Clear-Cutting and Colonialism: The Ethnopolitical Dynamics of Indigenous Environmental Activism in Northwestern Ontario

• Published in: Ethnohistory
• Main Author: Willow, Anna J.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Duke University Press 2009
• Subjects: Articles; anishina*
• Online Access: http://ethnohistory.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/56/1/35; https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2008-035

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.