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The Power of Stories in the South Moresby Controversy: A Narrative Network Analysis

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Book cover Environmental History in the Making

Part of the book series: Environmental History ((ENVHIS,volume 6))

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Abstract

From 1974 to 1993 a fierce forestry conflict evolved on the remote archipelago of Haida Gwaii, Canada. The South Moresby controversy (SMC) over ownership, use, and management of the temperate rainforests arose between the Haida First Nation, the provincial and federal governments, the forest industry, local residents, and environmentalists. Beside a novel agreement over protecting the area as National Park and Haida Heritage Site in 1993 (leaving open the legal dispute over title and landownership), the SMC produced a rich collection of stories, arguments, statements, and memories that combined into a powerful narrative-network. While political strategy and historical events plaid a prominent role, they have been well analyzed elsewhere. This paper focuses on the role of stories in the narrative-network of the SMC from the perspective of environmental history. According to narrative-network analysis stories figure as actors themselves, and their power, connections and impacts are investigated. In particular, stories connect human and non-human actors in the network, generate collective identity, and trigger action; leading to acts of resistance, protests, and political involvement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Among others: Laurie E. Adkin, ed., Environmental Conflict and Democracy in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009); Nicholas Blomley, “‘Shut the Province Down’: First Nations Blockades in British Columba, 1984–1995,” BC Studies III (Autumn 1996): 5–35; Bruce Braun, The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada’s West Coast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Niamh Moore, The Changing Nature of Eco/Feminism: Telling Stories from Clayoquot Sound (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016); Justin Lawrence Roy Page, Tracking the Great Bear, How Environmentalists Recreated British Columbia’s Coastal Rainforest (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014); Richard A. Rajala, Up-Coast: Forests and Industry on British Columbia’s North Coast, 1870–2005 (Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum, 2006); Louise Takeda, Island’s Spirit Rising. Reclaiming the Forests of Haida Gwaii (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015); D.B. Tindall, Ronald L. Trosper and Pamela Perreault, eds., Aboriginal Peoples and Forest Lands in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013); Jeremy Wilson, Talk and Log: Wilderness Politics in British Columbia, 1965–96 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998).

  2. 2.

    On June 3, 2010, the original name Haida Gwaii (“Islands of the people”) officially replaced the colonial name Queen Charlotte Islands. During the local name-changing ceremony on June 17, the Haida returned the colonial name to the Crown, symbolically stored in a beautifully crafted bentwood box, and respectfully handed over to Premier Gordon Campbell.

  3. 3.

    Tom Reimchen and Ashley Byun, “The Evolution of Endemic Species in Haida Gwaii,” in Haida Gwaii: Human History and Environment from the Time of Loon to the Time of the Iron People, edited by Daryl W. Fedje and Rolf We. Mathewes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005), 77–95.

  4. 4.

    Haida oral history, supported by recent archaeological data, suggests that bear hunting went back 13,000, and fishing 10,700 years ago. For a comprehensive collection of Haida Gwaii prehistory and archaeology: Daryl W. Fedje and Rolf W. Mathewes, eds., Haida Gwaii: Human History and Environment from the Time of Loon to the Time of the Iron People (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005).

  5. 5.

    John Broadhead and Thom Henley, introduction to Islands At The Edge: Preserving the Queen Charlotte Islands Wilderness, ed. by Island Protection Society (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1984), 15.

  6. 6.

    Marianne Jones, “Haida Art and Haida Gwaii,” in Raven Travelling: Two Centuries of Haida Art, by Vancouver Art Gallery, 1st pbk. ed. (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2008), 29. Raven is the creator in Haida oral history. He figures prominently in the Raven myth telling how Raven released humans from a giant clamshell.

  7. 7.

    Only very few settlers made Haida Gwaii their permanent home in the nineteenth Century. Most early visitors came for hunting, fishing, and mining, or were missionaries. The first official white settler, Roderick Finlayson Dodd, arrived in 1887, when he purchased a thousand acres of land in Delkatla Slough.

  8. 8.

    Sitka Spruce was used to build warplanes (mosquito bombers), and Haida Gwaii had some of the tallest and oldest Sitka trees in the province. Through government-controlled and military supervised Aero Timber, logging during the Second World War reached new dimension and resulted in severe damages on Moresby Island.

  9. 9.

    “The Queen Charlotte Islands represented the clearest example of hinterland resources being drawn off without appreciable local benefits,” in: Rajala, Up-Coast, 7.

  10. 10.

    Further on called IPS (for Island Protection Society to which it was renamed in 1979).

  11. 11.

    Garry Edenshaw was one of the key actors among the Haida during and after the SMC. He was in his early twenties when he founded IPS together with Thom Henley, an US-American adventurer and kayaker. Edenshaw later became known as Guujaaw (“drum”). He was president of the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN) from 1999 to end of 2012.

  12. 12.

    Evelyn Pinkerton, “Taking the Minister to Court: Changes in Public Opinion About Forest Management and their Expression in Haida Land Claims,” BC Studies 57 (Spring 1983): 76.

  13. 13.

    “Talk and log” mainly refers to resource conflicts dominated by government composed expert groups, assessed studies and conducted hearings, while logging continued. See: Wilson, Talk and Log.

  14. 14.

    Pansy Collison was born and raised in Old Massett. The Haida women attended the First Nations Educations programme for 2 years at UBC before returning home to get married in 1979. She is a teacher, singer, artist and storyteller.

  15. 15.

    Pansy Collison, Haida Eagle Treasures: Tsath Lanas History and Narrative (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd., 2010), 26.

  16. 16.

    Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Minneapolois: University of Minnesota Press 2005), 156.

  17. 17.

    William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” The Journal of American History (March 1992): 1375.

  18. 18.

    Do network theories like ANT detach environmental history from its parent discipline of history? Murphy, for example, claimed that environmental historians, who work almost by definition interdisciplinary, have long adopted the network approach common in disciplines like sociology, cultural geography or spatial ethnography, whereas “in the field of history, this insight has generally not changed the assumptions and epistemologies of historians who are not in environmental studies.” Edward Murphy. “Critique, Practice, and Ecologies of the Future: A Vision for Environmental Studies in the Humanities,” in: Emmett, Rob, and Frank Zelko (eds.), “Minding the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies,” RCC Perspectives 2014, no. 2: 55.

  19. 19.

    About hybridity and matters of fact: Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004); Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  20. 20.

    Richie Nimmo, “Actor-network-theory and methodology: social research in a more-than-human world,” Methodological Innovations Online 6, 3 (2011): 108.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 112.

  22. 22.

    Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram and Helen Ingram, The Power of Narrative in Environmental Networks (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 5.

  23. 23.

    Some of those and similar conclusions are also made in: Lejano, Ingram and Ingram, Environmental Networks.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 1.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 2.

  27. 27.

    Ibid.

  28. 28.

    Most recently: Takeda, Island’s Spirit Rising.

  29. 29.

    Many Haida worked and still work as loogers.

  30. 30.

    The term emplotment goes back to the works of the French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Emplotment creates the “internal of the narrative unity” and “forges a causal continuity from a temporal succession, and so creates the intelligibility and credibility of the narrative.” In: Kim Atkins, “Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/ricoeur/

  31. 31.

    Lejano, Ingram and Ingram, The Power of Narrative Networks, esp. 60–75.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., 63.

  33. 33.

    “Good stories engage readers in active participation – in this sense, narratives are never merely passively received.” Lejano, Ingram and Ingram, Environmental Networks, 58.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 46.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 20.

  36. 36.

    Haida Heritage Centre, “From the Time of Foam Woman,” online, directed by Jeff Bear and Marianne Jones (2007; Kaay Llngaay: Urban Rez Productions Inc., 2013.), retrieved from youtube, accessed December 10, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7qUCw7FST0

  37. 37.

    Bill Reid, “Out of the Silence,” in Raven Travelling. Two Centuries of Haida Art, ed. Vancouver Art Gallery, 1st pbk. ed. (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2008), 24.

  38. 38.

    Nika Collison, “Everything Depends on Everything Else,” in: Raven Traveling. Two Centuries of Haida Art, ed. Vancouver Art Gallery, 1st pbk. ed. (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2008), 63.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 57.

  40. 40.

    “Prime Cedar: Cornerpost of Haida Culture,” All Alone Stone, 4, 1980, 50.

  41. 41.

    HHC, “From the Time of Foam Woman.”

  42. 42.

    “Decision Rationale,” Haida Laas, October 2005, 25.

  43. 43.

    Personal conversation with Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson on October 1, 2012, at White Raven Law Corporation in Surrey.

  44. 44.

    April Churchill-Davis, “Speaking about Weaving Cedar,” in: British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, Queen Charlotte Forest District. Cedar Symposium: Queen Charlotte Islands, Proceedings of the Cedar Symposium: growing western redcedar and yellow-cypress on the Queen Charlotte Islands/Haida Gwaii (28–30 May, 1996), ed., Greg G. Wiggins (Victoria, BC: British Columbia Ministry of Forests, 1996), 52.

  45. 45.

    Jenny Broom, to the WAC, Wilderness Advisory Committee, submissions, No. 63, BCA: GR 1601, Box 5.

  46. 46.

    Pierre Nora, “Entré Mémoire et Histoire, La Problématique des Lieux,” in Les lieux de mémoire, vol. I. La République, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), XVI–XLII.

  47. 47.

    Lejano, Ingram and Ingram described “threats to and loss of home” as part of the plot in the case study of the Arizona-Sonora Border: Lejano, Ingram and Ingram, Environmental Networks, 90.

  48. 48.

    Diane Brown to the WAC, Wilderness Advisory Committee, proceedings, Skidegate, 16 January 1986, 80, BCA: GR-1601, Box 1.

  49. 49.

    Keith Moore to the WAC, Wilderness Advisory Committee, proceedings, Skidegate, 16 January 1986, 279–280, BCA: GR-1601, Box 1.

  50. 50.

    R. L. Smith to the Wilderness Advisory Committee, proceedings, Sandspit, 17 January 1986, 112, BCA: GR-1601, Box 1.

  51. 51.

    WAC Wilderness Advisory Committee, proceedings, Sandspit, 17 January 1986, 211, BCA: GR-1601, Box 1.

  52. 52.

    Guujaaw cited in: British Columbia and Council of the Haida Nation. “B.C., Haida Nation Restore Name ‘Haida Gwaii’ to Islands,” News Release, June 17, 2010.

  53. 53.

    Lejano, Ingram and Ingram, Environmental Networks, 67.

  54. 54.

    Culture, explains Satterfield, “is not a giant symbolic or structural mechanism that imprints itself on the individual and so directs behaviour; rather, it is an overarching, multi-originating, and multi-faceted resource. Individuals draw upon this resource while manipulating it to fit both their own ends as well as the context and social positions from which they act.” In: Terre Satterfield, Anatomy of a Conflict: Identity, Knowledge, and Emotion in Old-Growth Forests (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), 6.

  55. 55.

    Haida leader and then president of the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN), Miles Richardson, as cited in Gill: “That’s why we wouldn’t let anybody but Haidas on those blockades. We wanted a crstyal clear, unmistakable message that this was a Haida issue-it was an environmental issue, but it was a Haida responsibility. And that’s why we did that. And it worked.” In: Ian Gill, All That We Say Is Ours: Guujaaw and the Reawakening of the Haida Nation (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009), 120.

  56. 56.

    Ken Truesdell to the WAC, Wilderness Advisory Committee, proceedings, Skidegate, 16 January 1986, 141, BCA: GR 1601, Box 1.

  57. 57.

    “Land use agreement signing Wednesday in Vancouver,” Queen Charlotte Island Observer, December 10, 2007.

  58. 58.

    Lejano, Ingram and Ingram argued: “Narrative-networks, as we have called them, are simultaneously a story and a grouping of actors. A narrative-network is dialectic, where the actual phenomenon we are studying arises from the intimate relationship of the two terms. That is, networks exist, fundamentally, as narratives. Our argument all along has been that stories are used not just to enlighten the listener but also to refresh the ties that bind the teller to the movement. Thus, narratives are part of the glue that binds networks.” In: Lejano, Ingram and Ingram, Environmental Networks, 174.

  59. 59.

    Once a fierce park-opponent, Patrick Armstrong incorporated Moresby Consulting Ltd. in 1987, moved to Nanaimo and specialized in “the strategic management of natural resources and environmental issues” (according to his homepage). He became a passionate photographer; capturing wildlife and wild landscapes. See: Moresby Consulting Ltd., accessed December 13, 2014, http://www.moresbyconsulting.com

  60. 60.

    Jeff King, “South Moresby at 25,” Haida Gwaii Observer, July 13, 2012.

  61. 61.

    King, “South Moresby at 25.”

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Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the many people on Haida Gwaii, who agreed to discuss, remember, and narrate their personal accounts of the SMC, and provided additional historical evidence not available in archives. I am especially grateful to Jim Hart, Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson, and Nathalie MacFarlane. Sincere thanks to Graeme Wynn for his priceless advise and support during my PhD-years, to the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), to the team at the Haida Heritage Centre in Skidegate, the staff at BC Archives (BCA), and everyone who added to this research

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  1. University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Alexandra Vlachos

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  1. Alexandra Vlachos
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Correspondence to Alexandra Vlachos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Escola de Ciências, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Estelita Vaz

  2. IHC, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Cristina Joanaz de Melo

  3. Universidade do Minho, NIMA, Esola de Economia e Gestao, Braga, Portugal

    Lígia M. Costa Pinto

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Vlachos, A. (2017). The Power of Stories in the South Moresby Controversy: A Narrative Network Analysis. In: Vaz, E., Joanaz de Melo, C., Costa Pinto, L. (eds) Environmental History in the Making. Environmental History, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41085-2_3

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