‘Game which the pampered pleasure seekers seek’: hunting tourism, conservation, and colonialism in the Yukon Territory, Canada, 1910–1940

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the rise in popularity of hunting tourism in the Yukon Territory, Canada from 1910 to 1940 with particular attention to the ways in which hunting tourism intersected with wildlife regulation and colonisation. As sport hunting became more profitable, proponents both within and outside of the Yukon argued for increased wildlife regulation and the adoption of a North American conservation ethic. In 1920 the Yukon Territorial Government significantly amended the Yukon Game Ordinance in ways that created significant impacts on Indigenous ways of life. Changes to Game Ordinance regulations, influenced by colonial ideologies about wildlife, economically disadvantaged Yukon First Nations and threatened to undermine their subsistence lifestyles. Throughout this period, sport hunters, big game guides and outfitters, government officials, First Nations, and colonial agents all debated the purpose of conservation and the lived realities of wildlife regulation. This Yukon history of hunting tourism fits within broader histories at the intersection of tourism, conservation, and colonisation and demonstrates the ways that colonial ideologies about wildlife and conservation have favoured recreational uses of the natural world while undercutting Indigenous subsistence and market hunting and, in the Yukon, pushed First Nations to the margins of this new tourism economy.