Infrastructure Exposé: Colonialism, Protests, and Logging at Fairy Creek on What is Now Vancouver Island

• Main Author: Mei-Ling Patterson
• Format: Report
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Environment and natural resources economics; Environmental policy; Environmental geography; Indigenous peoples environmental knowledge; Fairy Creek Blockade; Vancouver Island; British Columbia; Pacheedaht; Ditidaht; First Nations; civil disobedience; settler-colonial; Canada; Indigenous communities; Turtle Island
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.32920/19519681.v1; https://figshare.com/articles/report/Infrastructure_Expos_Colonialism_Protests_and_Logging_at_Fairy_Creek_on_What_is_Now_Vancouver_Island/19519681

The goal of this assignment was to select a specific infrastructure project in North America and expose its colonial roots. For my assignment, I chose the Fairy Creek Blockade, an ongoing protest being conducted to stop the logging of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, BC, on the unceded land of the Pacheedaht and Ditidaht First Nations. These protests are now the largest act of civil disobedience in the history of the settler-colonial state of what is currently Canada, and the growth of these protests has been largely due to the influence of social media. Throughout the research I conducted for this assignment, I found that in many ways, it has been the opinions of everyone other than the First Nations whose land this is. These topics have been and continue to be amplified in the media contributing to the ongoing erasure of the Pacheedaht and Ditidaht First Nations communities as well as that of many other Indigenous communities across Turtle Island. There are several colonial roots to this specific infrastructure resource extraction project which I explore throughout my assignment.