Buried Epistemologies: The Politics of Nature in (Post) Colonial British Columbia

Author(s): Bruce Willems-Braun

Source: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 3-
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Buried Epistemologies: The Politics of
Nature in (Post)colonial British Columbia
Bruce Willems-Braun
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
Postcolonial theory has asserted the need to carefully consider how present-day social and cultural
practices are marked by histories of colonialism. This paper explores representations of the 'rainforest'
and nature'in British Columbia, Canada, and traces a series of 'buried epistemologies'through which
neocolonial relations are asserted in the region. Drawing upon recent representations of the forest
proffered by the forest industry and the environmental movement, and the historical writings of a
prominent nineteenth-century geologist and amateur ethnologist, the author shows how 'nature' ('wil-
derness') has been constructed as a realm separate from 'culture. 'He locates in this the possibility for
contemporary practices that abstract and displace the forest'from its cultural surrounds and relocate
it within the abstract spaces of the market, the nation, and, in recent ecological rhetorics, the biosphere
and the global community. By so doing, the author contests assumptions that colonialism is only an
'ugly chapter' of Canadian history and argues instead that colonialist practices and rhetorics remain
present but unthought in many of the categories, identities, and representational practices that are
deployed today both in public debate and scientific management of 'natural landscapes'and 'natural
resources.' Thus, amid the current popularity of notions like sustainable development, biodiversity
management, ecosystem restoration, and so on-which risk abstracting natural systems' apart from
their cultural surrounds-it is essential to recognize the colonial histories and neocolonial rhetorics
that continue to infuse 'commonsense'categories and identities like 'nature'and 'resources. 'Key Words:
cultural
politics, environmentalism, nature,
postcolonialism
Focusing attention on the presence of the colonial
imagination in today's post-colonial society is not
a gesture of ahistoricism-on the contrary. Prob-
lematizing historical distance, and analyzing the
way streams of the past still infuse the present,
make historical inquiry meaningful (Bal 1991:34).
A t what point can we be said to have en-
tered the 'postcolonial'? This question has
been raised recently by a number of writ-
ers who worry that with the recent acceptance
of 'postcolonial' criticism and theory into the
academy, the term is now applied so broadly
(and uncritically) as to render it empty (Mishra
and Hodge 1991; McClintock 1992). At its
best, postcolonial theory has sought to bring
critical attention to bear on the contested ter-
rains, global flows, and hybrid identities of a
world undeniably marked by histories and lega-
cies of colonization and decolonization, includ-
ing even the spaces and identities of the met-
ropolitan 'core,' its forms of consciousness and
its theories (Spivak 1988a; Appadurai 1990;
Bhabha 1994). At its worst, postcolonial theory
assumes a temporality that suggests that coloni-
alism is something that can be relegated to the
past, or, equally problematic, generalizes first, a
colonial discourse, and second, a subsequent
postcolonial condition, in ways that are inatten-
tive to the unevenness and particularity of spe-
cific colonial practices, processes of decoloniza-
tion and continuing anticolonial struggles
located at different sites; projecting globally
what are but local practices (for critiques, see
Mishra and Hodge 1991; McClintock 1992;
Shohat 1992; Dirlik 1994; Thomas 1994; De
Alva 1995). Most useful, I think, are those in-
stances where commentators have asserted the
need to think carefully about the continuity of
colonial or neocolonial relations, tracing the
way that streams of the past still infuse the pre-
sent (Bal 1991; Shohat 1992), and also turning
attention to differences between and within
'postcolonial' societies whereby the legacies of
colonialism are experienced unevenly between
Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, 87(1), 1997, pp. 3-31
? 1997 by Association of American Geographers
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4 Willems-Braun
social objects (Frankenberg and Mani 1993).
'Postcoloniality,' after all, appears quite different
when applied to different social groups within
now-independent white settler colonies like the
U.S., to the mestizaje of Latin America or to
indigenous peoples in Canada or Australia. In
this paper, the ambivalence of the term post-
colonial is explored along with its theoretical
and political relevance through a discussion of
the 'politics of nature' in recent environmental
conflicts in British Columbia, Canada (hereafter
BC).
In light of recent criticism, 'postcoloniality' is
now often taken to refer not only to a condition
'after colonialism' but also to the ways that co-
lonial pasts continue to organize experience in
the present. It signals, in other words, both con-
tinuity and discontinuity in histories of colonial
power and decolonization. As Stuart Hall has
recently noted, the temporalities (and, I would
add, spatialities) of colonialism/postcolonialism
are neither singular nor universal.
What 'post-colonial' certainly is not is one of those
periodisations based on epochal 'stages,' when
everything is reversed at the same moment, all the
old relations disappear forever and entirely new
ones come to replace them. Clearly, the disen-
gagement from the colonising process has been a
long,
drawn-out and differentiated affair (Hall
1996:247).
For Hall, postcolonial societies are characterized
by the persistence of the 'aftereffects' of colonial-
ism. But, he cautions, its politics cannot be
declared to be the same as they were during the
time of direct colonial occupation and rule, or
assumed to take the same form across different
sites. I wish to draw out three implications that
follow from Hall's remarks, and which in turn
frame the discussions that follow. First, in light
of the complex histories of colonialism/post-
colonialism, it seems necessary that we renovate
our conceptions of historical time. In other
words, to comprehend how colonialist practices
persist in the present requires a shift from con-
ceptions which understand the time of colonial-
ism/postcolonialism to be singular and unified
and where postcolonialism necessarily follows
after and supersedes colonialism as a subsequent
stage in history, to an increased attention to the
multiple temporalities of colonialism/postcolo-
nialism, the many condensations and ellipses
that arise when these different temporalities are
convened in relation to each other, and the vari-
ous temporal rhythms and spatialities that gov-
ern the emergence of colonialist or counter-
colonial representations and practices. Second,
if there is indeed no singular time and space
of colonialism/postcolonialism-but only the
transient moment of many intersecting tempo-
ralities and spatialities drawn into relation-it is
also impossible to speak of a singular colonial
discourse. If we take colonial discourse to refer
to the production and codification of knowl-
edge that underwrites and legitimates the de-
ployment of Western power over colonial sub-
jects (Williams and Chrisman 1994), it must be
recognized that this also occurs
diffierentially
through time and between places and thus can
be approached as neither a fixed nor universal
set of statements (see Thomas 1994). Quite the
opposite-it can be argued that colonial power,
far from monolithic, seizes upon, enlists, and
combines a range of discourses, knowledges, and
signifying practices (scientific, religious, aes-
thetic) which are not formally or ideologically
aligned with colonial administration, but from
which the demarcation and regulation of differ-
ence can be appropriated and utilized by colo-
nial power. In short, as Nicholas Thomas argues,
there can be no global theory of colonial culture,
only localized theories and historically specific
accounts that provide insight into varied articu-
lations of colonialist and countercolonial rep-
resentations and practices.1 Finally, it follows
that any politics of decolonization in the present
must be attentive to these multiple temporalities
and spatialities, and thus to the multiple forms
that colonialist practices take and to the differ-
ential and nonidentical sites of resistance that
emerge in this colonial/postcolonial terrain.
This is as true for North American societies as
any other. As Ella Shohat and Robert Stam
(1994) have demonstrated for North America,
colonialist cultural practices, and Eurocentrism
more generally, remain endemic, present as "re-
sidual traces of centuries of axiomatic European
domination" and therefore continue to inform
"the general culture, the everyday language, and
the media." Such "vestigial thinking," to use
their phrase, "permeates and structures contem-
porary practices and representations even after
the end of colonialism. . . . [It] embeds, takes
for granted, and 'normalizes' the hierarchical
power relations generated by colonialism and
imperialism" (p. 2). These traces are not always
immediately visible, nor do they comprise a ho-
mogeneous, internally consistent, (neo)colonial
discourse. Instead, they take the form of "buried
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Buried Epistemologies
5
epistemologies" or "bad epistemic habits" that
have been naturalized as "common sense" in
everyday relations and in social, economic, and
political
institutions.2
For geographers, the claim that a colonial
imagination can be found in the present, and,
further, that it operates quietly and effectively in
unquestioned identities and positive knowl-
edges, has presented a challenge to the disci-
pline's self-understanding. Like anthropologists
earlier, geographers have come to recognize their
discipline's complicity with colonialism and im-
perialism (Driver 1992; Livingstone 1992;
Godlewska and Smith 1994), although few have
given this a contemporary focus. Indeed, the
critical project as a whole has followed certain
paths, while leaving others unexplored. Most
commentators have mapped the links between
individual geographers, geographical institu-
tions, and past colonial administration: geog-
raphy as knowledge wielded in the interest of
empire. Others, drawing on a very different con-
cept of power, have explored in more detail the
colonizing power inherent in particular ways of
rendering landscapes 'visible': in other words,
the intersection of modalities of power, knowl-
edge, and spatiality in specific colonial practices
(Driver 1992; Gregory 1994; Ryan 1994). In
almost all cases, however, colonialism is safely
relegated to the past, although the motivation
behind this work often lies in the present
(Driver 1988). Curiously, while geographers
have paid considerable attention to the sig-
nificance of the production and representation
of space for colonial practices, less attention has
been paid to the production and representation
of nature. Geographers have had little to say
about the role that the production of nature
(rhetorically and materially) has played in the
colonization of particular social environments,
how natural scientists (including geographers)
made visible and available to colonial adminis-
tration a discrete realm called 'nature' that could
be seen as separate from colonized peoples, or,
perhaps more important, how what counts as
'nature' today is often constituted within, and
informed by, the legacies of colonialism. No
doubt this is explained in part by the growing
distance between critical human geography
(concerned primarily with spatiality) and envi-
ronmental geography (concerned mostly with
the management of physical environments),
such that both approaches all too often allow
'nature' to stand as an unproblematized, ahisto-
rical 'object.' So, although geographers have
written extensively on the representation ofna-
ture, and, equally as important, have linked this
with nature's transformation, this paper focuses
on questions of representation for different rea-
sons.3 Rather than explore changing ideas about
nature, I am more interested in the emergence of
'nature' as a discrete and separate object of aes-
thetic reflection, scientific inquiry, and eco-
nomic and political calculation at particular sites
and specific historical moments. By attending to
nature's construction in representational prac-
tices, the cultural politics that accompany each
and every staging of 'nature' can be made ex-
plicit. It may be necessary then-amid declara-
tions of the postcolonial-to decolonize com-
monsense notions of 'nature'; that is, to locate
the operation of relations of colonial power in
what has hitherto been seen as an inviolable
identity.
The 'Fate' of the Temperate
Rainforest: 'Public' Conflicts
and Constitutive Silences
The most intense, mediatized, and interna-
tionalized conflicts in British Columbia have
surrounded the 'fate' of the region's temperate
rainforest. These conflicts have conventionally
been staged as struggles between the forest in-
dustry and environmentalists, seen as an agonis-
tic contest between two poles in the sort of bi-
nary logic of 'regulated opposition' that Baudril-
lard (1984) locates as both the form and content
of politics in what he calls highly "mediatized"
societies (and without which the singular col-
lapses under its own weight). This binary 'stag-
ing' has focused much-needed attention on the
ecological consequences of forest modification,
on the responsibilities of forest users, and, to a
lesser extent, on the political economy of the
forest industry. But it has also worked hand-in-
hand with, and indeed relied heavily upon, the
marginalization of other voices-labor, local
communities, and, as I argue in this paper, in-
digenous peoples (First Nations)4 who do not
fit either of the 'positions' ascribed. Rather than
referee these conflicts, I seek to interrupt this
binary staging through a series of other ques-
tions about what is left unthought in struggles
over nature' in a region like BC. In what ways
and to what extent do these conflicts occur upon
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6 Willems-Braun
and rework a material-semiotic terrain already
inscribed within and through the histories and
tropes of past colonial practices? To what extent
are these histories simultaneously present but
buried within the conventional categories-'na-
ture,' 'resource,' the 'nation'-through which
these struggles are mediated such that these cate-
gories appear today in our public cultures as
unmarked, self-evident 'identities,' leaving their
constitutive moments in colonial histories, and
their political significance in the present, unex-
amined? How do these identities, in turn, work
to authorize certain voices (industry, environ-
mentalists) while simultaneously marginalizing
others? In short, to what extent are political
struggles over nature in sites like British Colum-
bia always already complicit in a politics ofna-
ture that risks reenacting colonial relations in
the present?
The significance of these questions has been
made evident most recently in the highly pub-
licized conflicts over the 'fate' of the forest in
Clayoquot Sound, a region that covers some
350,000 ha on the west coast of Vancouver Is-
land (Figure 1) and which contains large areas
of "old-growth" forests.5 That the region has
become the focus of intense international atten-
tion in the 1990s is due, in part, to a particular
configuration of local-global economic, cul-
tural, and ecological dynamics that have com-
bined to produce Clayoquot Sound as an
'event.' These can be summarized briefly. First,
rates of timber harvest in BC have historically
exceeded the annual reproduction of wood fibre
in the province's "economically viable" forests.
This, together with increased competition from
new wood fibre-producing regions (Southeast-
ern United States, New Zealand, Indonesia,
Brazil, and Chile, among others) has resulted in
a situation where for transnational forest com-
panies to maintain market share and profitabil-
ity, and for the provincial government to meet
its social goal of sustaining local forest-depend-
ent communities, the further exploitation of al-
ready depleted old-growth forests is necessary.
Second, just when the last remnants of so-called
'unmodified' forests were scheduled to be re-
made in the image of the commodity, the
science of ecology provided powerful new meta-
phors and new ways of 'envisioning' the for-
ests-and the earth-as ecological systems, and
thereby brought within public discourse con-
cerns over biodiversity, habitat fragmentation,
and ecological 'integrity.' Yet other local-global
.'.g: . .. ............
Figure
1. Location of Vancouver Island, British Co-
lumbia,
showing Clayoquot
Sound and areas claimed
as traditional territories
by
the Nuu-chah-nulth.
dynamics
have
emerged concurrently:
the
growth
of Vancouver as an administrative, fi-
nancial, and service center in
globalizing
econo-
mies,
increasingly detaching
the
city
from the
remainder of a
resource-dependent province
(Davis and Hutton
1989); linked to these trans-
formations, the formation of a new middle class
in Vancouver and elsewhere for whom 'nature'
could be
given
new
meanings;
and the
develop-
ment of international circuits of
capital,
com-
modities, and
images
that have
increasingly
dis-
placed
sites like
Clayoquot
Sound into
global
networks, and thus transformed local
struggles
over BC forests into a
global
issue.
Together
these conditions have worked to
produce
new
political spaces
and constituencies.
For these reasons, among others, Clayoquot
Sound has become a
flashpoint
for
struggles
over the fate of the
temperate
rainforests, and,
in the
early
1 990s, as transnational forest com-
panies
stood
poised
to increase the scale of for-
estry operations
in the
region,
environmental-
ists-most from outside the
region-declared
a
'last stand' in defense of the
region's old-growth
forests. It is here, also, in the midst of
political
struggles
over 'nature' and the 'fate' of the tem-
perate rainforest, that a
specific
silence can be
located and where we can
begin
to
map ways
that
present-day
constructions of nature are
marked
by
a colonial
past.
These issues could be
clearly
seen in a series of events in 1993. The
increasing intensity
of the conflict over the
Sound, and the internationalization of
protest
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Buried Epistemologies 7
in the early 1990s prompted the provincial gov-
ernment to prepare and release a land-use plan
(British Columbia 1993a) that sought to medi-
ate between the widely divergent demands of
industry and environmentalists.6 The plan,
which zoned the region for different uses-for-
estry, recreation, preservation, and so on-failed
to end conflict over the region, precipitating in-
stead one of the largest collective actions of civil
disobedience in Canada's history: the arrest of
more than 900 environmental protestors, and
an equally emotional response by forestry work-
ers who saw their livelihoods threatened. Much
has been written about this, mostly from within
the environmental movement and usually fo-
cused on relations between the state, corporate
capital, law, citizenship, and the 'rights' of the
nonhuman (Breen-Needham et al. 1994; Hatch
1994; MacIsaac and Champagne 1994). Less
attention has been paid to a subsequent report
by the provincial ombudsman (British Colum-
bia 1993b) which asserted that throughout the
events leading to the Clayoquot Sound decision,
the Nuu-chah-nulth-a confederation of First
Nations that live on the west coast of Vancouver
lsland7-were not adequately consulted, even
though the land at issue lay entirely within their
traditional territories and had never been ceded
to colonial authorities or to the federal state.8
The marginalization of the Nuu-chah-nulth
in decision-making processes around Clayoquot
Sound raises important questions that this essay
seeks to address. How is it possible that amid
the many voices 'speaking for' nature in Clayo-
quot Sound, the voices of indigenous peoples
were not adequately heard? What contributed
to this 'silencing'? The argument I make is that
the 'itineraries of silencing' that contributed to
Nuu-chah-nulth concerns going unheeded are
not found primarily in administrative process or
state policy (although they are certainly evident
at this level).9 Rather, in order to locate the con-
ditions of possibility for this absence, I turn my
attention to a series of current and historical
representational practices through which 'na-
ture' is made to appear as an empty space of
economic and political calculation and particu-
lar actors authorized to speak for it.10 I argue
that it is precisely such representational practices
that have underwritten and legitimated the ab-
straction and displacement of commodities
('natural' resources, visual 'scenery,' 'ancient'
trees, etc.) from one set of cultural relations and
their relocation within others: the abstract
spaces of the 'market,' the 'nation' and, in recent
ecological rhetorics, the 'biosphere' and 'the
global community.' One effect has been that
all apparent (from a distance) 'public' and 'un-
constrained' discussion over the fate of the forest
has been convened in precisely the binary logic
(jobs vs. environment) that authorizes certain
voices while marginalizing others. Indeed, this
displacement has enabled the construction of
policy about a self-evident thing called 'nature,'
and its zoning between various users, to proceed
as though it were simply the transparent expres-
sion of a 'national' interest or a mediation be-
tween various 'public' interests.
As I note later, these dynamics have not gone
uncontested-a story increasingly told by First
Nations, historians, anthropologists, and film-
makers. First Nations in BC continue to articu-
late other ways of imag(in)ing social natures that
are tied to their own cultural traditions and his-
torical and spatial practices. My purpose here,
however, is not to establish these as somehow
more 'authentic.'12 Rather, I focus on those
practices that work to limit possibilities for their
expression, and thereby seek to problematize
and undermine assumptions of historical dis-
tance between a colonial past and a postcolonial
present in BC's temperate rainforests. Begin-
ning therefore with recent forest industry
promotional literature and ending with contem-
porary constructions of 'nature' in environmen-
talist rhetorics, I will show at both sites on what
critical and constitutive absences the authority
to 'speak for' nature has been built. Between
these sections I interject the texts of the promi-
nent late nineteenth-century geologist George
Dawson in order to map 'genealogies' or 'pre-
texts' both of what counts as nature in BC today,
and of present configurations of authority in
BC's forests. Certainly, Dawson's texts do not
lead directly to the present 'war in the woods'
between environmentalists, industry, and First
Nations, as one link in a chain of historical
events, but they can be read to show the emer-
gence of the 'natural' as an entity separate from
the 'cultural' and the simultaneous marginaliza-
tion of native presence in British Columbia. Be-
hind present-day identities-as Foucault (1977)
and others have noted-lie numberless begin-
nings and myriad events, and Dawson's texts
can be made to subvert the easy play of recog-
nition in the present. In short, this paper can be
read as a cautionary tale; against what is now a
flood tide of managerialism in BC and else-
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8 Willems-Braun
where, organized around such notions as 'sus-
tainability,' 'ecological restoration,' 'bioregional-
ism,' and 'landscape ecology,' I sound a cautious
warning that asks about the historical condi-
tions that enable the management or preserva-
tion of 'nature' to proceed in the ways that it
does, that permit 'authority' to be constructed
and legitimated in particular ways, and that
naturalize a 'post'colonial cultural and political
terrain.
Staging 'Pure' Spaces of
Economic and Political
Calculation
'Custodians of the Forest': The Rhetorics
and Rights of Access of Transnational
Capital
British Columbia's environmental conflicts
are today played out in a highly mediatized ter-
rain in which actors vie for 'public opinion.'
Appropriately, then, I begin my inquiry with an
artifact drawn from the midst of these media
wars.
Beyond the Cut-my first exhibit in this story
of nature and its representatives-is a public re-
lations document in which the forest industry
conglomerate MacMillan Bloedel (MB) seeks to
legitimate its authority as the forest's 'custodian'
in the face of strong criticism of industrial for-
estry as practiced under advanced capitalism
(MacMillan Bloedel n.d.). The document, one
of several that the company has produced, is
attractively packaged and organized in an easy-
to-read format that mixes glossy photographs,
graphics, and written text (including boxed
quotes from scientific 'experts'). What intrigues
me, however, is not this format-which appears
ubiquitous today-but the two 'invitations' that
this document offers readers and through which
MB's authority is built. The first is an invitation
to evaluate MB's forest management practices.
The second, implicit in the first, is an invitation
to forget the colonial histories which have made
MacMillan Bloedel's position as 'custodian' pos-
sible. It is the second that enables the first to be
taken up as 'common sense' by the reader.
The booklet opens with a statement by Ray
Smith, then president and CEO of MacMillan
Bloedel:
At MacMillan Bloedel we are proud of our history
of forest management in BC-we believe that we
are among the best in the world when it comes to
forestry practices and integrated resource manage-
ment. We asked British Columbians about their
views on managing and using the forests in this
province, and we are now convinced that MB
shares the same constructive values, concerns, and
expectations for use of the forest resource as do the
majority of people living in the province.... We
are committed to manage our forestlands in the
best interests of the public.
Smith's statement sets the tone for the remain-
der of the document, where, in a selfless act of
'corporate responsibility,' MB turns the spot-
light of public scrutiny on its own practices.
This rhetoric of accountability pivots on the
mobilization of a potent political fiction-the
'public'-which at once posits a singular body,
situates the reader within it, and assumes a
unified and collective interest in the forest, flat-
tening out any difference within BC society. In
turn, this permits an initial but crucial displace-
ment: MB's rights of access to the resource are
to be legitimated through an evaluation of its
management of the resource, shifting attention
away from the more politically charged question
of tenure. This emphasis on management is in
large part a response to critics who claim that
the forest industry in BC is ecologically destruc-
tive and unsustainable (Hammond 1991;
Drushka et al. 1993), but it also carefully de-
lineates what is at stake in BC's forest disputes.
Organized thus, Beyond the Cut sets out to
persuade the reader about MB's expertise as a
forest manager and its responsiveness to 'public
concerns.' The first is achieved through a rheto-
ric of 'expert,' 'scientific' management. The
booklet is filled with photographs of experts at
work. "MB road engineers,' readers are told in
a caption beside a photograph of road build-
ers, "know that poor road construction prac-
tices can cause erosion and mud build-up in
streams." Photographs depict environmental
scientists engaged in research "in the field" or
the "lab," or working with "computer simula-
tions"-all privileged sites of 'authority' in
Western cultures of science (Haraway 1989).
Other photographs depict "high-tech green-
houses" (Figure 2) which grow "genetically su-
perior offspring," 'assisting' rather than 'destroy-
ing' nature. LUPAT-a Land Use Planning Ad-
visory Team-is introduced as a crack team of
"environmental specialists" with expertise in
"soils, wildlife, fish, water resources, and growth
and yield projections." Other experts, we are
assured, are consulted about "recreation and aes-
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Buried Epistemologies 9
..~i lS. . .. .. .. ....
A'
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A
lok .7/. ...
? I
4
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~-
-t
Figure 2. Forestry issues in British Columbia are often framed by forestry companies in technical rather than
social or ethical terms, thereby shifting attention away from contentious issues like land tenure. Images like this
one showing high-tech greenhouses are designed to convince viewers that the forests are being managed in the
most efficient manner and in the interests of an undifferentiated 'public.' Courtesy, MacMillan Bloedel Ltd.
thetics." Finally, the corporation notes that it
consults with the state at every level: BC Forest
Service, Ministry of Environment and Parks,
Heritage Branch, and the federal department of
Fisheries and Ocean. What makes this repre-
sentational strategy effective is what Jurgen
Habermas (1987) has described as the 'splitting
off' of expert cultures from the lifeworld, such
that communicative action becomes truncated
or colonized by systems-imperatives. Questions
of politics and legitimation are therefore dis-
placed from the social realm ('value' or moral
reason) to technical realms (instrumental rea-
son). Likewise, technical interests become es-
tranged from what Habermas calls 'enlightened
action' and come to be established themselves as
'values' such that rationality (as technique) is no
longer critique but legitimation. The issue then
is not whether MB's scientific credentials are
solid but how technical rationality becomes a
surrogate for moral or political rationalities.
Placed together with aesthetic displays of forest
renewal (inverting the 'before' and 'after' photos
that the environmental movement has used so
effectively), these rhetorics permit the company
to narrate a comforting story of rational man-
agement and temporary disturbance of a 'public
resource.' The message is unmistakable: MB's
forest practices are 'sustainable'; left to the com-
pany, the forest will be renewed, if not im-
proved, for future generations.
Pursuing the second tack, MB demonstrates
its responsiveness to public concerns by noting
that it incorporates public input, opens 'its' for-
ests to multiple users, and goes far beyond its
legislated responsibilities in preservation of for-
ests and wildlife habitat. We are assured that the
company holds the same concerns as the average
citizen about
preserving
areas of
"special impor-
tance." "The forests of British Columbia," we
read, "are a great source of pride and concern
for the people of the province. No one wants to
see them decimated or devoted exclusively to
timber production." MB therefore cooperates
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10 Willems-Braun
with government agencies in preserving exam-
ples of old-growth forests in areas of special
beauty and in critical wildlife habitats. Thou-
sands of hectares of forestland on Vancouver Is-
land, it claims, have been transferred from MB
ownership or tenure to parks and ecological re-
serves, while logging in other "sensitive" or "aes-
thetic" regions has been deferred indefinitely. At
the end of the day, MB appears as the public's
trusted spokesperson, possessing the most objec-
tive knowledge and advanced technology, and
mediating, in a disinterested manner, between
the claims of various "interest groups":
As custodians of the forest, MB protects, cares for,
and renews this great resource for the benefit of
present and future generations.... The company's
forestry policies are based on achieving an optimum
balance for all users taking into account economic,
recreational, and environmental factors.... (italics
mine)
In a world of competing demands and uncertain
economic and ecological futures, MacMillan
Bloedel knows best.
Normalizing the Forest: Public Fictions
and National Displacements
This is not the place to debate the sustainabil-
ity of current forest practices, nor to ask whether
MacMillan Bloedel has been a good steward.
Not that these are unworthy topics, but to do
so would be to accept the first invitation without
recognizing
the second invitation that
accompa-
nies it-the invitation to forget the colonial his-
tories that enable and legitimate present-day
constructions of authority. How is it that the
land appears in documents like this-and in
much 'public' debate over forest management-
as a purified space of economic and political
calculation (containing visual, ecological, and
economic resources) without any other compet-
ing claims? Why should this appear so 'natural'?
Why is it 'common sense' to debate rights of
access to forest resources in terms of technical
expertise and the strategic interests of the 'na-
tion' without any acknowledgment that other
'nations'-First Nations like the Nuu-chah-
nulth-may dispute these territorial claims? In
turn, how is it that MacMillan Bloedel (or, for
that matter, the BC Ministry of Forests) appears
as the forest's legitimate custodian? What dy-
namics lie behind and establish this authority?
Perhaps more to the point, how is it that in BC,
a discourse of resource management (bound to
a new and powerful metanarrative of sustain-
ability and tied to the administrative space of
the nation) has been constructed and institu-
tionalized in a conceptual and administrative
space entirely separate from another, unmarked,
but certainly not unrelated, management dis-
course that never appears in these discussions,
yet which by its absence naturalizes the abstract
space of the Canadian state and economy: the
demarcation, segregation, and administration of
native communities and lands?13
These are difficult questions, but we can be-
gin
our
inquiry
into this invitation to
forget by
returning to Beyond the Cut, and by paying at-
tention to the absences and silences that struc-
ture its narrative. What remains completely un-
marked in the photographs, text, and figures is
a subtle manoeuvre whereby the 'land,' the 'for-
est,' and a commodity, 'timber,' are simultane-
ously abstracted and displaced from existing lo-
cal cultural and political contexts, and resituated
in the rhetorical space of the 'nation' and its
'public.' The forest that MB discusses is at once
any forest and no forest at all. With the exception
of a small map that superimposes MB's forest
tenures over the 'empty' space of the province,
MB's forests are devoid of specificity-geo-
graphical or historical. Thus, in a neat symmetry,
what MB authors, authorizes MB. Displaced
from its cultural surroundings, the forest be-
comes an unmarked, abstract category emptied
of other claims-a pure space that exists only as
a ground and raw material for the self-creation
and rational management of the nation-state. As
such it is free to be inscribed and incorporated
within other territorializations and temporalities
as the 'nation's' forest, divided into units (Tree
Farm Licences), allotted to leaseholders (like
MB) and subjected to rational management
(computerized models, scientific and economic
rationalities) so as to produce 'sustained yield'
through rationalized 'forest rotations' as part of
the administration of a national 'population' and
'economy' (Figure 3). Indeed, in one of the
many ironies found in BC's forests, foresters and
economists today refer to this rationalized forest
as the 'normal' forest.14
Ecologists have argued that the 'normal' forest
is in many respects 'abnormal,' but in the pre-
sent paper this is not my complaint. (Nor do I
share belief in a 'normal' forest that can be
si(gh)ted independent of regimes of knowl-
edge-even the science of ecology.) Rather, in
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Buried Epistemologies 11
0
A FOREST
z
z -
w
~~ROTATION
Cl)
3RUes IImRn
o e coSnteta n
Fiurr3eI
dreiscusesyth
ofoforetmnagementrie bC'
wihteforests aere dipaermad theirloablecontextsuand
Thidscefaces rther mhany wutuays tatd BC'stforestl land-
scapes.
Source: MacMillan Bloedel, n.d.
the midst of a
putatively 'postcolonial'
context,
I
argue
that this abstraction
displaces
discussions
of
authority
from
questions
of
territory,
tenure,
and
rights
of access (and their constitutive Colo-
nial histories), and convenes them
instead-pre-
cisely through
the normalization of the 'forest'
and its
integration
into the administration of the
'nation-state' and its
'populations'-around
questions
of rational
management
and conser-
vation. This, in turn, permits
a
particular logic
of
equivalence
to circumscribe and
apparently
exhaust
possibilities
of
public
debate: the health
of the resource is the health of the nation. It is
not
rights
of access but the economic and eco-
logical
details of the 'normal' forest that are at
stake.
MB's rhetorics-and the normalization of
the forest more
generally-however,
assume
a
priori
the
juridical, political,
and
geographical
space of the nation-state and
ignore
its historico-
geographical
constitution (and contestation). By
staging
the nation-state as accomplished rather
than
continually articulated, the Tree Farm Li-
cences which MB holds, and the 'normal' forest
it
manages,
are rendered
transparent
and thus
common sense.' Detached from their local cul-
tural relations, it becomes a short
step
to see
these territories as empty public lands ('wilder-
ness'), leased to transnational companies for the
'benefit' of the general population.'5 In light of
incomplete decolonization in British Columbia,
such rhetorics risk reinscribing colonial rela-
tions, erasing present-day First Nation struggles
over 'sovereignty,' and ignoring their continual
assertion that what appears as 'wilderness' in one
rhetoric is a highly cu/turallandscape in another.
Assuming the fixity of these 'national/natural'
spaces (and their staging as an abstract 'void' and
normalization within a 'national economy') is, I
suggest, a bad epistemic habit, one that simul-
taneously incorporates and renders invisible the
colonial histories through which these spaces
have been constituted and naturalized, and
which in turn authorize certain voices-re-
source managers, bureaucrats, nature's defend-
ers-to speak for nature.
Unthinking Neocolonial
'Cultures' of Nature: Genealogies
of 'Wilderness'
If the genealogist refuses to extend his faith in
metaphysics, if he listens to history, he finds that
there is 'something alto gether different' behind
things: not a timeless and essential secret, but the
secret that they have no essence or that their es-
sence was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from
alien forms. . . . What is found at the historical
beginning of things is not the inviolable identity
of their origins; it is the dissension of other things.
It is disparity (Foucault 1977:142).
It is to these colonial histories and practices
that I want to turn now. MacMillan Bloedel's
'authority' is built, in part, by establishing the
forest as a 'natural' and 'public' resource. But
this is facilitated, in turn, by histories of 'seeing
nature' on Canada's west coast that are deeply
imbricated with forms of colonial power. In
other words, the authority of corporate capital
today is related in important ways to historical
practices
of
imagining, representing,
and
puri-
fying 'natural' landscapes. As I will argue, these
practices permitted 'natural' spaces to be appre-
hended apart from forms of native territoriality.
Wedded to a Western metaphysics of truth, such
representations could be seen as revealing the
'real' structure of the landscape, and could give
rise, in turn, to forms of administration that
accepted this as a matter of course. By showing
the mechanics of the production of this rhetori-
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12 Willems-Braun
cal space called 'nature,' it becomes possible
both to write a genealogy of 'nature' as the ab-
sence of culture ('wilderness') in late twentieth-
century British Columbia, and to destabilize
claims of authority that are built on this ab-
sence.16 I will be necessarily selective; to unthink
the neocolonial assumptions buried in MB's
text, I will enlist the writings of George Dawson,
a geologist and amateur ethnologist, who trav-
eled the coast with the Geological Survey of
Canada in the 1 870s-1 880s. By reading
Dawson's texts against the grain, the fixity of
this national/natural space-and its repre-
sentation as a nonhumanized hinterland-ap-
pears less certain; its construction as such, upon
which subsequent 'rights' of access are built, is
made visible at the moment of its emergence.
Displacements: Bounding the 'Native' and
Producing 'Nature'
Dawson's travels coincided roughly with the
years that the federal Indian Reserve Commis-
sion (IRC) was allocating and demarcating In-
dian Reserves in the province. This makes
Dawson's texts particularly significant. It is the
Reserve Commissions that cartographically in-
scribed colonialist discourse onto the territory
of the province, bounding, within a quasi-legal
discourse, the space of native villages and be-
yond their extent, positing an empty nature
open to settlement or enterprise. This in turn
has authorized subsequent depictions of BC as
a 'resource landscape' rather than a 'cultural
landscape.' Considerable attention in BC histo-
riography has focused on the Indian Land Ques-
tion, debating the relative 'generosity' to the In-
dians of successive colonial administrators, and
later, after the colony joined Canada in 1871,
specific provincial and federal authorities (Fisher
1977; Tenant 1990). However, as Gayatri Spi-
vak (1990) reminds us, administrative practice
presupposes an irreducible theoretical moment.
Practices such as those of the IRC occurred not
simply through administrative fiat, but were
made possible through a series of discourses
through which a 'space' of administration could
appear, and that at once invited and legitimated
the actions of administrators. The cartographic
inscription of colonialist rhetoric in the 'reserve'
was thus prefigured and facilitated by a more
general textualization which included not only
the appearance of written records, but more
important, the emergence of a sense of order
and totality through the production and dis-
semination of knowledge pertaining to the land
and its inhabitants. In this way a 'landscape'
could be known and made available.
In this light, Dawson's travels and writings-
in part because he wrote as a 'disinterested' sci-
entist, not a colonial apologist-provide a valu-
able window into the extent of a colonialist visu-
ality that at once ordered and naturalized BC's
natural/cultural landscapes, and at the same
time underwrote the bounding of native terri-
tories and the shape and future direction of state
policy. What I wish to trace in Dawson's work,
then, is the process by which the 'land' was
made to appear as 'nature': a space that held no
signs of 'culture' and therefore could be appro-
priated into the administrative space of the 'na-
tion.' This occurred, I will argue, not through
the denial by Dawson and others of native
claims to the land (Dawson personally suggested
the opposite) but through a series of repre-
sentational practices that at once located and
contained a native presence, dividing west coast
territories into the 'primitive' spaces of native
villages, and the 'modern' spaces of the emerg-
ing Canadian nation.
Dawson's official writings took the form of
survey reports for the Geological Survey of Can-
ada (GSC), fulfilling one of the conditions that
the colony of British Columbia had attached to
union with the Dominion of Canada in 1871:
that geological surveys be made of the new prov-
ince's 'domain.' Several scholars have shown the
significance of these surveys in the development
and spatial extension of the Canadian nation.
Zaslov (1975) notes that the survey was a prime
instrument in "pushing back the frontiers" and
that it was, in many places, the "first arm" of
the Canadian government. More recently, Keller
(1987) has tied the formation and activities of
the GSC more closely to imagined geographies
of a 'transcontinental' Canadian nation, and
also to utilitarian concerns for national eco-
nomic development. Both, however, view the
survey primarily as a process of enumeration,
documenting, through careful observation, the
wealth of the new nation.
This the survey certainly was. But it was also
much more. The GSC not only enumerated,
but brought a particular mode of intelligibility to
bear on the landscape. This was no mere ac-
counting, it was a means of simultaneously stag-
ing and availing, a way of producing 'spaces of
visibility' (Rajchmann 1988; Gregory 1994)
and by extension 'spaces of invisibility' that in
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Buried Epistemologies 13
turn authorized the activities of certain actors.
The outline of Dawson's (1880) report on his
1878 explorations in the Queen Charlotte Is-
lands (located north of Vancouver Island) makes
the construction of spaces of visibility/invisibil-
ity in the practice of enumeration abundantly
clear. Like most GSC reports, it begins with a
general description of the islands-a bird's eye
view that situates them in relation to the rest of
the nation, and provides a general outline of
their physical geography-coastline, harbors,
rivers, mountains, and so on. This provides
readers with a general 'frame' that can then be
filled with more detail. Subsequent chapters and
appendices locate and describe the islands' geol-
ogy, Indians, zoology, and botany-divisions in
the text which apparently 'mirrored' what could
be 'found' in nature. Plants, animals, Indians,
rocks-each were separated and evaluated as
discrete entities which, in turn, could be further
subdivided, providing, through the enumera-
tion of the 'parts,' a picture of the 'whole.' Geo-
logical observations, for instance, were divided
into further classifications: Triassic, Cretaceous
coal bearing, Tertiary, and glaciated and su-
perficial deposits. Likewise, Dawson's notes on
the Haida Indians distinguish and analyze
physical appearance, social organization, relig-
ion and 'medicine,' the potlatch and distribu-
tion of property, folklore, villages, and popula-
tion. Through the construction of particular cir-
cumscribed knowledge domains, these land-
scapes were encountered, organized, and
enumerated.
More than enumeration, Dawson's survey
also stood as a remarkable case of 'anticipatory
vision.' At the time he undertook this task, the
white settler population in BC was still outnum-
bered by natives, and, further, this settler popu-
lation was clustered almost entirely at the ex-
treme southwest corner of the province (Galois
and Harris 1994). Beyond its extent, the land
was still known and experienced through native
territorialities and temporalities. The survey
therefore embodied and inscribed a national tele-
ology on a landscape that, although bounded by
the cartographic abstraction of national borders,
had not yet been rationalized in relation to them.
Yet these boundaries-however abstract-were
of great significance. As Benedict Anderson
(1991) persuasively argues, it is only subsequent
to the demarcation of a 'national territory' that
surveys like Dawson's could become part of the
accounting ledgers of the nation. Only sub-
sequent to this bounding could 'interiors' ap-
pear 'empty' and available to be 'filled.'17 In a
series of telling metaphors, Robert Brown, an
explorer on Vancouver Island who preceded
Dawson by fifteen years, makes this anticipatory
filling explicit.
It was the intention . . . that we should strike
through the unexplored sections of the Island,
carefully examine that tract as a specimen, and thus
form a skeleton to be filled up afterwards (Hayman
1989:9) [italics mine].
Later, Brown described the findings of his ex-
plorations as "tests of the whole" (1869), by
which the regions between his traverses could be
"judged." On more than one occasion he fanta-
sized of its future transformation at the hands
of settlers:
The trail from Victoria to Comox crosses the
Quall-e-hum River close to the coast, and an ex-
tension of this would form a transinsular road con-
necting coal miners of Nanaimo and the farmers
of Comox with the wild savage of Nootka, Klay-
o-quot [Clayoquot] and Barclay Sound (1864:25)
[italics mine].
Likewise, Dawson (1880a:38) speculated that in
the Queen Charlottes "before many years exten-
sive saw-mills will doubtless be established....
The quality of the spruce timber is excellent,
and beside the immediate shores of the harbour,
logs might probably be run down the Naden
River from the lake above." Both Brown and
Dawson assume and enact the bounded space
of the colony and nation respectively, reproduc-
ing in a speculative fantasy what had already
been accomplished elsewhere in the Americas.
The GSC, then, in Dawson's writings more spe-
cifically, must be seen not only as an enumera-
tion, but also, quite literally, as a means of in-
corporation-constructing and filling the 'body'
(skeleton) of the 'nation' (specimen), and in-
scribing these new territorializations onto West
Coast lands.
Significantly, in the colonial context, the in-
corporation of the nation (as a body) and the
'visualization' of its 'internal structure' involved
also a fundamental division and displacement.
These occurred in two ways. First, at the same
time that the skeleton of the nation was being
given flesh, it was also anatomized-divided
into its component parts. The divisions of the
survey introduced categories by which the land
could be known and appropriated. Second, by
constructing
discrete entities-minerals, trees,
Indians-these could be apprehended entirely
apart from their surrounding, displacing and
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14 Willems-Braun
resituating objects within quite specific, but very
different, orders of signification. These processes
of division and displacement can be seen in
Dawson's journals. In these, Dawson recorded
observations and kept a daily account of his
movements, including descriptions of the social
and technical mediations that made his move-
ment and his scientific observations possible:
people he met, how he traveled, where he
stayed, who acted as his guides, instruments
used, measurements made, and so on. On the
reverse side of his journal pages, Dawson occa-
sionally inserted details that he had missed.
More often, Dawson used these blank spaces to
write a second 'parallel' text. In this he elabo-
rated upon aspects of the physical landscape or
native culture. Much of the information found
on the back of these pages was later incorporated
into his 'scientific' texts on the geology, re-
sources, and native cultures of the west coast,
but it is the organization of these parallel texts
that is of interest. Some passages dealt exclu-
sively with geology or botany, others only with
native culture, while yet others synthesized both
into an enumeration of different aspects of the
country (but even here, as in his reports, the two
identities were rarely brought into relation; na-
tives appeared as yet another element to be
documented).
One example will suffice. From August 8-10,
1878, Dawson, accompanied by his brother
Rankine, an Indian guide named Mills, and the
crew of the schooner Wanderer, traveled from
Skidegate to Masset, along the east and north
coast of Graham Island. On August 11, the day
following his arrival in Masset, Dawson at-
tended church, dined with the missionary Mr.
Collison, read recent newspapers, and "wrote up
notes." The events of the four days are duly
recorded in his daily journal entries. On the
reverse, two parallel texts are found (see Ta-
ble 1). In one text we find an enumeration of
the 'wealth of nature.' Here the sciences of bot-
any and geology play a larger part. Specimens
are located and related in space. Physical proc-
esses are described and possibilities for estab-
lishing communications (or lack thereof) duly
noted. In the parallel text, Dawson describes
native peoples, their customs and behavior (and,
on other occasions, their villages). This appears,
quite literally, as a turning of Dawson's gaze
from one 'object domain' to another.
The same separation is found in his photo-
graphs: geological sites and landscape vistas on
the one hand (Figure 4) and native villages and
individuals on the other (Figure 5).18 So, while
indigenous peoples were at once described in
great detail-their physical features and cultural
forms documented and enumerated-they were
simultaneously detached from the landscape,
which could then be subsequently encountered
and described as devoid of human occupation.
In other words, Dawson distills the complex so-
cial-ecological worlds of his travels into neat un-
ambiguous categories: primitive
culture and
pristine nature. No relations are drawn between
the two. Instead, the former is contained within
the 'village,' fixing a native presence in 'place,'
while beyond the bounds of the native villages,
Dawson filled the blank spaces of the imperial
map with the colored spaces of geological and
botanical maps. In turn, these latter spaces could
be subject to new visual regimes which saw the
land in terms of stratigraphy and geological
time, 'revealing' an 'environmental architecture'
that could be appropriated as yet new frontiers
for capital. The enterprising settler, armed with
a rudimentary knowledge of geology, could
therefore 'read the rocks' according to an as-
sumed plan, and indeed was encouraged to do
so.19 Dawson himself would go on to write texts
about Canada as a "field for mining investment"
(1896), and create provincial maps of the re-
gion's "important trees" (1880b)-important
not for native inhabitants, but for the nascent
forest industry. What we find in Dawson's writ-
ings, then, is the unveiling of nature's 'plan,' a
plan which both preceded and lay external to a
native presence and which would be fulfilled
only through the judicious mixing of European
(Canadian) capital and labor.
The Appearance of Natural Order and the
Ordering of Nature's Appearance
Dawson's texts suggest the possibility of writ-
ing genealogies of unmarked categories such as
'nature,' the 'land,' and the 'nation.' But they
also help clarify how colonizing power works. As
Timothy Mitchell (1988) notes, the illusion of
representations like the survey, the journal, or
the map was that they appeared to be without
illusion: they were faithful to the 'things' repre-
sented, promising complete and certain knowl-
edge (even if this was continually deferred, as
Robert Brown [1869] noted, leaving "details" to
"more minute after inspection"). This promise
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Buried Epistemologies 15
Table 1. Parallel Texts Found on the Reverse Pages of George Dawson's Journals
Text 1: Physical Landscape Text 2: Cultural Landscape
The Coast between Skidegate e& Masset, in some re- Potlatch. Mr. Collinson gives me some additional
spects resembles that between Cumshewa & Skide- light on this custom.
gate. A bare open stretch with no harbour & scarcely
even a Creek or protected bay for Canoes or boats, When a man is about to make a potlatch, for any
for long distances. The beach is gravelly & sometimes reason, such as raising a house &c. &c. he first, some
coarsely stony to a point near windbound camp of Months before hand, gives out property, money &c.,
track Survey. Beyond this it becomes sandy, & though So much to each man, in proportion to their various
not without gravel continues generally of Sand, all the ranks & standing. Some time before the potlatch,
way to Masset. this is all returned, with interest. Thus a man
receiving four dollars, gives back six, & so on. All the
Lawn Hill is evidently Caused by the outcrop of vol- property & funds thus collected are then given away
canic rock described in field book, is probably Terti- at the potlatch. The more times a man potlatches, the
ary. Beyond this for some distance, & including the more important he becomes in the eyes of his tribe,
region about Cape Ball, cliffs, or low banks of drift- & the more is owing to him when next some one
clay, & sands characterize. They are generally wearing distributes property & potlatches.
away under the action of the waves, & trees &
stumps may be seen in various stages of descent to the The blankets, ictus &c. are not torn up & destroyed
beach. In some places dense woods of fine upright except on certain special occasions. If for instance a
clear trees, are thus exposed in section, & there must contest is to be carried on between two men or three
be much fine spruce lumber back from the sea every- as to who is to be chief, One may tear up ten
where. Very frequently the timber seen on the imme- blankets, scattering the fragments, the others must do
diate verge of the cliffs, & shore is of an inferior qual- the same, or retire, & so on till one has mastered the
ity, rather scrubby & full of knots. The soil is others. It really amounts to voting in most cases, for
generally very Sandy where shown in the cliffs, or in such trial a mans personal property soon becomes
peaty in bottom places where water has Collected. exhausted, but there an under-current of supply from
Sand hills or sandy elevations resembling Such, are his friends who would wish him to be chief, & he in
seen in some places on the cliffs, in section, & there most popular favour is likely to be the chosen one.
is nothing to show that the Soil away from the Coast
is universally sandy, but the fact that the upper depos- At Masset last winter, a young man made some
its of the drift spread very uniformly & are of this improper advances to a young woman, whose father
character. Further north the shore is almost every- hearing of the matter, was very angry, & immediately
where bordered by higher or lower sand hills, Covered tore up twenty blankets. This was not merely to give
with rank Coarse grass; beach peas, &c. &c. Beyond vent to his feelings, for the young man had to follow
these are woods, generally living though burnt in suite, & in this Case not having the requisite amount
some places. The trees are of various degrees of excel- of property, the others of his tribe had to subscribe &
lince, but most generally rather undersized & scrubby. furnish it, or leave a lasting disgrace in the tribe.
This part of the coast is also characterized by lagoons, Their feelings toward the young man were not
& is evidently making, under the frequent action of naturally, of the Kindest, though they did not turn
the heavy South East sea. him out of the tribe as they might have done
after
having atoned for his fault.
Totems are found among the indians here as
elsewhere. The chief ones about Masset are the Bear
& the Eagle. Those of one totem must marry in the
other.
Source: Cole and Lockner (1993:57-59). Emphasis in original.
allowed readers (and writers) to apprehend an
appearance of order that was thought to emanate
from nature itself, rather than from the ordering
of appearances in representational practices.
Reading the survey only as a more-or-less ac-
curate 'record' within a story of progressive
European acquaintance with west coast lands
obscures the manner by which the survey en-
framed the land within regimes of visibility. It is
important to be clear: what is at issue is not
whether Dawson's surveys represented the land-
scape accurately. As Mitchell notes (1988:18),
the problem with explanations that reveal power
to work only through misrepresentation is that
representation is itself left unquestioned. Power,
he argues, operates precisely in the novelty of
continuously creating the
effect
of an 'external
reality.' Thus, the force of Dawson's surveys lay
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16 Willems-Braun
^t Aft _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Jt
'4~~~~4
_[.; . -_ 0_x1T. 4~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .. ... ....
l -
.t
A , k
. ... .. . '.. . ...
~~~~~~~~~~ ". ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.;~~...... ..... .
Figure 4. 'Basaltic columns, Tow Hill.' Photograph by George Dawson, 9 August 1878. As a geologist, Dawson
was trained to evaluate BC's landscapes in terms of geological formations, revealing an 'environmental architec-
ture' that could be mapped entirely separate from the cultural landscape and appropriated as yet new frontiers
for capital. Source: National Archives of Canada, C51371.
not in whether they got it right or wrong.
Rather, it lay in the production of an 'effect' of
truthfulness that was tied to a metaphysics
which assumed that behindrepresentation lay an
order that representation continually ap-
proached. Through the hold of this metaphysic,
the survey could be taken as approaching 'na-
ture' itself, effacing the particular technologies
of vision through which it was produced, and
finding in the 'order' of representation the order
of 'reality' itself.
Dawson's surveys and journals did not invent
objects and landscapes in flights of fancy. These
were material practices that engaged material
worlds. Rather, in rendering the land visible, the
surveys constructed from what was encountered
an ordered scene that could be read. Such prac-
tices, as Paul Carter (1987) notes, were not sim-
ply textual, but highly material; they did not
leave the land untouched. Instead they actively
displaced and resituated landscapes within new
orders of vision and visuality, and within re-
gimes of power and knowledge that at once
authorized particular activities and facilitated
new forms of governmentality. It was only after
the land was staged as a 'theatre' of 'nature,' after
all, that it could be made available to political
and economic calculation.20
Significantly, the production of 'nature' in
colonial discourse did not occur through a
straightforward erasure of native presence. In
Dawson's texts (as in others of his time), indige-
nous 'populations' were identified and described
in great detail. This presence, however, was or-
dered and contained in a discourse of 'primitive
culture': a culture that lay outside, and had no
place in, the unfolding history of the modern
'nation.' At the same time that Dawson placed
native peoples 'on view,' he displaced them both
temporally and geographically from their sur-
roundings. Concurrently, Dawson described a
national (physical) landscape consisting of cer-
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Buried Epistemologies 17
4~~
I,~~~~~~~~~'
Figure 5. 'Skedans Indian village.' Photograph by George Dawson, 18 July, 1878. In his photographs, as in
his journals, Dawson divided the land into 'natural' and 'cultural' landscapes. Dawson was fascinated by the
totems at Skedans and took five photographs of the village. The following day, he examined the surrounding
landscape for mineral deposits. Source: National Archives of Canada, PA38148.
tain geological and botanical entities, containing
certain landforms and waterways, and subject to
particular climates and meteorological phenom-
ena. What resulted, then, was a textual and spa-
tial separation of the 'tribal' village from the
'modern' nation. Native village sites became tied
to a traditional, nonhistorical culture, and sepa-
rated from a surrounding landscape that was
figured, in turn, as a field for the enterprise of a
dynamic modern culture. Colonial discourse in
this instance did not erase, it displaced. Erasure
occurred, to be certain, but not through lack of
attention. Rather it occurred in the move-
ment/translation between different orders of sig-
nification.
Here lies the significance-in the present-of
rereading historical texts like Dawson. Mary
Louise Pratt (1992) has argued that this dis-
placement of the 'native' from their physical sur-
roundings was a common trope in nineteenth-
century travel writings produced by Europeans
moving through the 'primitive' spaces of Africa
and the Americas. As Pratt notes, scientific ac-
counts-like Dawson's-did not exist in a
realm apart from imperialism and European ex-
pansion, they actively facilitated both. "Natural
history," she writes, "extracted specimens not
only from their organic or ecological relations
with each other, but also from their place in
other people's economies, histories, social and
symbolic systems" (1992:31). In Dawson's
texts, native peoples were spatially 'fixed' at cer-
tain sites-usually villages or resource procure-
ment sites-and surrounded solely by what ap-
peared as the empty space of nature. Across this
empty space, primitive peoples only 'moved,'
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18 Willems-Braun
leaving little trace of occupation or, in the same
discourse, few claims of possession. As people
possessing only a transient, undisciplined gaze,
it could be assumed that they had no real knowl-
edge of the tremendous riches that lay upon or
beneath the "face of the country." In this way,
Pratt writes, the Americas were reinvented as "a
primal world of nature, an unclaimed and time-
less space occupied by plants and creatures
(some of them human), but not organized by
societies and economies; a world whose only his-
tory was the one about to begin" (1992:126).
Dawson's textual divisions and rhetorical dis-
placements were, in effect, agents of deterritori-
alization, rendering invisible existing relations
between native peoples, their immediate sur-
roundings, and the complex cultural/political
institutions that organized these relations.21 In
turn, other notions of property and ownership
particular to European societies could be in-
scribed over the extent of the territory and in-
stitutionalized in legal and political discourse.
Indeed, there is an entire institutional/admin-
istrative history to the construction of 'natu-
ral/national' space that I have explicitly not fo-
cused on here. The separation of the 'land' and
its 'resources' from native peoples and their
communities and its relocation into the abstract
space of the nation is not solely, or even primar-
ily, the result of juridico-political statements and
public administration (colonialism proper). Nor
is the persistence of colonialist practices today
solely the result of administrative policy. The
conditions of possibility for modern Tree Farm
Licences, abstracted as ahistorical, rationalized
spaces, are multiple and disparate. In part, they
were prefigured and facilitated in the manner
that the BC landscape was encountered and de-
scribed by explorers, travelers, scientists, and set-
tlers and the cultural, economic, and institu-
tional forms that were subsequently inscribed
and reproduced in BC society. "The act [prac-
tice] of language," Paul Carter (1987:144)
notes, "[brings] a living space into being and
render[s] it habitable, a place that [can] be com-
municated, a place where communication [can]
occur." This is an important point to make in
the political present. In legal struggles today, and
in recent "government to government" negotia-
tions, First Nations must always deal with the
question of 'evidence' for native claims. Most
commentators on native 'dispossession' have de-
bated colonial policy and legal pronouncements
(Tenant 1990). While this is important for trac-
ing the quasi-legal apparatus of dispossession, it
leaves what Spivak calls the theoretical moment
contained in administrative practice intact. It
fails to sufficiently identify the many ways that
past colonial policy (and administrative prac-
tices today) relied upon and incorporated repre-
sentational practices that as a matter of course
already depicted the land through colonialist
rhetorics which narrowly circumscribed notions
of native territoriality within a larger narrative
of the emerging nation. The displacement that
occurred in the 'spatial writings' of settler socie-
ties rendered invisible existing territorializations,
making the land appear "as Eden." This was,
figuratively and materially, the "worlding of a
world on a supposedly uninscribed territory,
part of an imperialist project which had to as-
sume that the earth that it [re] territorialized was
in fact previously uninscribed" (Spivak 1990:1).
Native land rights have been notoriously
difficult for Western colonial cultures to see. In-
deed, countering such colonialist rhetorics-
both historical and contemporary-was a cen-
tral task faced by the Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en
nations in their early 1990s land claims case
(Solnick 1992). If these founding rhetorics and
territorializations are left unexamined, then past
colonial authority appears legitimate, and by ex-
tension, so also does the authority claimed today
by transnational forest companies. By noting
that dispossession occurred not simply through
legal pronouncements, but also, and primarily,
through a visuality that at once geographically
located and spatially contained native presence
(and therefore authorized European claims to an
empty land), a narrative that sees the land as
unoccupied wilderness can be contested and dis-
mantled, creating a conceptual space within ju-
ridico-political discourses in which past and pre-
sent forms of native territoriality and possession
might be made visible.
Saving 'Wilderness': Nature as
the A sence of (Modern) Culture
The continuing colonial legacy of extractive
capital and state-economic planning found to-
day in BC is not unique within Canada. From
Clayoquot Sound in BC to the Great Whale
hydro project in Quebec, race, colonial histo-
ries, and staples development have been closely
intertwined. At least until recently, the explicit
environmental racism of such projects has been
contained through a silent colonial violence that
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Buried Epistemologies 19
marked the bodies but denied the voices of First
Nations.
Let me return to the present, but in order to
ask a different question. If, as many First Na-
tions speakers have argued, the economic ex-
ploitation of nature-as-resource has tended to
rely on, and reproduce, colonial relations in BC,
might the same be said of environmentalist
rhetorics articulated in the defense of nature? To
what extent does the defense of nature mirror,
albeit inversely, the staging of nature-as-resource
in staples economies, a staging that is itself tied
to the nation's colonial legacy? Here I am re-
sponding to criticisms leveled by a number of
First Nations speakers-perhaps most promi-
nently by George Watts during the European
tour of the BC Premier in February 1994-that
the environmental movement is guilty of its own
forms of neocolonialism.22 To explore Watts's
complaint, I return to the same 'media wars'
from which I drew my first 'exhibit.'
On the Wild Side
Clayoquot: On the Wild Side (Dorst and
Young 1990) is one of the most popular coffee-
table books recently published by the Western
Canada Wilderness Committee. Although it has
a substantial text, the 160-odd photographs are
clearly asked to bear the narrative burden. This
book, and others like it, have been immensely
successful in raising public awareness about en-
vironmental issues in British Columbia, not the
least because the landscapes that the photogra-
phers 'capture' are some of the most 'scenic' (ac-
cording to certain Western aesthetics) that the
province has to offer.
Photographic collections have been used ef-
fectively to mobilize support for the preservation
of certain landscapes in the U.S. and Canada
since the 1930s, when the Sierra Club first pub-
lished Ansel Adams's photographs in its struggle
to preserve Kings Canyon, California, from re-
source development. It is important to note,
however, that photographs, even in documen-
tary photography, do not 'mirror' nature; they
actively construct landscapes that observers are
invited to grasp as the 'real.' As cultural critic
and historian of photography John Tagg notes,
The photographer turns his or her camera on a
world of objects already constructed as a world of
uses, values and meanings, though in the percep-
tual process these may not appear as such but only
as qualities discerned in the "natural" recognition
of "what is there". . . . The image is therefore to
be seen as a composite of signs.... Its meanings
are multiple, concrete and most important, con-
structed (1988:8).
So, although Clayoquot: On the Wild Side dis-
rupts the representational logic of extractive
capital, it does not necessarily reveal an essential
'reality' that is obscured behind the commodity
form. Rather, it invites the viewer to engage the
landscape of Clayoquot Sound in highly selec-
tive ways. In itself this is not a problem-it is
the nature of all representational practices. But
it means that rather than accept these photo-
graphs as a transparent reflection of 'nature it-
self,' we should read such images as texts organ-
ized through a particular optic.
The book opens with a series of spectacular-
ized landscapes. Here the photographer, Adrian
Dorst, displays his substantial talents and finely
tuned aesthetic sensibilities as a nature photog-
rapher. From the first page on, scenes unfold of
a sublime, complex, enchanting landscape filled
with powerful forces and intricate, even delicate
relations (Figure 6). This is a fantastic display of
the 'wild side' of Vancouver Island, what Young,
in the text, declares a "showcase of environ-
mental elegance and diversity" (p. 20). From the
wide sweep of crescent beaches to wave-
pounded coastal headlands; from shoreline trees
sculpted by the lashing winds of fierce winter
storms to the unimaginable, soft silence and
teeming, luxuriant growth of its ancient forests,
Dorst 'captures' a spectacular landscape. Land,
forests, animals, and sea are brought together
into a symphony of natural harmony. This is a
land that is resolutely 'wild' and 'nonhuman-
ized,' the last stand of a pristine nature external
to and threatened by the juggernaut of indus-
trial
society.
In light of recent millennial pronouncements
of the 'end' of Nature (McKibben 1990),
Dorst's images are not only striking but contain
a sense of political urgency. Yet as important as
the authors' political commitments are, these
images are deeply problematic. This is true not
because they set out to defend 'nature.' Rather,
what is equally striking about the images-
although at first this only seems 'natural'-is the
absence of people, including the photographer
himself. With the exception of one chapter, few
photographs contain people, and only a few
more contain signs of human activity. This al-
lows the region to appear as the 'other' to indus-
trial society: untrammeled wilderness. In turn,
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20 Willems-Braun
~~ A~~
Figure 6. Old-growth, Clayoquot Sound. Photographer, Adrian Dorst. Images of 'ancient,' 'pristine' rainforests
are frequently used in struggles to preserve 'wilderness' areas like Clayoquot Sound. In these, 'wilderness' is
framed through a constitutive absence: signs of modern culture and technologies. Courtesy, Adrian Dorst and
the Western Canada Wilderness Committee.
the absence of Dorst allows the camera to appear
as an unmediated extension of the 'eye,' an ap-
paratus that simply records for the viewer what
is 'there' to be seen: a timeless, nonhumanized
nature. As the Wilderness Committee's popular
poster declares, "Wild beaches. Wild rainforests.
Wild forever."
Tropes of Traditional Culture
They cannot represent themselves; they must be
represented (Karl Marx 1965[1852]:106).
Clayoquot Sound, of course, is far from un-
occupied. Today, some 1,800 people live in the
region, of which the Nuu-chah-nulth account
for about half. The non-Native population lives
almost exclusively at the south end of the Sound
in the town of Tofino, which is also the Pacific
terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway, and
thereby stands, for many non-Native Canadi-
ans, as the symbolic end of 'humanized' nature.
Beyond this lies 'wilderness.' Native communi-
ties in Clayoquot Sound are today centralized at
Ahousat, Optisat, Hesquiaht, and Esowista. All
but the latter are located beyond Tofino.
Although the first few chapters of the book
depict landscapes that contain no signs of hu-
man occupation, Dorst and Young are more
than casually aware of a native presence. In the
middle of the book, they include a chapter that
focuses at some length on the Nuu-chah-nulth.
Here lies a crucial tension: a cultural presence
lies at the heart of this 'natural paradise.' How
this tension is negotiated and resolved points to
underlying differences between the environ-
mental movement and First Nations in BC and
reveals some insidious neocolonial tropes that lie
at the heart of environmental representations of
'nature' in the region. These are not immedi-
ately apparent and have generally been over-
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Buried Epistemologies 21
shadowed by the support that most sectors of
the environmental movement have given to
First Nations' land claims in BC. Indeed, Dorst
and Young reiterate this support. Their book is
itself dedicated to the Nuu-chah-nulth, and the
text, at least in this chapter, is clearly sympa-
thetic to Nuu-chah-nulth struggles within a ju-
diciary that has often refused to recognize native
sovereignty. The author, Cameron Young, cele-
brates precontact Nuu-chah-nulth life, which,
he writes, subverting a discourse of primitivism,
was "lived on a grand scale." He also relates
recent work by anthropologists that estimated
populations on the so-called wild side of Van-
couver Island to have stood at 70,000 at the
time of contact. Prior to contact, Young contin-
ues, "these people developed a cultural philoso-
phy and a life-support system [that was] subtle
and complex" (p. 41). Placed against the com-
ments of a BC judge who claimed that precon-
tact native life was "to quote Hobbs (sic) ... at
best 'nasty, brutish and short"' (Delgamuukw v.
the Queen 13:129), Young's text weighs in on
the side of anticolonial struggle.
Yet despite such assertions, this chapter is
highly ambiguous at several levels. Inserted into
the book as it is, it gives the impression of simply
'inserting' native people into, and as part of, a
preexisting natural landscape. Other chapters
focus on the rainforest, wildlife, coastal ecology,
and so on. This is mirrored in the text of the
chapter itself, which begins with a brief account
of the region's natural history and ends with the
appearance of what amounts to one of nature's
constituent parts: native peoples (summarized
best by the chapter title: At Home in the Wild).
It is not that native people are erased from rep-
resentations of Clayoquot Sound. Rather, just as
with the writings of George Dawson at the end
of the nineteenth century, it is how they are made
present that matters.
Most problematic, I think, is that the authors
remain within the thrall of a transcendental
naturalism that requires that nature appear in its
most 'pure' form as the absence of culture. "In
many places," Young writes, "this is still a virgin
landscape lost in time and governed by the
unequivocal laws of nature." On this, much
turns. Within this rhetoric-a mainstay of
much North American environmentalism
(Guha 1989)-the text and photographs can
present native culture only in narrowly circum-
scribed ways. If we look at Dorst's photographs
in more detail, we can locate a well-rehearsed
series of distinctions that at once mark a tradi-
tional native presence but erase all signs of a
modern Nuu-chah-nulth culture. As the chapter
unfolds, it becomes clear that human presence
is not the problem in the Sound but the pres-
ence of modern technological societies. This re-
quires that the author and photographer main-
tain and police a careful distinction between the
'traditional' and the 'modern.' All photographs
that depict Nuu-chah-nulth culture therefore
firmly bind this culture to history, not to the
present. Eight photographs in the chapter con-
tain 'native' content. In the only one to show
'live' natives, members of the Tla-o-qui-aht
band are shown paddling a traditional canoe
(Figure 7). In another a fallen totem pole is
reclaimed by nature. A moss-covered skull is
identified as the remains of a Nuu-chah-nulth
member, while another photograph depicts the
decaying corner post of a traditional longhouse.
A single dugout canoe is shown on a beach as
dusk falls. In a similar scene, a canoe floats a few
meters offshore, silent and empty in the fading
light. A whale bone is located at an old village
site. A lone totem is found standing in the
forest.
The book's photographs are clearly designed
to be the focal point of the publication, but they
contain no signs of ongoing struggles by the
Nuu-chah-nulth to forge a cultural existence
that is at once continuous and modern. Where
Nuu-chah-nulth activity is present, it is only as
a picturesque traditional life, threatened by an
intrusive modernity.23 These photographs invite
viewers to encounter the region through a well-
organized, historically specific optic that trades
heavily upon distinctions drawn between nature
and culture, the modern and the traditional.
Through lenses ground in histories of colonial
(and colonizing) practices, natural and cultural
identities are constructed, purified, and dissemi-
nated. From the contested multiple identities of
social life in the Sound are captured a timeless
series of 'pure' forms. This optic can be dis-
played as operating along two axes (Figure 8).
Together with the nature-culture (or wilderness-
city) axis that Roderick Nash (1973) mapped in
Wilderness and the American Mind can be found
a second continuum: traditional-modern. On
each axis identities are invested with meaning by
the antipodal identity of the other. Identities are
more 'pure' the further they can be separated.
Nature is the absence of culture. The traditional
is the absence of the modern. In turn, once these
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22 Willems-Braun
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Fiur 7;
Tlao-qu-ah [Ca
t
paders Phtogahrdin
rt. Whie the
prsec
of Fis Naton
inspoel
:'wild': rein of -.:;- is noted
by...
eniomna
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rersnato s'taiinl'o
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Committee.I -=BR
dualisms are established, a logic of equivalence
can link 'similar' terms: nature/traditional; cul-
ture/modern. The two axes-nature-culture,
and traditional-modern-become conflated
into a singular story of modern, Western cul-
tures and traditional, non-Western, natures.
Once established, other dualisms can be
mapped onto this grid: science-ethnoscience,
fact-myth, civilized-primitive, spoiled-pristine,
and so on (Hall 1992).
Dorst and Young set out to establish the
unique wilderness character of Clayoquot
Sound. As such they map a metropolitan anxiety
over the space of its hinterland. Despite cele-
brating native culture, the authors' overarching
representational logic requires that native pres-
ence not exceed the bounds of the traditional.
The language and visual representation of
"natural harmony," of a nature "as yet untram-
meled wild and free," becomes a language of
cultural invisibility. The Nuu-chah-nulth, rele-
gated to the traditional, remain only as place-
holders in a larger, natural drama. By removing
signs of modern Native culture from the land-
scape, the same rhetorical manoeuvres which
nature
traditional modern
culture
Figure 8. The colonial rhetorics of 'wilderness.' By
mapping these dualisms onto each other (culture-
nature, modern-traditional) native peoples are
conflated with nature and areas are seen to remain
'natural' only if the cultures that live there remain
'traditional.'
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Buried Epistemologies 23
enabled the region to be seen as a resource land-
scape in the first place are again deployed just as
with Dawson a century prior; native presence is
at once marked, contained, and marginalized,
and this landscape becomes simply a "gift of
nature to humanity" (p. 20).
Ironically, by locating native culture reso-
lutely in the realm of the 'traditional,' the writer
and photographer can retain a contradictory po-
litical posture that articulates support for land
claims as well as a desire for preservation. These
very different political struggles become
conflated through the assertion that traditional
native culture was not ecologically disruptive
and, if it remains 'authentic,' should never be.
In turn, by staging this region as 'nature' and
the Nuu-chah-nulth as 'traditional,' the envi-
ronmental movement establishes its own right
to be modern, scientific, and enlightened
spokespersons for nature (and 'natives') in the
region, and the legitimate opponents to corpo-
rate capital. The distinction between the 'tradi-
tional' and the 'modern' thus becomes what
Haraway (1992:312) has described as a 'distanc-
ing operation' whereby the represented is "dis-
engaged from surrounding and constituting dis-
cursive and non-discursive nexuses and relo-
cated in the authorial domain of the repre-
sentative." Ironically, the only 'modern'
intrusion into the Sound that is authorized be-
comes that of 'disinterested' photographers and
scientists (Figure 9). Zodiacs, it appears, are re-
served only for these. In a preface to the book,
the wildlife artist Robert Bateman assumes the
position of nature's 'ventriloquist,' abstracting
nature into the rhetorical space of the nation in
a maneuver remarkably similar to MacMillan
Bloedel's:
The world recognizes Canada as containing one of
the last great remnants of wilderness and we Cana-
dians have always prided ourselves in our natural
history...
This decade will see them saved or lost.
Our generation must draw the line for all of them
[italics mine].
....... F. I.... .................. : s i
A.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ....... . .sRT.1i%"
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A
i .. ...... _,- r v...i I
G o d i _ . .. ... ... ... ... ... ........... .2I~~~~~~~f::lS .. Mt/_) '_............................................... .. ;.. .
j~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. A...::. ... A E
ants.. | _ _ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Figure
9. Nature's
representative. Photographer,
Ron Grover. Within the frame of 'wilderness,' only
two actors
are authorized to
'speak
for' nature: 'traditional' native
peoples,
and 'disinterested'
ecologists.
In essence, because
the former is often an
identity imposed
on First Nations rather than ascribed
by them, 'wilderness' becomes the
authorial domain
solely
of the
ecologist. Courtesy,
Western Canada Wilderness Committee.
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24 Willems-Braun
Likewise, a recent Greenpeace UK (1994) pub-
lication extends this further:
Clayoquot Sound ... is at the center of an eco-
logical catastrophe of global significance.... An
area of stunning natural beauty, Clayoquot Sound
is the largest remaining area of intact ancient rain-
forest left on Vancouver Island. The people of Brit-
ish Columbia therefore have in Clayoq uot Sound
the best opportunity to protect an irreplceablepart
of their natural heritage before it is destroye by
logging [italics mine].
While I also am concerned about the rainforests
and their inhabitants, human and nonhuman, I
worry about the representational practices in
this last publication, where, despite the familiar
refrains of support for land claims, the photo-
graphs actually do erase native presence from the
Sound, reducing the conflict for British viewers
to one between logging and preservation: nature
spoiled or nature saved.
Within rhetorics of "nature as the absence of
culture," First Nations are provided with few
possible subject positions, and these few are
highly circumscribed. While nineteenth-
century colonial rhetorics simultaneously
marked and contained native presence and
voice, this representational logic 'gives back' a
native voice only to ask it to speak the language
of traditional culture and cultural authenticity.
Native peoples are asked to occupy subject po-
sitions demarcated by others. For First Nations
to forge a modern future within the staples-
based economies of the west coast is to risk 'los-
ing' what many non-Natives consider 'authen-
tic' native culture and thereby also their right to
speak as native people for their lands. On the
other hand, to refuse modernization-to consti-
tute identity around the 'traditional' as the en-
vironmental movement implicitly asks-is to
remain forever outside the economic circuits of
the global economy, situated where European
cultures have always placed indigenous popula-
tions: back in nature, always outside modern
forms of rationality, as undeveloped, primitive
precursors to modern cultures. As a Hesquiaht
woman noted, both rhetorics easily lead to as-
sumptions that aboriginal people are "incapable
of being maintainers of our own territory"
(Charleson 1992). In a region whose future ap-
pears destined to be tied to staples production
(and its associated industry, nature tourism),
these rhetorics are deeply problematic. My ar-
gument is not that cultural traditions should be
abandoned, or that native people should neither
appropriate the languages of Western culture
nor speak from the various 'positions' available
within these discourses. As Cree Chief Whap-
magoostui explained in a context that has dis-
tinct parallels (the Great Whale project in Que-
bec), when necessary the Cree played the Dances
with Wolves card to great effect (Cohen 1994).
Rather, attention must be paid to whether these
distinctions-nature-culture, traditional-mod-
ern-among others, are externally ascribed or
internally claimed by a people for whom the
categories may have little salience, or may, at
certain moments, become mechanisms for cul-
tural
invisibility.
Conclusion: The Cultural Politics
of Nature
"Nature," Donna Haraway (1992:296) ar-
gues, "cannot pre-exist its construction." What
counts as nature is always something attained,
not found in passive observation. It is given
form and meaning, identity and specificity,
through a series of specific, embodied practices.
Through these, not despite them, nature is
"made to speak."
I emphasize Haraway's point not to argue
that nature can be represented in many ways,
which is obviously true, nor to turn materialist
accounts on their head by insisting on the ma-
teriality of representation (without emphasizing
that this is always also a representation of mate-
riality), but instead to insist that how nature is
constructed matters. Poststructuralists have in-
sisted upon the 'unfixity' of social identities like
nature, in part to move away from notions of
fixed 'identities,' ahistorical 'essences,' or under-
lying 'structure.' While it has led at times to
arcane debates over 'social constructivism'-an
unfortunate phrase which, as Bruno Latour
(1993) has shown, displaces everything into the
'social' without attention paid to the practices
of purification by which the 'social' itself is made
to appear self-evident-I wish to highlight more
explicitly the political usefulness of certain post-
structuralist insights.
Emphasizing the
unfixity of identities suggests
that they are always in the process of being con-
stituted and that attention must be paid to the
processes by which identities assume degrees of
fixity. Hence, what counts as nature is always
only 'unstably fixed,' the many ways that it has
been constructed, and, more important, the po-
litical effects of each always open to contest-
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Buried Epistemologies 25
ation. Yet contesting the construction of nature,
despite widely held assumptions, is not simply
a matter of speaking nature's truth. Somewhat
ironically, given their mistrust of modernity, en-
vironmentalists have remained under the thrall
of this most modern mythology. Nature is not
'hidden' through misrepresentation. Nor is there
any environmental 'ethic' that preexists a way of
valuing, enframing, or disclosure (Heidegger
1977). Environmental politics is not solely a
matter of 'speaking for' a 'mute' nature, or be-
coming nature's 'voice' in the midst of, and
against, what is thought to be, in modern indus-
trialized societies, a narrowly instrumental rela-
tion to the nonhuman world. This is because
speakingfor 'nature' is always simultaneously an
enframing
of
'nature.' There is always, as both
Derrida (1976) and Spivak (1988b) have noted,
a 'double session' to representation; to represent
as a proxy is always already to frame a constitu-
ency. Both aspects of representation, speaking of
and speaking for, are present simultaneously.
Failure to attend to this, as I have sought to
demonstrate, risks engaging in an unacknowl-
edged, hidden, or buried politics that a meta-
physics of presence renders invisible. Yet we can-
not simply avoid the problem of representation:
one cannot not represent. Responsibility (politi-
cal and academic) therefore lies at that point of
internal tension that marks the 'double session'
of representation; one needs to be vigilant about
the problem and politics of representation.
As I have shown in this paper, Nature is never
a 'pure' category. It is always invested with, and
embedded in, social histories. Indeed, it is pre-
cisely when it appears as a pure category that it
operates most ideologically (Smith 1984). First
Nations in BC know this well. The ambivalent
natural/cultural landscapes of the Pacific North-
west have been distilled into 'natural' and 'cul-
tural' landscapes by European explorers, scien-
tists, and settlers since the time of first contact
in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Today the marginalization of native voices can
be found, despite important differences, in the
rhetorics and practices of both extractive capital
and environmentalism. Each constitutes nature
as external to human communities, a rhetorical
manoeuver that authorizes certain 'disinterested'
voices-the resource manager, the ecologist, or
nature's 'defender'-to speak as nature's 'repre-
sentatives.' From an anticolonial perspective, ex-
tractive capital and environmentalism are in
many ways mirror images, sharing common ele-
ments of a culture of nature. In the case of the
former, the BC landscape is staged as a 'natural'
landscape filled with 'natural' resources but
empty of people. In the case of the latter, nature
is also emptied of cultural content, understood
as existing in its most purely 'natural' state only
in the absence of (modern) culture. Taken to-
gether, these rhetorics constitute a 'natural' field
and divide it between opposing non-Native in-
terests.
Neocolonialist practices persist in 'postcolo-
nial' societies like Canada, surfacing time and
again in everyday practices of representation,
producing and legitimating new forms of colo-
nial domination. These have not gone unchal-
lenged. Long before the contact periods (from
time 'immemorial'), First Nations peoples had
clear conceptions of ownership, political author-
ity, and social and ecological responsibilities
(Monet and Skann'u 1992; Marshall 1994).
The landscape that a member of Captain Cook's
crew thought in 1778 "remained in a state of
nature" was already a fully social and political
landscape. These relations did not disappear
with the cartographic and quasi-legal separation
of native peoples from their lands. Today, in a
series of interventions-from commissioned ar-
chaeological studies to documentary filmmak-
ing, from deconstructing maps to building road
blockades-First Nations are contesting the
buried colonial epistemologies that enframe na-
ture through a defining absence (Arcas Consult-
ants 1986; Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council
1990; Wild 1993; Brody 1994; Blomley, forth-
coming). At these sites can be found repre-
sentational practices that construct nature as so-
cial, relating physical environments to historical
narratives and cultural practices. In these cases,
to speak ofnature is immediately to invoke and
articulate a series of other intertwined cultural
identities, while at the same time placing in
question those representations that construct
nature as external to cultural and social rela-
tions.
The earth, Haraway (1992:315) writes, is a
"semiotic place." If, as she insists, Nature is one
of those impossible things that we cannot not
desire but can never have, we must always attend
to its making-rhetorically and materially, and
the two always together.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge Michael
Brown, Dan Clayton, Derek Gregory, Sarah Jain, and
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26 Willems-Braun
two anonymous referees for helpful comments on
earlier versions of this paper. Eric Leinberger pro-
vided cartographic support. Research was supported
through a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sci-
ences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Notes
1. As Williams and Chrisman (1994) note, "colo-
nial discourse" emerged as a field of academic
inquiry with the publication of Edward Said's
Orientalism (1979). Although scholars have ar-
gued over whether colonial discourse can or
should be understood as coherent or unified,
two general assumptions are widely accepted.
The first, drawing on Foucault, is that it is pos-
sible to locate a series of Western discourses
(whether or not formally aligned with colonial
administration) that produced and codified
knowledge about non-Western cultures, and
thus established rules governing what could or
could not be said. And, second, it is generally
acknowledged that these knowledges could be
utilized in, or worked to facilitate, the deploy-
ment of colonial power.
2. Colonial discourse theory has drawn extensively
on Foucault and Gramsci, perhaps most produc-
tively by Said (1979; for a critique of Said's
method of drawing these two together, see Porter
1983). Both locate power at all levels of society.
Gramsci emphasizes that relations of power are
found in the taken-for-granted and that this is
linked to the hegemony of a certain class; Fou-
cault documents how power operates in the
nomination of the visible, and how this makes
'objects' (the body, populations, etc.) available to
disciplinary practices. Without conflating the
two, and thus effacing important differences, it
is useful to see how both can be resources for
theories of colonial (and colonizing) practices.
Foucault provides tools by which to show how
colonial subjects (and colonial natures!) could be
made available to administrative practices, or in
other words, how power/knowledge was itself
colonizing. Gramsci, on the other hand, pro-
vides a framework by which to see how colonial
practices were legitimated and naturalized
through the ascendancy of certain ideas.
3. For the classic history of how nature has been
represented in Western cultures, see Glacken
(1967). David Livingstone (1995) is one among
many recent examples of a renewed interest in
this topic.
4. First Nations is the term preferred by BC abo-
riginal communities, deliberately subverting the
primitivist tropes of 'tribe' found in anthropo-
logical literatures. In addition, the term is used
to assert an organized, political presence that
preexists European contact while simultaneously
placing in question the territorial claims of the
Canadian nation-state.
5. What constitutes 'old-growth' forests-and their
significance-is widely debated. Most generally,
'old-growth' forests are characterized by the fol-
lowing: huge accumulations of biomass; large
trees exceeding 1-2 m diameter at 1.3 m height
and reaching 60-80 m total height; old trees,
often older than 200 years and occasionally ex-
ceeding 1,000 years; and structural diversity, in-
cluding various tree sizes, snags (dead standing
trees), down logs, and so on. The latter is often
considered its most important feature since
ecologists link it to the abundance of habitats
for specialized species, higher biodiversity,
and within this 'web' of relations, higher eco-
system resiliency (see Klinka et al. 1990; Frank-
lin and Spies 1991; Kimmins 1992; Franklin
1993).
6. Various unsuccessful attempts at reaching con-
sensus occurred between 1989 and 1993. Most
important were the Clayoquot Sound Integrated
Resource Management Planning Process, and
the Clayoquot Sound Sustainable Development
Task Force.
7. The Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council is an um-
brella organization that represents various tribal
groups on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It
is itself divided into a northern, central, and
southern district. Clayoquot Sound lies in the
central district, and the government land-use de-
cision affected the traditional territories of five
bands (Tla-o-qui-aht, Ahousaht, Hesquiaht, To-
quaht, and Ucluelet).
8. The issue of Nuu-chah-nulth sovereignty in
Clayoquot Sound is still before the courts. See
Martin v B. C. (Govt.). Recently, treaty negotia-
tions have begun between the Nuu-chah-nulth
and the provincial and federal governments.
9. This argument is made most forcefully by
Nicholas Thomas (1994:2).
Colonialism is not best understood primarily as a
political or economic relationship that is legiti-
mated or justified through ideologies of racism or
progress. Rather, colonialism has always equally
importantly and deeply been a cultural process; its
discoveries and trespasses are imagined and ener-
gized through signs, metaphors, and narratives;
even what would seem its purest moments of profit
and violence have been mediated and enframed by
structures of meaning. Colonial cultures are not
simply ideologies that mask, mystify, or rationalize
forms of oppression that are external to them; they
are also expressive and constitutive of colonial re-
lationships in themselves.
10. Here I depart from the current fascination with
'round tables' on the environment, which as-
sume that such arenas provide possibilities for
'ideal speech situations.' Although these arenas
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Buried Epistemologies 27
do often increase possibilities for participation,
they do not by themselves mitigate the relations
of power that are inscribed into public debate
through the categories and identities by which
conflicts are organized and understood. By es-
tablishing their resolutions as products of 'open'
public processes, existing relations are often le-
gitimated.
11. The abstraction and displacement of the local
into the global has become a well-rehearsed
theme and it is not only aboriginal communities
that are marginalized by such processes (see
Hecht and Cockburn 1989). My argument is
somewhat different: for this abstraction and dis-
placement to proceed as it does in BC, a native
presence must be at once erased or marked in
ways that de-link indigenous peoples from their
surroundings. This occurs in different ways and
is enabled through different knowledges and sig-
nifying practices (i.e., primitivism)
than the mar-
ginalization of othersocial groups. My argument,
in other words, is not that marginalization is
unique or limited to indigenous peoples, but
that by paying attention to these practices we can
begin to identify how colonial relations are per-
petuated in the present.
12. The phrase 'social nature' should ward against
simplistic interpretations that locate aboriginal
peoples as 'closer to' nature or as necessarily hav-
ing an environmental ethic of sustainability. Like
any other social group, the production of nature
by individual First Nations groups is mediated
through cultural practices, epistemologies, and
technologies.
13. The legislative vehicle for administering Indians
and Indians lands in Canada has been the federal
Indian Act, which was administered by the fed-
eral Department of Indian Affairs. For a history
of its early years, see Brian Titley (1986).
14. The normalization of nature in forms of modern
power remains undertheorized. Michel Foucault
(1979, 1980), for instance, rarely looked beyond
human subjects, bodies, and institutions, but
clearly the normalization of 'life' that he docu-
mented with such brilliance-its ordering and
disciplining through modalities of power,
knowledge, and spatiality-extends to and in-
corporates not only human subjects but 'nature'
itself. The regulation of populations and econ-
omy in BC required not simply the exploitation
of the 'forest' but its construction in discursive
practices that at once constituted, rendered avail-
able, and rationalized the 'forest' within an ad-
ministrative apparatus, making it adequate for
models of social and ecological productivity. The
relation between modernity, modernization, and
nature has generally been discussed in terms of
the domination (even death) of nature in the face
of instrumental reason (Leiss 1972; Merchant
1980). One of the problems with such work is
that it assumes that modernity marks a transition
from harmony with, to exploitation of, nature.
While the scale and intensity of nature's produc-
tion by human societies has certainly changed,
an argument can be made that what differenti-
ates premodern from modern relations with na-
ture is not harmony versus domination so much
as different knowledges and technologies that ar-
ticulated nature as a social
object
and made it
available to economic and political calculation
in new ways.
15. Various Royal Commissions have been commis-
sioned to evaluate BC's forest tenure system and
practices. Each has based its findings on two
founding assumptions: that the forests are
"Crown" land, and that they are to be managed
in the "public" interest.
16. Foucault (1977) develops his notion of geneal-
ogy to trace the 'emergence' of objects and iden-
tities in the present, rather than understanding
these as preexisting their construction.
17. It is no accident that Dawson first traveled to the
west coast as part of a joint British and American
survey of the international boundary between
Canada and the United States.
18. Dawson's photographs are collected in the Na-
tional Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
19. An editorial in the Victoria newspaper British
Colonist from June 27, 1863 makes this explicit,
Every school in the colonies where boys are taught
should make these branches [geology and mineral-
ogy] part and parcel of its curriculum. Small cabi-
nets of rocks and ores could be easily made or
imported for the purpose of giving the pupils a
practical acquaintance with the subject matter of
those sciences.... The mountains, the hills, and
the rocks of the island and the mainland would be
no longer trodden over in ignorance without atten-
tion.... Combining this acquaintance with theory
they may learn from books, they would in their
prospecting tours be alive to metaliferous indica-
tions, and would no longer walk blindfolded, pass-
ing unconsciously material for untold wealth, as
must now be often the case (de Cosmos 1863).
20. Cultural geographers have recently placed con-
siderable attention on 'reading' the landscape as
a 'text' (Duncan 1990; see also the edited collec-
tions by Cosgrove and Daniels 1988; Barnes and
Duncan 1992). This has had the important ef-
fect of shifting attention away from the previous
concerns of cultural geographers with mapping
the material transformation of 'natural' land-
scapes into 'cultural' landscapes by successive
culture groups, and instead has drawn attention
to the cultural construction of landscape
through contested practices of signification. De-
meritt (1994), drawing on Latour and Haraway,
has recently criticized the 'new' cultural geogra-
phy for locating agency wholly in humans
(or the 'social'). I share Demeritt's concerns
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28 Willems-Braun
(although caution that the agency of non-
humans-animals and machines-can never be
marked apart from a further set of contested
practices of signification). However, I find the
new cultural geography problematic in other
ways. First, by its almost exclusive focus on
'cultural' landscapes, it has left unexplained
how so-called 'natural' landscapes have them-
selves been constructed and contested. Second,
and perhaps more important, by presuming the
landscape as a 'text' to be decoded, much atten-
tion has been given to 'interpreting' landscapes
and less attention paid to how the 'landscape' is
made to appear as a text to be read in the first
place. In this section I have sought to demon-
strate how landscapes are made
intelligible.
Al-
though focusing on different 'mechanisms' of
landscape production, I share Mitchell's (1994)
desire to retain within the concept of landscape
a clear focus on "how landscapes are produced
and in what ways they structure social action"
(p. 10).
21. The erasure of native presence-textually and
physically-occurred in many ways, and was in
any case uneven across the Americas. Historians
of the American West, for instance, have empha-
sized how the frontier mythology was central to
the removal of native people from their lands
(Drinnon 1980; Slotkin 1985; Limerick 1987;
Limerick argues that this continues to under-
write American imperialism). In Canada, this
mythology did not take hold in any comparable
way. Regardless, what I trace here is not the
evacuation of the 'real' into 'mythology' (and
thus into the realm of the 'untruthful'), but the
very ways that locating the 'real' or the 'truthful'
through representational practices became
aligned with colonialism. In a sense the subtitle
to Drinnon's book- The Metaphysics of Indian-
hating-captures
this conjoining of knowledge
and power in the marginalization of natives,
even if his account does not work directly with
this constellation of ideas.
22. Premier Harcourt's tour of European cities was
intended to forestall a boycott of BC forest prod-
ucts which Greenpeace had threatened to organ-
ize. Watts's statements became the most pro-
vocative aspect of the trip, both in Europe and
in British Columbia. The 'accuracy' of news re-
ports and Watts's own position as a Nuu-chah-
nulth spokesperson came under considerable at-
tack in the days and weeks that followed.
Regardless of how either issue is answered,
Watts's comments brought to the fore the prob-
lem of conflating two very different political
struggles.
23. This contains echoes of nineteenth-century
American painter George Catlin's desire to 'pre-
serve' Indians who were fated to become 'tainted'
by the 'contaminating' vices and dispositions of
civilization (see Limerick 1987).
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