JUG320S: The Canadian Wilderness

JUG320S: The Canadian Wilderness Week 10: Native Land Claims Professor Emily Gilbert http://individual.utoronto.ca/emilygilbert/

Today’s Themes I: The “Normal Forest” II: Clayoquot Sound III: Whose Land? Whose Nature? Whose Knowledge? IV: Moving Beyond Wilderness

I: The “normal forest” • Sustained yield: amount of tree fiber removed from forest should equal amount added through growth • Need knowledge of inventories and growth rates, and economic, ecological and technological variables • Normal forest: “an outdated concept, drawing on the idea of a norm or standard forest structure against which existing forest structures can be compared. A normal forest is a forest composed of even-aged fully-stocked stands representing a balance of age classes such that for a specified rotation period, one age class can be harvested in each year. At the end of the rotation, the stands that were harvested first in the cycle would be ready for harvesting again” Government of British Columbia, Glossary of Forestry Terms.

Justice Gordon Sloan (1945) Report of the Commissioner Relating to the Forest Resources of British Columbia • How to rationalize forest production to produce rational and stable society • Normal forest makes competing uses difficult • Conflicts arise in 1980s as remote forests coming under practices of sustained-yield forestry

II: Clayoquot Sound • 262,000 hectare (3,500 km2) region of islands • Salmon-rich rivers and rainforested valleys • Low-elevation old-growth temperate rainforest

Clayoquot Sound • 262,000 hectare (3,500 km2) region of islands • Salmon-rich rivers and rainforested valleys • Low-elevation old-growth temperate rainforest

1979: Tofino residents begin to mobilize against logging; Friends of Clayoquot Sound formed • Early 1980s: Macmillan-Blodel and International Forest Products going to log intact forest areas • 1984: blockades set up on MI • 1985: Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht bands obtain injunction because of impending land claims; ecotourism grows • 1988: Blockades begin at Sulphur Passage; 35 people arrested • 1990: Task Force begins

1993: government unilaterally implements its land-use plan • Divides Clayoquot Sound into zones: preservation; logging; multi-use: 62% to be open to logging • Did not include Nuu-chah-nulth, even though they are almost entire population (except Tofino and Ucluelet) • Summer: • Mass protests, about 12,000 • Forest workers protest • Over 850 arrests • international attention, eg Midnight Oil

Logging corporations close down entire operations • Moves to include Aboriginal peoples in negotiations • 1993: Scientific Panel for Sustainable Forest Resource Practices created with Aboriginal input • Mike Harcourt flies to Europe, includes George Watts, a former Nuu-chah-nulth chief • 1994: Interim Measures Agreement announced • 1994: Central Regional Board created with Aboriginal co-management powers • 1996: MB and Aboriginal peoples begin negotiations to form shared venture • Nuu-Chuh-nulth ban Greenpeace from region

1997: Ma-Mook Natural Resources Limited founded to represent five Nuu-chah-nulth bands • 1998: MB and Ma-Mook form company, Iisaak Natural Resources Ltd. • 1999: Memorandum of Understanding signed between Iisaak Natural Resources and Greenpeace Canada, Greenpeace International, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club of BC and Western Canada Wilderness Committee. • 2000: CS designated a UN Biosphere Reserve

Iisaak will: • Develop and deliver new, innovative ways of managing the resources of Clayoquot Sound which respect to cultural, spiritual, recreational, economic and scenic values. • Collaborate with local communities and conservation interests to maximize the value of the products delivered through the application of forest practices that respect ecological and cultural values. • Deliver value based select products that are customized to meet the interests of local and international buyers. • Achieve Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification through an independent, third party accredited certifying body. • Establish a successful forest services company that will demonstrate innovative approaches to ecologically based forest management. • Visit and learn from examples of sustainable management of indigenous forests from around the world. • Manage adaptively.

Iisaak represents a turning point in resource management in Clayoquot Sound. A departure from conventional forest practices, Iisaak will respect all forest values: Conventional ForestryInnovative Forestry Maximizes profit. Builds asset value and total returns. Simplifies forest and outputs. Restores forest complexity. Manages for a single product. Manages for multiple products. Emphasizes quantity of production. Emphasizes quality of production. Reduces standing timber inventory. Sustains long-term forest yields. Reduces native biodiversity. Supports native biodiversity. "Environment" is a cost. "Environment" is a benefit. Adapted with permission from Michael Jenkins, Forest Trends

2006: Clayoquot Sound Central Region Board announces eight watershed plans for Clayoquot Sound: 90,000 hectares • UN Biosphere Reserve: • Development restricted in core area that includes 1 national parks, 16 provincial parks, 2 ecological reserves • Industrial activity not restricted in 58,000 hectare buffer zone, 180,000 hectare transition area • "Clayoquot Sound's pristine valleys should be saved forever, but these new plans undermine years of protests, good faith negotiations and the will of the international community," said Stephanie Goodwin, Greenpeace forest campaigner. "Any long-term solution for Clayoquot Sound must incorporate the protection of these valleys."

Western Canadian Wilderness Committee (WCWC) • Clayoquot: On the Wild Side (1990) • Photography by Adrian Dorst; text by Cameron Young

Clayoquot: On the Wild Side (1990) • importance of the visual • Seeing is believing • The objectivity of the camera and its operation • Bringing the local to other places • Understood within the wider circulation of texts • Presents the aesthetic beauty; spectacle of nature • Missing: workers, residents, recreationists • People as passive observers; women conflated with nature • Photographer absent (except 2): photography as unmediated production

Dorst as a “Robinson Crusoe with a zodiac”; masculinized hero protecting feminized nature • Constructs the reader as: • Nature’s defender • Heroic explorer

Where are the Aboriginal peoples? • Nuu-chah-nulth in Ahousat, Opitsat, Hesquiat, and Esowista

Aboriginal peoples • Inserted into narrative as part of nature • Pre-contact culture celebrated in text • Photos empty of people; echo with decline, loss • Located outside history, and hence within nature

Indigeneity as signifier: that which is not modern • Cultural, ideological, political-economic transformations • Not just Western discourse; and room for agency • Tradition guarantees indigeneity’s nonmodernity • Does not question linear, progressive history of modernity

Assumption that indigenous peoples • Have expertise in sustaining ecological relations • That preserving nature preserves indigenous culture • Postcolonial environmentalism • Indigenous identities defined and contained within European environmental imaginaries and the nation-state

III: Whose land? Whose nature? Whose knowledge? • Objectifying approach to nature of resource industry • “Here I stand for the wild things who have no voice in our courts, our boardrooms, and our politics. I speak for the wolves, the trees, and eagles” Clayoquot protester • “The very survival of the Nuu-chah-nulth depends on the survival of old growth forests. Old-growth forests are our most important places of worship. Within forests we are completed surrounded by life; within forests we can renew our spiritual bonds with all living things” Khah-keest-ke-us (Simon Lucas)

Nuu-chah-nulth—Umeek of Ahousaht • “hishuk-ish t’sawalk” everything is one • Mutual recognition, mutual respect, mutual responsibility, mutual accountability Delgamuukw Supreme Court decision (1997) • Recognizes Aboriginal title • Sui generis relationship to the land • Acknowledges Aboriginal perspective of land

Mapping Culturally modified trees (Arcas Associates) • Meares Island and 1980s logging • CMT to support Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht land claims • To establish uninterrupted relationship to place—over 2500 years • Systematic survey: about 20,000 CMTs • Transformations to CMT over time

Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom (TEKW) • Affirmation in Brundtland Report (1987) • Also Convention on Biological Diversity; Agenda 21… • Secwepemc (Shuswap), Interior Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw, and Nuu-Chah-Nulth, Northwestern BC

TEKW • Practices and strategies for resource use and sustainability • Philosophy or worldview • Community and exchange of knowledge or information “All of use, scientists and nonscientists alike, are looking for a more complete understanding of ecosystems, so that we can better care for them and alleviate some of the damage that we have done. TEKW provides answers, not only in terms of detailed observations of particular localities and resources, but also in terms of philosophies and methods of acquiring and communicating knowledge that can enrich our lives and help us to achieve a better, more sustainable relationship with our environment” (Turner, Ignace and Ignace 1285)

IV: Moving Beyond Wilderness • “Theoretical purity can be a dangerous game if it undermines political action” (Braun 72) • “objective is not to tear things apart; it is to engage in the work that must be done in order to locate other, more just, worlds where current practices of marginalization have less purchase” (Braun 72)

“We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as, as ‘wild.’ Only to the white man was nature a ‘wilderness’ and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame...When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the ‘Wild West’ began.” Ogalala Sioux Chief Luther Standing Bear

“I never thought of the Stein Valley as a wilderness. My Dad used to say ‘that’s our pantry’. We knew about all the plants and animals, when to pick, when to hunt. We knew because we were taught every day. It’s like we were pruning everyday... But some of the white environmentalists seemed to think if something was declared a wilderness, no-one was allowed inside because it was so fragile. So they have put a fence around it, or maybe around themselves.” Ruby Dunstan, of the Nl’aka’pamux people of the Stein Valley in Alberta, Canada

“You have CheeBaiging which is where our people’s spirits go after they die. The Teme-Augama Anishnabai cannot look at our homeland as wilderness… They’ve got to be words that are attached to the land. And that is the case with this refiguring wilderness. You’ve grown from it, your descendants have grown from it, you’ve been a part of this growth from the land as well. There is no such thing as ‘wilderness,’ a word that maybe in a couple of hundred years, maybe even sooner, will have no meaning. Wilderness is now losing its meaning for colonial purposes” Chief Gary Potts, Teme-Augama Ahnishnabai

JUG320S: The Canadian Wilderness