Re(con)figuring Alliances: Place Membership, Environmental Justice, and the Remaking of Indigenous-Environmentalist Relationships in Canada's Boreal Forest

Abstract

Critical observers of the international environmental movement have found that indigenous-environmentalist alliances have often been predicated upon reproductions of an asymmetrical political status quo, thereby perpetuating indigenous peoples' systemic disadvantages and predestining promising partnerships for eventual disintegration. Spotlighting the relationship between Grassy Narrows First Nation and Rainforest Action Network, this article describes how indigenous-environmentalist alliances are being constructively re(con)figured in the context of recent anti-clearcutting activism in northwestern Ontario. An analysis of the positive interpersonal relationships cited by participants as key to the coalition's success reveals the significance of (1) a social setting conducive to imagining membership in a diverse community united by an emplaced interest in boreal forest protection and (2) a transformed conceptual framework that redefines the environment to include human activities and concerns. I argue that this dynamic socio-discursive context not only facilitated the development of a strong alliance and an effective conservation campaign, but may also ultimately empower indigenous communities to participate in environmental protection on terms that are closer to their own. When environmentalists refigure the categories that guide their relationships to the places they seek to protect, they also reconfigure the power structures underpinning their alliances with the indigenous groups who call those places home.

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