Lions and Tigers and Bears—Wait, Why?

Modern zoos and aquaria are sites of education, recreation, research, and conservation; they are also the result of thousands of years of human-animal interaction, colonial expansion, and imperial violence. Beginning with the similar but not identical menagerie, this paper historically situates customs and ideologies to demonstrate how the zoo genre has changed over time. A brief review of academic, grey, professional, and community literature explores critical perspectives on contemporary animal display practices. Though North American zoos have come a long way from the concrete pits and metal bars of the 19th and 20th centuries—and it is important to recognize that the people working in zoos and aquaria do critically important work—I argue that contemporary zoo exhibitions still act as a manifestation of these legacies when they remove tangible reminders of human contact and interference with animals and other non-human beings. Through an analysis of exhibit design at a zoo and an aquarium in Canada, this paper explores how animal exhibits at zoos and aquaria may maintain a colonial gaze in their dominant positioning of human visitors. Elder Albert Marshall’s “Two-Eyed Seeing” framework shows us how we might reimagine these practices with both Indigenous and mainstream Western ways of knowing.