Curated by Ryley Gelinas

The American Hotel, 2020
Courtesy Ryley Gelinas

Hotel mural by Glen Eagle Speaker

The American Hotel in Fort Macleod, Alberta, a now vacant building, was once a place of interaction between the settlers of the town, the colonial police force which helped found the fort and the Indigenous peoples living in town and on surrounding reserves. In this way, the American Hotel can be seen as a contact zone, a space in which social, racial, and cultural differences and similarities were constructed and reinforced. 

Through a combination of objects, archival sources, newspaper articles and oral history interviews, this exhibition portrays the American Hotel and its history as a contact zone from the 1950s to the 1980s through changing ownership, exploring patron interactions and examining police intervention.