National Parks as Cultural Landscapes

Globally, 50 per cent of all national parks and protected areas are on indigenous lands, with 85 per cent of parks in Latin America and Africa declared on indigenous territories (Kemf 1993, Amend and Amend 1995, Colchester 1996, Mackay 2002). This chapter reviews the history of indigenous exclusion and removal from national parks regarded as ‘wilderness areas’, starting with Yellowstone, and the relationship to tourism. By the 1980s, there was emerging recognition of national parks as cultural landscapes, inhabited by local people, with legal recognition of indigenous land rights and the advent of co-managed or jointly managed parks. Some key national parks that are now managed with indigenous groups in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the US are critically examined. These co-managed national parks represent the cultural identity of affiliated indigenous nations along with other political, economic and environmental values of national parks as symbolic landscapes and conservation or tourism icons representing the identity of modern nation-states. There is a focus in this chapter on governance structures allowing for indigenous inclusion in park management, cultural interpretation, cultural values and conflicts in parks and the involvement of indigenous groups in tourism and conservation within these co-managed national parks. Regaining legal control over tribal lands within parks and the reassertion of indigenous cultural identity in protected areas will increasingly define the management of conservation and tourism in these parks.