AlterNatives: Community, Identity, and Environmental Justice on Walpole Island (Part of the Cultural Survival Studies in Ethnicity and Change Series)

by Van Wynsberghe, Robert M.

• ISBN13: 9780205349524
• ISBN10: 0205349528
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Allyn & Bacon

Summary

A new entry into the Cultural Survival Studies in Ethnicity and Change Series, this ethnography provides a detailed account of how the Walpole Island First Nation has effectively organized itself in order to protect meaningful cultural and economic ties to its natural resources. This account focuses on the Heritage Centre a Walpole Island First Nation government body in Southwestern Ontario, Canada that has a twenty-year history of engaging in multifaceted endeavors to safeguard the environment.

Table of Contents

Preface.
Foreward by Dean Jacobs, Executive Director Walpole Island Heritage Centre.

1. Walpole Island.
Walpole Island: Recent History.
Walpole Island Today.
Framing the Debate: Collective Action and Identity.
The Truth About the Questions.
Coming Attractions.

2. Resources, Values, and the Heritage Centre.
Historical Forces and the Building of the Heritage Centre.
The Heritage Centre.
Engaging the Community/Maintaining Legitimacy.
The Heritage Centre and the Synthesis Model.

3. The Toxic Blob.
Science for the Angry: Is Research Sufficient?
A Brief History of Walpole Island.
Contemporary Walpole Island: A Community Responds to Contamination.
How the Heritage Centre Reformulates Sustainability.
Consciousness Negotiated.

4. The Pipeline/Water Tower.
The Event.
Elders and Future Generations.
Recent Past.
The Heritage Centre's Reformulation of Sustainability.
Summary: Solidarity and Implicit Meanings.

5. The Wetlands Management Plan: Ambivalence and Contradiction.
The Event.
Community Response to the Wetlands Management Plan: Cultural Health and Sustainability.
Recent Past.
Heritage Centre's Response to Community Opposition to the Wetlands.
Management Plan.
Summary: Collective Identity and Negotiating Tradition.

6. Imperial Chemical Industries of Canada.
Ten Cents for Every Gallon.
The Collective Action Frame.
Raising the Ante: Zero Discharge.
The Heritage Centre's Reformulation of the Collective Action Frame.
Summary: Alliances Revisited.

7. Critical Findings: Methodological Considerations.
All the Me's in Method.
Theory.
Consciousness, Collective Identity, and Solidarity Revisited.
Some Final Words: AlterNatives.
Native Environmental Justice Framework.