On August 9, the day the United Nations has designated for the recognition and celebration of indigenous peoples all over the world, the Foothills Ojibway Society will perform traditional songs and dances in the lobby of the Sawridge Inn and Conference Centre. If the group ever wishes to demonstrate these elements of their traditional culture on sacred ground near Jasper, they’ll have to engage in some fancy footwork of a decidedly different sort.

The Ojibway consider Buffalo Prairie, an open grassland near the Valley of the Five Lakes and clearly visible from Highway 93, to be traditional land. Those connected with the group speak of the Ojibways’ deep spiritual connection to the place. It would seem an ideal location to conduct their traditional rites, but for that to happen, the group will have to formally start the ball rolling with Parks Canada.

“There have been some informal discussions about holding this event in Jasper National Park,” said Sherrill Meropoulis, heritage program officer for the park. “There’s a possibility of having something in the park next year but first we have to have a formal request and then it has to go through an environmental assessment process.”

Meropoulis wouldn’t speculate about potential ecological concerns involved with holding an event at Buffalo Prairie, but did suggest that Parks might not be alone in wanting to be cautious about the environmental health of the area.

“They have some cultural values of their own that may be important to consider in that respect, about preservation,” she said. “Is there a potential for future use for ceremonial purposes? I would say yes, we really value these opportunities.”

Meropoulis has been working alongside JNP Superintendent Ron Hooper to build relationships with the many aboriginal and Metis groups with historical links to the park and she hopes that closer collaboration can lead to the development of a policy or framework for this sort of activity on national park lands.

“We are going to get more requests for spiritual and ceremonial use of Parks land as we work on communicating with our partners,” she said. 

While draft policies exist regarding aboriginal use arrangments in national parks and historic sites, Meropoulis said nothing final or formal has been created. Locally, no ad hoc arrangments have been made with individual interests.

“Nothing specifically has happened yet, there are those things that may happen rather informally, but again through engaging with our partners in the Metis and aboriginal communities, we hope to work on that.”

The Ewan Moberly homestead site is a good example of that collaboration, Meropoulis said. Working with the descendents of the Metis settler, Parks came up with interpretive media for the site, as well as doing some important building stabilization.

“We’ve created a really nice site upon which the story of the Metis in the upper Athabasca Valley can be told,” she said.

A meeting scheduled for the fall will bring many of the interested groups to Jasper to discuss the relationship between aboriginal groups and Jasper National Park. 

“That will be a really important foundational meeting for us,” Meropoulis said. “There’s much recognition of the importance of these stories, and the need for these groups to involved. They are undrepresented stories, not just in Jasper National Park, but across Canada.”