Colonial natures? Wilderness and culture in Gwaii Haanas National Park reserve and Haida heritage site

National parks in Canada have never only been about camping and wilderness preservation. Instead these parks are hubs of political, cultural, economic, and biophysical interaction that are subject to diverse national meanings. In Canada, national park status gives the state more power to ensure environmental standards than any other provincial or federal legislation. In examining the ways in which nature is a target of changing forms of governmental intervention, I look at how national parks in Canada continue to manage lands, people and the idea of nature. One of the core ideas that continues to shape national park projects is the explicit attempt to define a natural relationship between the nature contained within these places and Canadians. I argue that the creation of national parks involves the elaboration of a hegemonic governmental nationalism that is able to exercise powers of definition. A postcolonial environmental analysis is used to examine the nineteen-year struggle leading up to the creation of Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site on Haida Gwaii, British Columbia and its aftermath. The example of South Moresby is distinct in the history of both wilderness battles and of national parks in Canada because of the use of nationalist and sovereignist strategies to stop unsustainable exploitation of an ancient temperate rainforest. In particular, I explore the ways in which the Haida Nation’s assertion of title throughout the struggle has inflected different aspects of Gwaii Haanas, including how its existence as a national park of two nations troubles conventional imaginings of national parks in Canada. The connections that I draw between nature, nation and colonialism on Haida Gwaii are the result of an interest in the ways in which colonialism continues to operate in and through state institutions and lands in Canada.