“Wilderness” revisited: Is Canadian park management moving beyond the “wilderness” ethic?

This paper questions whether the rescaling of conservation practice in Canada to include local and Indigenous communities, NGOs, and private market-based actors represents a move away from wilderness-thinking in conservation, and what implications this might have for the future of conservation in Canada. We explore the links between Cronon's “wilderness” ethic and coloniality, racism/sexism/classism, and political economy, and the extent to which recent trends in conservation practice, such as co-management arrangements, private tourism proposals, and a shift in programming to attract a diverse public to parks, help us to move beyond the limited vision for conservation and environmentalism that the wilderness ethic provides. We interrogate the ways in which the concept of wilderness is being employed, resisted, and transformed by a multitude of actors in three parks and conservation areas across Canada. We argue that although recent developments in conservation practice help to redress some of the worrisome aspects of wilderness-thinking in parks, they also reinforce and re-emphasize problematic lines of thinking and praxis. While the wilderness character of Canadian parks has shifted a great deal since the turn of the 20^th century, the wilderness ethic remains deeply embedded within conservation discourse and practice.     

Indigenous Tourism and Processes of Resilience – About Communicative Strategies among Tourism Workers in Québec

ABSTRACT

Tourism is a well-known way of life for an increasing portion of the world's indigenous communities, and it has taken tortuous paths and undergone changes in approach and meaning.

Indigenous tourism is examined here within the theoretical framework of resilience, focusing on development, communication and justification. Men and women and their perspectives on space, time and spatial relations are the crucial agents in these processes. Based on an empirical study in Québec, Canada, we show that the impact of indigenous tourism includes networks within the local community at the regional and national levels, as well as translocal networks and relationships. Communicative processes are essential for achieving resilience, communicating identity within families and the community, and giving a voice to a political project. We argue that indigenous tourism works on several geographical levels and that these levels intersect and have the potential to increase resilience if they interact. Our study supplements resilience development theory by highlighting the need to consider communities as parts of networks. It also contributes to the field of tourism research by emphasising communication on several levels.     

The politics of expressive forms,ethnographic practice,and indigenous–state relations

This review examines four recently published ethnographies of North American Indian communities in both the United States and Canada, each reflecting the ways in which sovereignty and self-determination are realized and compromised. The evolving indigenous polities discussed in these works each articulate with the nation-state that encompasses them in different ways, in large part by virtue of the kinds of resources the communities are perceived to manage by salient institutions in the dominant society. These works are also insightful concerning the possibilities and limitations of ethnography in highly politicized settings.     

Indigenous Environmental Justice: Comparing the United States and Canada’s Legal Frameworks for Endangered Species Conservation

Canada and the United States are both committed to the protection of endangered species. This article examines how the legal frameworks created around the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Canadian Species at Risk Act (SARA) intersect with Indigenous environmental justice (EJ). Specifically, the distribution of benefits and burdens is examined since critical habitat designations can limit activity on Native American and First Nation tribal lands. Legal documents and recent court cases also give insight into Indigenous inclusion and recognition in conservation approaches in North America. Overall, it is argued that Canada’s approach comes closer to EJ, but neither legal framework meets the criterion of genuine EJ for Native Americans and First Nations.     

4. TECHNOPOLITICS IN THE ARCHIVE: SOVEREIGNTY,RESEARCH, AND EVERYDAY LIFE

This article explores the place of the archive in the context of land claims research. This essay develops a critical approach to identity technopolitics with the aim of helping historians working with indigenous communities to ask new kinds of questions about the relationships and subject positions opened up by archivization and the myriad other technologies of land claims research. Since researchers first began preparing for the Canadian case, Delgamuukw’ and Gisday'wa v. The Queen, four decades ago, the immense stores of documentary evidence generated for the trial have given ground to numerous new claims and conflicts. Tracing the experiences of one prominent Gitxsan historical researcher who has leveraged his own archive and expertise to build genealogies for hundreds of individuals, I explore the intimate disappointments and impossible obligations that indigenous historians must mediate.     

“There are mentalities that need changing”: Constructing personhood,formulating citizenship,and performing subjectivities on a settler colonial frontier

Settler colonial nations are sites of legal pluralism in which encounters between differing constructions of citizenship are formulated. These can involve customary, differentiated, and universal modes of citizenship. But the relationships amongst these are problematic, as are the ways they play out in the performance of subjectivities. To understand these dynamics, we need to think about ideas of personhood that are at their root. Based on research in Nunavik, this article focuses on how, through wildlife management, notions of personhood are being legally codified, particularly in relation to property. It examines the degree to which official ideas of personhood coincide with Indigenous ones in the construction of citizenship, and considers how these combine with property relations in the performance of subjectivities. Enforcing state wildlife regulations has altered the moral codes that define what persons are and determine how they should interact with one another. This research underscores the contradictions that arise as a result of codifying notions of personhood and citizenship in the context of settler colonialism.     

Do Minorities Trust Less? Understanding Differences in Social Trust among Canada’s Major Ethno-Racial Groups

Using data from Canada’s General Social Survey, this article assesses ethno-racial differences in social trust. Bivariate findings reveal that the three most culturally distinctive minorities—visible minorities, the French, and Indigenous Peoples—exhibit the lowest trust of all groups. Multivariate analyses show that controls for “ethno-cultural markers” (religion, language, immigration status), socioeconomic influences (education, income), and social engagement indicators (voluntary association activity, ethnic diversity of friendships) explain the lower trust between the French and, less so, among visible minorities. Socioeconomic factors partly account for lower trust among Indigenous Peoples, but they still express comparatively low social trust even with controls. The article discusses how interpretations focusing on “social distance” and “social boundaries” processes help in understanding social trust differences across Canada’s major ethno-racial communities.     

Tomorrow’s Country: Practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia

First Nations peoples are revitalising diverse cultural fire practices and knowledge. Institutional and societal recognition of these practices is growing. Yet there has been little academic research on these fire practices in south-east Australia, let alone research led by Aboriginal people. We are a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts focused on cultural fire management in the Victorian Loddon Mallee region. Using interviews and workshops, we facilitated knowledge sharing and discussion. In this paper, we describe three practice-oriented principles to develop and maintain collaborations across Aboriginal groups, researchers, and government in the Indigenous-led revitalisation of fire on Country: relationships (creating reciprocity and trust), Country (working with place and people), and power (acknowledging structures and values). Collaborations based on these principles will be unique to each temporal, social, cultural, and geographic context. Considering our findings, we acknowledge the challenges that exist and the opportunities that emerge to constructively hold space to grow genuinely collaborative research that creates change. We suggest that the principles we identify can be applied by anyone wanting to form genuine collaborations around the world as the need for social–ecological justice grows.     

One image,multiple nationalisms: Face to Face and the Siege at Kanehsatà:ke

Iconic news photographs, particularly those taken during wars and national crises, provide visual synopses of important historical events – events about which stories of triumph and tragedy are superimposed. In this paper, we systematically trace the appearances and discussions of a single, iconic image, given the moniker Face to Face, over time. In the twenty plus years since its initial publication, media discourses around the image referenced Kanien'kehaka /Mohawk, Indigenous, Quebecois and Canadian nationalisms. We conclude that discourses surrounding war and conflict imagery can be read as reflecting plural nationalisms and that while a dominant meaning can be projected onto such imagery, this is neither singular nor fixed.