“They could take you out for coffee and call it consultation!”: The colonial antipolitics of Indigenous consultation in Jasper National Park

Abstract

Although Canada has been applauded for its co-management arrangements in recently established national parks, it continues to struggle with its legacy of colonial dispossession of Indigenous peoples, especially in its older and more iconic parks. First Nations were evicted from the earliest parks such as Banff and Jasper in a process of colonial territorialization that facilitated a “wilderness” model of park management and made space for capitalist enterprises like sport hunting and tourism. In Jasper National Park today, private tourism development proposals trigger a duty to consult with nations whose Aboriginal or Treaty rights may be impacted by development. In the last few decades, Jasper has made strides toward “reconciliation” including forming the Jasper Aboriginal Forum in an attempt to improve consultation with First Nations. I argue that Jasper’s approach to reconciliation and consultation reproduces and further entrenches unequal colonial–capitalist power dynamics, relying on antipolitical strategies to produce the appearance of inclusion and to naturalize the park’s ultimate decision-making authority in First Nations’ traditional territories. Park management attempts to incorporate First Nations’ input and certain “cultural” rights into existing state-led science-based management structures while leaving the legitimacy and justness of those structures unquestioned. As a result, Jasper’s approach to consultation obscures the ongoing neocolonial political and economic violence of alienating First Nations from their land bases and consequently reinforces existing inequalities. Ultimately, I argue that this antipolitical approach facilitates tourism development projects that benefit government and industry and not Indigenous communities.