Clear-Cutting and Colonialism: The Ethnopolitical Dynamics of Indigenous Environmental Activism in Northwestern Ontario
Since December 2002 members of Grassy Narrows First Nation have maintained a blockade to slow the pace of clear-cut logging in their traditional territory. This article situates contemporary anti-clear-cutting activism at Grassy Narrows in its ethnohistorical and ethnopolitical context. It considers...
| Published in: | Ethnohistory |
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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Duke University Press
2009
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| Online Access: | http://ethnohistory.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/56/1/35 https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2008-035 |
| Summary: | Since December 2002 members of Grassy Narrows First Nation have maintained a blockade to slow the pace of clear-cut logging in their traditional territory. This article situates contemporary anti-clear-cutting activism at Grassy Narrows in its ethnohistorical and ethnopolitical context. It considers the blockade not as a manifestation of inherent indigenous environmentality but as a complex phenomenon predicated on Anishinaabe people's desires for self-determination, recognition of rights, and the power to decide what takes place on land they perceive as theirs. More broadly, it suggests that acknowledging indigenous environmental activism as a fundamentally political project challenges stereotypical images of ecological nobility and, concurrently, calls into question mainstream conceptions of a just modern society that has long since done away with colonialism. |
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