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Photo by Library Archives of Canada

When the Stoney were invited back in, it was for the annual Banff Indian Days, an event that ran into the 1970s. Tourists were entertained by dancing, drumming, “war whoops” and archery performed by “Chiefs and Braves and squaws in full regalia,” as a 1929 advertisement put it.

This year, national parks are in the spotlight after the federal government offered free admission as a 150th birthday gift to Canadians. More than 14.2 million people have taken advantage of the offer, an increase in attendance of 10 per cent in the first seven months of the year over last year, with some parks and historic sites seeing attendance more than double from last year as people take up Parks Canada’s invitation to “find adventure, fun for the whole family.”

But beneath the feel-good evocation of family camping trips and pristine wilderness, another discussion is taking place about the very nature of Canadian parks and the responsibility of authorities to reconcile with a tarnished past. Among Indigenous leaders, there is more talk of a day when their people will return to the parks — not to amuse tourists, but to live and work.

The Stoney were not alone in being banished from lands they once lived on to clear the way for Canadian parkland. In 1936, members of the Keeseekoowenin Ojibwa band were expelled from a fishing station within the newly created Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. As they left for a reserve outside the park with their belongings on wagons, they saw smoke rising from their houses and barns, set alight by park wardens wanting to ensure the Ojibwa did not return.