Between Now and Future Sovereignty: Indigenous Forestry in the Conjuncture

Abstract

The participation of Indigenous nations in the industrial logging of their own territories has received scant attention in academic literature despite the challenges it poses for decolonial critiques of extractive industries and efforts of non-Indigenous land defenders to build solidarity with Indigenous nations. Taking as a point of departure recent struggles over the logging of old forests on Vancouver Island, in the settler province of British Columbia, and drawing on the political economic history of the island's Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, we employ a conjunctural analysis to argue that Indigenous forestry can be understood as the articulation of Indigenous practices of self-determination (in a context heavily constrained by the colonial past and present) with a set of structural fixes for an industry in crisis. We argue that understanding the present moment of Indigenous forestry as a conjuncture affords an analysis of the tricky conditions that Indigenous communities must imperfectly and strategically navigate to adapt their livelihoods and exercise self-determination in the colonial present while maintaining possibilities for a decolonised future. It also points to a series of contractions at work in Indigenous forestry which could become disarticulated and rearticulated, potentially opening up wider possibilities for a decolonial future in “BC forests”.