and Western power, failing to recognise ‘wilderness’ as ancestral and often sacred homelands for indigenous aboriginal peoples who were viewed as an unfortunate blight and an affront to the sensibilities of tourists. Policies of aboriginal displacement gained traction in the founding of America’s first national parks, namely Yosemite, Yellowstone and Glacier, from the 1870s until the 1930s. These established precedents for the exclusion of native peoples from other holdings within the national parks system in the rest of North America. The rhetoric of cultural superiority, which stemmed from feudal principles of land ownership, resulted in the placing of differential values on the landscape and consequently, the study of national parks is one way to understand the evolving framework of the Canadian state, conservation thought and practice and its political character. conservation-induced displacement While the establishment of national parks in Canada had adverse consequences for First Nations, Inuit and Métis land, hunting, fishing and timber rights, other groups were also affected. Land exchanges and expropriations of private landholdings as a park-creation tool, particularly in Canada’s Atlantic provinces, was revealed by Boyce Richardson in his 1985 National Film Board documentary For Future Generations which profiled growing opposition to expropriation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The creation of Cape Breton Highlands National Park (1936), Prince Edward Island (1937), Fundy (1948), Terra Nova (1957) and Kejimkujik (1960) left many landowners with no choice but to accept the government’s meagre financial offers and to relocate to nearby communities. Many were angered by the arbitrary way they were treated and forced removals fostered negative relationships for years, sometimes generations. Particularly contentious was the case of Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick where the 1969 expropriations disrupted and dismantled the lives of more than 1,000 Acadians whose families had fished and
farmed the land for generations. Settled communities and villages were uprooted followed by a swift and violent erasure of traces of human habitation despite organised resistance. A year later in 1970, Québec’s first national park, Forillon, also resulted in the forced displacement of over 225 Gaspésiens. Though most signs of human occupation were erased from Forillon National Park, certain buildings and landscapes in the Grande-Grave sector remain to this day. Eventually, Parks Canada’s policy was amended to prohibit the use of expropriation to create or enlarge national parks. Parliament subsequently amended the Canada National Parks Act in 2000 with a similar legislative prohibition. Now, land that is required to establish national parks is acquired only on a willing seller-willing buyer basis. However, policy towards either erasure or preservation of the history of occupation
within any national park is not always clear. peace building and reconciliation In many countries, state-supported cultural heritage
management policies pay little attention to difficult histories, preferring to ignore and selectively edit them to tell more comfortable or self-affirming tales to bolster national and community pride. The violent history of dispossession through forced displacement and expropriation, associated with the establishment of Canada’s national parks, was silenced and ignored to hide the less palatable parts of the national park narrative that involved the systematic exclusion of people from their ancestral lands. These unwanted, dark memories were so irreconcilable with the country’s sense of national identity that they were selectively erased from public consciousness. By default, the material heritage testifying to these unsettling events was often physically removed, neglected and over time, obliterated entirely from public view and civic space. As a result, these distorted narratives and sensitive histories prove to be challenging to interpret and reconcile due to their potential to further constrain, disadvantage and oppress already silenced and marginalised groups.
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parks and national forests on the east coast of the US was more challenging than in the west given the extensiveness
of landscape. There is a question of authenticity in national parks, as the image and narrative they present is selectively curated by (in the US) the National Park Service, which effectively operates as an historic preservation agency. The NPS has historically maintained and preserved sites and landscapes to present their own interpretation of the correct, or authentic, or popular moment in history (natural or human) for any particular site. As Desiree points out, the danger in this is the overlooked history and culture that falls outside
landscape history I find is this romanticised notion of wilderness, and the untouched landscape, and how effective this has been at shaping the national landscape identity. Licari references how thoroughly constructed the landscape of Tuscany is, although it is praised for its natural beauty. Early settlers in North America often failed to recognise the effects and traces of long-term extensive land management by aboriginal people. When we look at a landscape and consider it to be wild and untouched, we often don’t see the evidence of human intervention
of the NPS rhetoric, although reparative efforts may begin to
bridge those forgotten/ neglected histories. In addition to the erasure of cultural history, this selection and maintenance of the authentic history can have ecological implications. Preservation of this frozen-in-time moment is at odds with the dynamic nature of landscape, and over long- term application can have detrimental effects on the stability of ecological systems. Related to Ania’s reference to Licari’s work, one very interesting point in North American
of settlement. Large continuous areas were
really only possible after passing the Weeks Act in 1911 (providing fed funds for the purchase of land for National Forests), and allowing the use of eminent domain for the purpose of creating recreational land. I am interested in the piece from a landscape history perspective, and how the cultural rhetoric of national parks/wilderness has influenced the development
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