As part of a commitment to collaborating with Indigenous Peoples to protect natural and cultural heritage, Parks Canada says work is already underway at its two national sites near Revelstoke to advance conservation and reconciliation.
As per the federal agency's 2025-26 Departmental Plan, announced last July, three-and-a-half dozen sites across the country will see land, water and ice management returned, in part, to the hands of the communities who've stewarded these places for millennia.
Since Parks Canada enacted its Indigenous Stewardship Policy in 2024, a goal has been "to support the connections between Indigenous peoples and the lands, waters and ice located within the traditional territories, treaty lands, and ancestral homelands that overlap with national heritage places," it wrote.
It says this goal falls in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, as well as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 79th and 80th Calls to Action. No. 79, in particular, asks Canada to develop a framework for adjusting national sites and monuments to commemorate First Nations, Inuit, and Métis history, heritage values and memory practices.
By March 2026, the federal agency aims to have cooperative management and decision-making with Indigenous Peoples at least 27 natural and 15 cultural heritage sites. Which sites, specifically, however, remain to be seen.
Locally, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier national parks' teams are working with the Ktunaxa, Secwépemc, Sinixt and Syilx Okanagan to build strong relationships and give these groups opportunities to reconnect with their traditional lands and engage in local management, according to Parks Canada.
"At Rogers Pass National Historic Site and along interpretative trails in Mount Revelstoke and Glacier national parks, Parks Canada is working with local nations to develop exhibits and interpretive materials that reflect the full story of this area," public relations and communications officer Sierra Stinson told Black Press Media by email.
Today, both Mount Revelstoke and Glacier still lack comprehensive educational material throughout their informational signage on local Indigenous history and culture. Even the Rogers Pass Centre offers little insight into the instrumental roles that First Nations played in early European settlement and transit through the pass, which is where most historical accounts of Glacier start from.
"Very little is known about the use of the area by First Nations peoples before the arrival of the railway route finders in the 1860s and 1880s," Parks Canada notes online. "More work needs to be done to fill this gap in our understanding of the human heritage of the Selkirk Mountains."
Occasionally, early European visitors to Rogers Pass attempted to highlight certain elements of the landscape with local languages, to mixed effect. For example, the Illecillewaet River, along with the namesake valley and glacier, carries the Sinixt term for "big water" all the way from the park to Upper Arrow Lake.
Two years after Glacier was established, William Spotswood Green named the area he first climbed in 1888 the Asulkan Valley because he reported "asulkan" to mean "wild goat" in a local First Nations dialect. However, it remains unclear which language the word would've come from.
Moreover, the dominant tendency of settlers in the early days of Mount Revelstoke and Glacier was to name peaks, passes and other picturesque places using words familiar to them — rather than to the First Nations who'd already known the lands for time immemorial.
Following public engagement back in 2019, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier staff reported a lack of representation of Indigenous history and culture on these lands, and consequently, a lack of public education.
"Parks Canada heard from many people that they are unaware of Indigenous cultures, histories and traditional territories in the area," the engagement summary reads. "Comments identified the need to involve Indigenous peoples in protecting and sharing the area’s natural and cultural heritage, and in decision-making for the parks."
At the time of the engagement, the agency didn't even distinguish the Sinixt as one of the local Indigenous communities.
Six years later, as collaboration with all four First Nations is now in motion for Revelstoke's two national parks, Stinson specified that one way Parks Canada is engaging locally with these communities in conservation, species recovery and habitat restoration is through Indigenous-led Guardians initiatives.
Since 2018, the federal government has invested $125 million in more than 240 of these initiatives for First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, with current funding expected to last through 2026.
"These programs help maintain and revitalize Indigenous connection to the lands, waters, and ice that sustain the systems of knowledge, laws, and governance that inform Indigenous stewardship practices," Stinson added.
She noted that "Parks Canada will continue to engage Indigenous communities connected to Mount Revelstoke and Glacier national parks to take a two-eyed seeing approach to conservation, ecological protection, wildfire risk reduction, species management, and archaeological care."
