces. This becomes apparent in perceptions within the profession (and likely also outside). One study participant shared, “As a White male, I am the sought after ‘ideal’ of a guide and I am treated as such”; and another, “if you are not White male, you’d better be ultra-competent and strong” (p. 157). Lived experiences of gender discrimination in the guiding industry, from higher to lower frequency, centred on: 1) competence; 2) motherhood; 3) traditional gender roles; and 4) hostile, sexualized work environments. The 2019 study also found that 1 in 3 women in the profession experienced sexual harassment, and of those, 30% experienced unwanted touching or further violation. Of those harassing experiences, 60% were instigated by fellow guides and co-workers (Reimer & Eriksen, 2022). Critical examination of the effects of this on the felt sense of belonging and safety for women in the mountains is an emerging area of research. It seems to us that there is room for work along these lines that carefully considers the specificity of context, including how gender, class, language, and race influence how mountain professionals experience and work in mountain spaces.
3.8 Governance in Contemporary Mountain Spaces
3.8.1 Mountains as borderlands
Daniel Sims, Tsay Keh Dene First Nation, 2022, LC 3.23
Mountains have long been regarded as natural borders and states have used them to support territorial claims (Debarbieux & Rudaz, 2015; Hansen, 2013). Certainly, mountains can act as barriers. Daniel Sims (Tsay Keh Dene First Nation), observed during the CMA Learning Circle that the mountains surrounding his community are part of the reason why they enjoy greater access and governance over their Traditional Territory (LC 3.23). Geographer Cole Harris made an analogous point about the efficacy of mountain geographies as blockades to colonial law (Harris, 2008) (see Sec. 3.6.1). Scholarly work considering mountains and national borders in the Canadian context tends to be natural scientific and bureaucratic in orientation, often concerned with megafauna migration across international boundaries (Jones, 2010; Proctor et al., 2012, 2015, 2018), and international water treaties such as the Columbia River Treaty (Cosens, 2012; Hirsch, 2020). Academic work investigating mountains in Canada as boundaries assumed, made, and maintained appears to be lacking. The related topic of mountain warfare—its impacts on people and places, and how mountains shape practices of war—is also explored for other mountain regions (Kemkar, 2006), but we have found nothing on this topic in the Canadian context.
3.8.2 Indigenous governance in mountain places
Mountain regions—like all other regions in North America—are characterised by complex, long-standing, political relationships between Indigenous Peoples and their Traditional Territories and with settler-colonial states and governance systems, including treaties, imposed land ownership arrangements in contexts where they were alien, and much more. This section explores these relationships through engaging with Indigenous governance or the many ways that Indigenous Peoples have governed themselves and continue to do so despite the profound impacts of historic and ongoing colonialism. We found that there is minimal literature explicitly about Indigenous governance of mountain regions. We find there are two main reasons for this. First, the literature about Indigenous Peoples in mountain spaces often fails to acknowledge that Indigenous ways of knowledge and being expressed through oral history and practice also contain knowledge about governance and law (Todd, 2016; Whyte, 2017). We understand this misrecognition or overlooking of the existence of Indigenous governance and law to be a form of settler-colonial violence, grounded in ontological difference, that has tremendous implications for the ability of Indigenous Peoples to maintain their collective continuance (Todd, 2016; Whyte, 2017). Second, when there is literature on Indigenous governance relevant to mountain spaces, it often simply occurs in mountain spaces rather than being explicitly about governance of uniquely mountainous spaces and relations. While it is beyond the scope of this review to examine all literature on Indigenous governance in mountain spaces, below we present several examples.
The 15-year Peel Watershed Regional Land Use Planning process in Yukon is a story of environmental protection, Indigenous governance, and conservation in a mountain region (Section adapted from Wilson, 2020; see also Staples et al., 2013). The Peel Watershed Planning Commission developed a plan in 2011 (through a 7-year co-management process outlined in Chapter 11 of the Yukon Final Agreements). The recommended plan did not meet the Yukon government’s expectation due to the high degree of protected lands (80% protected). Rather than making recommendations to the plan developed by the Commission, the Yukon Government developed their own plan including new land use designations and reduced protected areas (71% open for mineral exploration and 29% protected lands). The Yukon Government’s decision was the subject of legal action by three First Nations (First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, and Gwich’in Tribal Council), along with the Yukon Chapter-Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and Yukon Conservation Society including a series of court cases between 2014 and 2017 that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2014, the Yukon Supreme Court ruled in their favour stating that the Yukon Government’s actions did not reflect reconciliation as fundamental to the “spirit and intent” of modern land claim agreements (The First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun v. Yukon, 2014). The Yukon Government appealed this decision, and in 2015 the Yukon Court of Appeal partially reversed the Yukon Supreme Court’s decision (The First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun v. Yukon, 2015). First Nations appealed this second decision and the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the First Nations sending the parties back to the point in the process where “Yukon can approve, reject, or modify the Final Recommended Plan” (First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun v. Yukon, 2017 SCC 58, 2017).
While the Peel trial was about interpreting how the land use planning process in Yukon is laid out, it has broad implications for Indigenous-State reconciliation in Canada. It makes clear that modern land claims, which create a framework for shared governance between First Nations and settler-colonial governments, should not be interpreted in a narrow legalistic manner. Instead, the case affirms that reconciliation is fundamental to the implementation of modern land claims including provisions for co-management, which are legally binding and the “Crown” must act honourably in their implementation (Langlois & Truesdale, 2015a, 2015b). This means that settler-colonial governments have a responsibility to interpret the terms of land claims agreements generously and with the intent to achieve reconciliation. The final approved plan was completed in 2019 (Peel Watershed Planning Commission, 2019).
Indigenous Peoples in mountain places are also working hard to revitalise their Indigenous law and governance systems. Examples can be found through the work of the Relaw (“Revitalizing Indigenous law”) program with West Coast Environmental Law. For instance, since 2017, the Taku River Tlingit, whose Traditional Territory is located in northern British Columbia (Boreal Cordillera) have been working to revitalise their governance system as a “living law that can and should be taught, learned and used every day” (West Coast Environmental Law, 2022a). They have documented their process in a video.14 Similarly, the sməlqmíx, the syilx people of the Similkameen Valley in southern British Columbia (Montane Cordillera), issued a declaration stating the nʔaysnúlaʔxw snxaʔcnitkw (Ashnola Watershed in its entirety) as an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) (West Coast Environmental Law, 2022b).
3.9 Conclusion
As the stories recounted and assessed in this chapter demonstrate, mountain homes and Homelands are places of complex, layered histories, evolving and competing practices and representations, and wells of cultural and spiritual meaning for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson, Lhù’ààn Mân Ku Dań, 2022, LC 3.24
Yet, to have mountains as a Homeland is different from having one’s home in the mountains. In closing the meeting of the Canadian Mountain Assessment Learning Circle, Elder Gùdia Mary Jane Johnson (Lhu’ààn Mân Ku Dań) reflected on the fact that:
We came from different mountain regions on the land. We came from the St. Elias, where I come from; the Rockies, down in this area; the Mountain Dene mountains; the mountains in interior British Columbia; the Chic-Choc mountains in Quebec; a little bit of the Torngat mountains in Labrador. So, we’re really from all places. (LC 3.24)
In light of this geographical and cultural diversity of mountain Homelands, we have endeavoured to be careful and specific in our thinking and our words. At the same time, Gùdia Mary Jane reminds us that the “one thing that has brought us all together is that we all come from the land” (LC 3.24). Illustrating this similarity, Learning Circle Indigenous Knowledge Holders repeatedly commented on how many of them face similar pressures and threats to their Homelands and access to these lands, a topic that will be treated at greater length in Chapter 5: Mountains Under Pressure.
Despite all that we have learned from in preparing this chapter, there are numerous gaps in the topics and regions we were able to assess given the limitations of author expertise and time constraints (Table 3.1). The state of knowledge for these areas and issues remains uncertain.
Overall, we have found that the literature on mountain Homelands and homes gravitates toward the west, with mountain regions in Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon accounting for the bulk of the material.
We found that there is a decent amount of English-language literature on multispecies relations, but that French-language scholarship is more limited. The multispecies literature tends to focus on Indigenous relations with animals and plants; we note that with the exception of a few well-known studies (e.g., Cruikshank, 2005), there are few concerned with relations to beings other than plants and animals. With the possible exception of the case of bears, studies concerned with non-Indigenous peoples’ multispecies relationships with non-humans are an area to which scholars could productively contribute, as are the ways that mountains can serve as religious or spiritual places for non-Indigenous peoples in Canadian contexts.
Non-Indigenous religious and spiritual experiences of mountains in Canada |
The multispecies relations around salmon in the Atlantic Maritime and Boreal Shield Region |
2SLGBTQI+ experiences of mountains outside the context of recreation |
The role of tourism in shaping mountain homes and Homelands |
The specifics of early colonial incursion for each mountain region in Canada |
The role of heritage preservation in shaping mountain parks & protected areas |
The specific histories and analysis of the governance for each mountain park & protected area |
Extraction labour as a form of place making in mountains |
The role of lobbyists of various kinds (industrial, environmentalist) in shaping mountain places |
Scholarship relevant for place-making in Arctic Cordillera, Interior Hills North, Interior Hills West, and Interior Hills Central regions |
Specifics of literatures for mountain place-making in Atlantic Maritime and Boreal Shield, and Eastern Subarctic regions |
While we know quite a lot about the ways that settler colonial infrastructures, ideas, representations, and practices shaped mountain regions in the West, in particular the Rocky Mountains, we deem that there is more to be known about how these were established and continue to operate in other mountain regions. The impacts and workings of systems of private land is another area where we noticed an opportunity for greater scholarly engagement. We believe that more studies that carefully treat such systems as diverse and changing over time, with an eye to their ontological implications for how land is known, used, and experienced, would be especially welcome for our understanding of mountain Homelands and homes.
We note that one important virtue of studies that investigate non-Indigenous peoples’ multispecies and spiritual relations in mountains, as well as those that examine the precise, ongoing workings of settler colonialism is that such work can reveal non-Indigenous and colonial ways of knowing and doing as one type among many, rather than as “natural”, “normal”, or “default”.
Based on our assessment of the role recreation plays in the shaping of mountains as home and its impact on mountains as Homelands, we conclude that the following areas are subjects about which we need to know more: how various forms of recreation in addition to skiing and mountaineering have shaped mountains in Canada and their demographics; how recreational practices differ across mountain regions in Canada; intersectional experiences of mountain places through recreation; how race, specifically, intersects with recreation in the context of mountains, and how tourist experiences can impact governance of mountain spaces through advocacy groups and lobbying. We also noted an opportunity in the literature to study the impacts and alterations which commodification and increased visitor traffic have on mountain homes and Homelands, a topic taken up in greater detail in Chapter 5.
The topic of governance, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, in mountain regions in Canada is a weak point in our assessment due to the composition of our author group. We agree much more can be surveyed and known about how legal and political systems shape mountain homes and Homelands for all their denizens, human and non-human.
Finally, we note that while there is literature on the ways that Indigenous Peoples in Canada were dispossessed or barred from their mountain Homelands, there are fewer documented stories detailing resistance, refusal, and co-opting of colonial structures for the purpose of re-establishing and maintaining connection to mountain Homelands. We know these stories exist because we heard them from our colleagues at the CMA Learning Circle, and we have tried to highlight them where we could. However, this lack of understanding seems symptomatic of a more general feature of the literature. Topics exploring how Indigenous Peoples cultivate and maintain mountain Homelands are generally treated in isolation from those considering how non-Indigenous people are at home in mountains, except when the stories are ones of hegemony and dispossession. We are uncertain to what extent this may be an artefact of the framing we have used in this chapter. Still, our framing seems unable to fully account for this observed separation. It seems, then, that there is an opportunity, even a need, for studies that weave together, in fulsome ways, the multiple, interconnected, and ever-evolving stories of mountain Homelands and homes.
- 1 See, for instance, legendsofamerica.com/na-blackfootcreation/ and https://www.ktunaxa.org/who-we-are/creation-story/.
- 2 Note that we treat this text gingerly. Although it contains much historical information, it was written in a style that uses group psychological descriptions such as “particularly aggressive” or “ferocious” to explain the actions of certain Indigenous Peoples, rather than seeking to understand the reasons behind conflicts and rivalries. We are thus careful in our selection of material and do not endorse this as a quality interpretive text.
- 3 https://kickinghorseresort.com/purchase/boo-grizzly-bear/
- 4 For the webinar, see: https://fb.watch/dG7HWqcPFt/. Please also see Keepers of the Water website https://www.keepersofthewater.ca/.
- 5 https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/environment/natural-resource-stewardship/consulting-with-first-nations/agreements/other-docs/nenqay_deni_accord.pdf
- 6 https://www.buffalotreaty.com/relationships
- 7 https://www.facebook.com/keepersofthewater/videos/241248714322362/
- 8 https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/bcp-pco/Z1-1991-1-41-149-eng.pdf
- 9 https://www.nunatsiavut.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labrador-Inuit-Land-Claims-Agreement.pdf
- 10 https://www.gov.nl.ca/exec/iar/files/ch9.pdf
- 11 https://www.indigenouswomxnclimb.com/
- 12 http://www.shawnadempseyandlorrimillan.net/#/alps/
- 13 https://powsincanada.ca/2022/03/03/seeing-double-pow-artists-at-camp-133-ozada/
- 14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvCOtp0MpFk
Glossary
Indigenous Epistemologies and Ontologies: Indigenous Peoples, and their ways of knowing and being, have been suppressed and marginalised through colonialism both historically and in an ongoing manner. In spite of this, Kim TallBear (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) reminds us, “[I]ndigenous peoples have never forgotten that non-humans are agential beings engaged in social relations that profoundly shape human lives” (TallBear, 2015, p. 234). Yet, Western knowledge systems are limited in their capacity to account fully for Indigenous worldviews (Hunt, 2014; Z. C. Todd, 2016; Watts, 2013). Consequently, Indigenous ontologies are frequently seen as cultural perceptions that occupy the realm of “myth” or “belief.” There is a need to take Indigenous Peoples’ ontological assumptions literally rather than symbolically (Hunt, 2014; Nadasdy, 2007) and by doing so to take seriously the possibility and politics of multiple worlds that include an active role for non-human relations such as plants, animals, rocks, glaciers, water, and more. Sarah Hunt (Kwagiulth, of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation) points out that to move beyond the limits of Western knowledge we must centre Indigenous Knowledge Holders including the “work of Indigenous thinkers (scholars, Elders, community leaders, activists, community members) [which] contain a wealth of place-specific practices for understanding how categories of being are made possible within diverse Indigenous cultures” (Hunt, 2014, p. 27). Much of this, we believe, has not been captured in our assessment.
Indigenous Governance: Indigenous governance refers to the many ways that Indigenous Peoples have governed themselves and continue to do so despite the profound impacts of historic and ongoing settler-colonialism on their “collective continuance,” including ways of life, health, and culture (Barker, 2011; Borrows, 2002; Coulthard, 2014; Ladner, 2017; Napoleon, 2013; Simpson, 2014; Whyte, 2017). Indigenous governance starts from the assumption that all Indigenous Peoples “had self-complete, non-state systems of social ordering that were successful enough for them to continue as societies for tens of thousands of years” (Napoleon & Friedland, 2014, p. 3). While disrupted by historic and ongoing colonialism, knowledge of these systems persists in practice and oral traditions (Borrows, 2002; Napoleon, 2013). Indigenous Peoples are working to revitalise their legal and governance systems and to assert their self-determination within and outside of processes of state-based recognition (Coult-hard, 2014). While Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies are often misidentified as just being about relationships to the environment or cultural understandings, Indigenous governance scholarship and practice reminds us that they are complete systems that also contain knowledge about governance and law (Todd, 2016; Whyte, 2017).
Ontology and Epistemology: Ontologies are ways of being and epistemologies are ways of knowing. Ontologies are systems of identification and classification that define the boundaries between things in the world (Descola, 2013). By way of analogy, if the world is a room, an ontology is a description of the furniture in it, and how they are arranged in relationships to one another. There are different ways to furnish rooms and different ways to arrange their placements, so, too, are there different ontologies or models of the world. In other words, ontologies can be thought of as the basic conceptual underpinnings of the meaning, purpose, and identity of a thing and where it belongs in the larger social order of relations, obligations, and origin (Descola, 2013). Epistemologies are accounts about what knowledge is, how it is obtained, and what features make it valid or invalid.
Settler-Colonialism: Settler-Colonialism is a form of colonialism in which colonisers dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their land for settlement and resource development. Both colonialism and settler-colonialism are based on domination by an external power, only settler-colonialism seeks to replace Indigenous Peoples with a settler society (Wolfe, 2006). Settler-colonial scholars define colonialism as a “structure, not an event” (Kauanui, 2016; Wolfe, 2006). We define colonialism, and resistance to colonialism, as “a living, quotidian, and ever present moment that actors can interact with and interrupt. It is not an event, not even a structure, but a milieu or active set of relations that we can push on, move around in, and redo from moment to moment” (Barker, 2011; King, 2019, p. 40). Defining colonialism as a set of active relations, we understand colonialism as something that attempts to destroy or replace Indigenous relations. This negotiation and dispossession are ongoing. In this way, we understand colonialism as something that attempts to destroy or replace Indigenous relations with colonial relations. While different sets of relations are not necessarily mutually exclusive, colonial relations based on “property” and “ownership” seek to replace or dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their Homelands in a way that seeks to destroy Indigenous land relations and resistance to colonialism. While dispossession is often initially carried out by physical force, diverse technologies maintain this dispossession (e.g., maps, laws, and numbers) (Harris, 2004). In other words, settler-colonialism is a set of technologies of “alienation, separation, conversion of land into property and of people into targets of subjection” (Yang, 2017). All forms of dispossession are legitimated, justified, and reinforced through ideology and discourse about identity (Harris, 2004).
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