Presentation short abstract

Blackfoot-led buffalo reintroduction in Glacier & Waterton Lakes National Parks shows how Indigenous-park relations are improving, as parks are supporting Indigenous ecologies and sovereignty. We also show how parks are important to Indigenous Peoples through education and ecological protection.

Presentation long abstract

The Blackfoot-led Iinnii Initiative is reintroducing free-roaming buffalo – iinnii in Blackfoot – onto traditional Blackfoot Lands, including into Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks across the U.S.-Canada border. This provides a concrete path for helping heal the fractured relationship between the Blackfoot and the parks. Reflecting a long history of dispossession by parks, Glacier and Waterton played key roles in taking over Blackfoot lands and instituting a new knowledge system based on Western wildlife management. Iinnii’s return advances debate on Indigenous-national park relations in two ways. First, it shows that we need a richer and more nuanced understanding of Indigenous-park relations that captures how this is changing. Today, Tribes and other Indigenous Peoples are rebuilding not only their presence in parks but also bringing back Indigenous and in particular relational ecologies, and this is supported by park administrations. This, however, is just the beginning of much-needed changes that may translate, for instance, into more intensive co-management that embraces Indigenous ecologies and even land back. Second, despite their harms, parks can remain important to Indigenous Peoples. They can harness their public education mission to reinforce Indigenous ecologies, belonging, and self-determination. Parks also largely refused industrial development within their borders to protect the land and its resident creatures. While not by design – and even done at the expense of Indigenous Peoples – this has often protected Tribal homelands, providing opportunities for reconnection, the return of culturally significant species, and the potential rewriting of wildlife management based on reciprocity and abundance.