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

Abstract

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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