Idealizing Inhabited Wilderness: A Revision to the History of Indigenous Peoples and National Parks (original) (raw)

Whereas most histories of national parks and indigenous peoples have largely focused on dispossession of resident populations in the making of uninhabited wilderness areas, this article surveys the perhaps equally problematic history of the idea of preserving human communities today referred to as ‘indigenous’ in parks. In the very first-ever call for a national park, as well as in frequent proposals for nation parks throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and now the twenty-first century, protected areas have been envisioned as places of conservation, study and display not only of endangered species, but also of human groups perceived to be endangered. Drawing on cases from the early US, colonial Africa, Indonesia and India, as well as on histories of international conservation policies emerging around WWI, the article argues that this alternative conception of what national parks should look like has been pervasive, perennial, and deeply problematic. The problem is not only that indigenous groups have long been perceived as in danger of becoming extinct, and therefore paternalistically projected as in need of protection. It is also that these peoples, who have long suffered dehumanizing animal analogies, are envisioned as endangered like wildlife, and in need of protection in parks.

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