Perspectives

Timothy LeCain brings together niche construction theory and neo-materialism in an analysis of late nineteenth-century open-range cattle ranching in Montana.

Clapperton evaluates three existing frameworks for understanding Indigenous and non-Indigenous claims to know the environment. While each framework has its strengths, they reinforce a binary between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge and keep salvage paradigms of Indigenous knowledge alive. Clapperton calls for an enlarged definition of Indigenous knowledge that could account for boundary-crossing and Indigenous people “doing” science.

Longley traces how geographic and cartographic knowledge of the Athabasca region, Alberta, Canada, colonized the region in the southern imagination long before the oil sands industry began extraction there. The practices of exploration, surveying, and documentation mapped the Athabasca region in terms of its rich bitumen deposits, obscuring the histories of Indigenous people. The south gained political and economic control of the region, although this process is incomplete and contested.

Sandlos and Keeling explore Indigenous resistance to arsenic pollution. Indigenous communities mobilized knowledge around environmental pollution and its health impacts. The authors show how this resistance to environmental racism is connected to other Indigenous struggles over industrial development and to issues such as land claims, sovereignty, and colonial dispossession.

Janovicek’s article studies the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By learning, preserving, and sharing traditional agricultural skills and knowledge, back-to-the-landers contributed to the revitalization of local food economies. The links they made connected them to others in their communities and to other generations of activists.

DeWitt explores tensions between national parks, private sector tourism, and environmentalism. Although private business owners feel connected to nature and play a role in park guardianship, a longstanding mistrust of private sector activity in and around national parks means their voices are often overlooked. The article calls for greater attention to the significance of gateway communities.

Dudley draws on her experience of researching the Severn River, UK, to reflect on what it means to know a place. The river is constituted through legal documents, maps, regulations, through the lived experience of recreational users, and through imaginative and artistic practices. These multiple ways of knowing a river can inform philosophies of place and space.

Trim’s article focuses on “countercultural environmentalists” and an alternative development program in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The project’s history raises questions about the consequences of treating environmental issues as technical problems to be solved with innovation and new technology. This approach both depoliticizes environmental issues and embeds them into new political structures.

This article traces the development of environmentalism in Portugal, and particularly the role of environmental NGOs as producers of expert knowledge to be used in policy making. The Portuguese environmental movement has professionalized rather than formalizing as green political parties. Portuguese environmentalism has adapted and evolved under authoritarian regimes, neoliberalism, European integration, and the financial crisis.

Piper argues that coal has played an important role in Alberta’s history, although it receives less attention than the oil sands. Coal has been essential to Alberta’s economy and the industry has benefited from government support, although from the 1970s this came into conflict with growing grassroots environmentalism. Whether the coal industry can withstand recent political and economic changes, however, remains to be seen.