Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper, Environmental Activism on the Ground: Small Green and Indigenous Organizing (review)

Labour / Le Travail
Issue 93 (2024)

Reviews / Comptes rendus

Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper, Environmental Activism on the Ground: Small Green and Indigenous Organizing (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2019)

Conceptualised in response to hegemonies of big green organisations within environmental discourse, this volume contains a curated collection of works that both criticise the erasure of Indigenous action from large-scale mainstream environmental efforts, and also partakes in re-historicising environmentalism with a heterogenous lens towards local-level sovereignty-driven “land and community stewardship.” (86)

Divided into two parts, Environmental Activism on the Ground begins by outlining tools, strategies, and processes undertaken by local-level environmental actors (Indigenous or otherwise) in Part 1 (Processes and Possibilities). These are supplemented with suggestions for future environmental action, grounded in empirics rather than theory. Part 2 (Histories) contextualises roots of environmentalist strategies and attempts to highlight Indigenous treaty rights within the history of North American environmentalism. Part 2 contains the only explicitly Indigenous-authored chapter (by Tobasonakwut Peter Kinew), which was originally published in the magazine Alternatives, in the 1970s.

The authors of this volume reportedly aimed to produce a “hopeful and optimistic book,” (15) in response to the discursive shifts in environmentalism towards “imaginative, aspirational, and future-oriented” (15) narratives rather than ones that illustrate inevitability of doomed futures. Hope and optimism simmer throughout the main arguments of various chapters, especially shining through in Grossman’s work, which illustrated the power of spatial tactics employed by local activists to disrupt operations of seemingly-invincible big energy corporations. This aspect of the volume stands out as an act of scholar-activism by coalescing academic and activist goals.

Discussions of Indigenous-settler alliances noted in Grossman’s work are similarly present in chapters by Evans, Leeming, Willow, and Welch. Evans’ chapter is intended as a hope-inspiring documentation of Indigenous-state confrontations across the Americas (North, Central, and South) within the context of environmentalism. He historicises state violence against Indigenous communities and concludes by listing examples of successes or improvements in Indigenous-state relations. Similarly, Willow propagates cross-cultural alliances as crucial components of envisioning environmental futures. Grossman’s chapter stands out by attempting to balance romanticised notions of humanist unity in environmental activism with acknowledgments of power relations between marginalised and privileged actors: “The idea of why can’t we all just get along (like ‘united we stand’ or ‘all lives matter’) is sometimes used to suppress marginalised voices, asking them to sideline their demands in the interest of the ‘common good.’” (63)

Beyond highlighting green alliances, several authors encourage us to challenge normative definitions of environmentalism and conservation, while partially unearthing the assumptions that built them into existence. In her analysis of environmental histories of provincial and state parks, DeWitt quotes Carolyn Finney to point out exclusion of African Americans from narratives around conservation while suggesting “historians should aim to broaden their definition of environmentalism.” (144) Similarly, Leeming’s work on Canadian rural environmentalism grounded in post-colonial theories impressively upturns the normative direction in which conceptual frameworks travel within mainstream environmental scholarship – from the Global North to Global South. Leeming’s chapter makes crucial contributions to the social history of environmentalism in North America. First, he counters metro-normativity in environmental activism discourse by focusing on rural activism; and second, his work expertly draws upon post-colonial theories of scholars from the Global South (Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martinez-Alier) to inform understandings of environmentalism in rural Nova Scotia. Additionally, Willow asks us to abandon “Western-centric perspectives” (36) of conservation in favour of pluralistic definitions.

Scales, measurements, and effectiveness of activist “successes” were central tenets connecting various chapters in this volume. Zelko, Clapperton, and McLaughlin’s chapters towards the end were most prominently aimed at providing “insights into the tensions around size, scale, and impact that shaped histories” (13) of environmentalism from 1960s until 1980s. The authors present important challenges to linear narrativisations of environmental movements (from local to global, from small scale to large scale). Tumultuous trajectories of small organisations like The Society for Pollution and Environmental Control (Clapperton) and an “environmental behemoth” (289) like Greenpeace (Zelko) presented side-by-side depict the complexities of scaling movements and problematises the assumption that scaling upwards leads to positive growth for environmental organisations.

Crucially, the editors point out the dearth of scholarship attending to Indigenous and small scale activism, placing the text in a position to address this lacuna in the field. It may also benefit us to consider exactly how this gap is to be filled. A meaningful incorporation of Indigenous voices could have been demonstrated by adopting Indigenous theoretical frameworks of relationality and decoloniality and including original writing by Indigenous scholars/activists. Liza Piper’s analysis of environmental discourse in Alternatives magazine in the 1970s served as an introduction to the only explicitly Indigenous-authored chapter (Kinew), republished in this volume. As part of her content analysis of Alternatives’ contributor biographies, Piper highlights the lack of Indigenous voices and authorship in Alternatives in the 1970s.

In the same vein as authors of Alternatives writing about Indigeneity, Welch, Willow, and Grossman, “certainly foregrounded [Indigenous] affiliations in order to lend credibility to their ability to speak to Indigenous issues.” (161) These authors had significant work-based lived experience in their sites of research. Welch’s chapter shows intricate knowledge of the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s activism, likely owing to his decades of experience in Apache lands. Similarly, Willow’s study has resulted from years of working with activists in Grassy Narrows First Nation (Ontario) and West Moberly First Nations (British Columbia). Grossman’s experience as a community organiser for Native and rural non-native alliances to protect local ecologies informed his work on how local-level climate action can pose serious confrontations to shipping and expansion practices of fossil fuel industries.

Yet, the authors who included a positionality statement to outline their lived experiences of working with Indigenous peoples also fall short of reflecting upon their racial or gendered position within their work. Willow comes closest to acknowledging her social location in her work: she states her Euro-American and middle-class identity as a position of privilege but does not delve into how she has navigated this privilege while conducting research with Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental activists. Here we may recall Indigenous scholars, such as Marisa Elena Duarte, signalling the centrality of delving into researcher positionality within the project of intellectual decolonisation.

As the editors point out, several tools and processes of environmentalism within and outside of green organisations have been highlighted within this volume – coalitions and alliances (between Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists; the state and activists; and the state and Indigenous Peoples); adaptation and growth trajectories of organisations; and incorporation of scientific expertise in activism. Curation of chapters centring on various geographical areas in Part 2 lends itself well to re-historicising environmentalism, especially in Canada, which can be seen as a crucial contribution of this volume. Overall, Environmental Activism on the Ground makes crucial contributions to contemporary environmental sects within archaeology, sociology, history, and geography.

Chetna Khandelwal

University of Calgary

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52975/llt.2024v93.026.