Water Conversations – Alberta 2015

OH Alberta: Bewildered in Banff

OH Alberta: Bewildered in Banff is a series of photographs of an embroidered banner taken for a walk through the town of Banff in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The banner was a site of protest and a mobile memorial to the removed indigenous peoples whose former summer hunting grounds were in the Bow River Valley. The land was cleared of people to make way for tourism to Banff hot springs and the ‘wilderness’ of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Excluded from Banff National Park between 1890 and 1920, the first nations of the Nakoda peoples reservation is located east of Banff National Park and is the third largest Indian reserve in Canada. Known as Stoney 142, 143 and 144, the reserve was badly damaged by a flood in 2013 with hundreds of residents evacuated from their homes.

From residency at the Banff Centre, Alberta Canada. This body of work was made possible through the Jim Dining and Evelyn Main Endowed Scholarship for Visual Arts and Artist Bursary, Leitrim Arts Office, Ireland.

With thanks to the banner bearers, Kathryn Alder & Susan Leen

Photos: Anna Macleod and Nilcole Lattuca. March 2015