GRAFTING Issue 01 The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge June 2018

Joseph Graham, William Newman, and John Stacy, The Geologic Time Spiral—A Path to the Past (ver. 1.2, 2008). U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY GENERAL INFORMATION. graft (n.1) "shoot inserted into another plant," late 15c. alteration of Middle English graff (late 14c.), from Old French graife "grafting knife, carving tool; stylus, pen," from Latin graphium "stylus," from Greek grapheion "stylus," from graphein "to write". So called probably on resemblance of a stylus to the pencil-shaped shoots used in grafting. graft (n.2) "corruption," 1865, perhaps 1859, American English, perhaps from British slang graft "one's occupation" (1853), which is perhaps from the identical word meaning "a ditch, moat," literally "a digging" (1640s), from Middle Dutch graft, from graven "to dig". The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is a serial broadsheet publication pro- 01 GRAFTING June 2018 duced by the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga, as part of The Work 02 COMMUTING August 2018 of Wind: Air, Land, Sea, a site-specific exhibition, public program, and publication series 03 BEARING October 2018 On The Geologic Time Spiral designed to expand perspectives on climate change through artistic practices, cultural 04 SHORING December 2018 inquiry, and political mobilization. 05 ACCOUNTING February 2019 06 FORGING April 2019 The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea Publisher Lisa Hall Exhibition: 14–23 September 2018 Blackwood Gallery Books: September 2018, June 2019, September 2019 University of Toronto Mississauga Public Programs: June 2018–April 2019 Broadsheet Series: June 2018–April 2019 Editorial Collective D.T. Cochrane, Alison Cooley, Fraser Drawing attention to the relative scales of geologic and human time, the Geologic The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea aims to foster a deeper public awareness of the complex McCallum, Christine Shaw, Joy Xiang Time Spiral is an apt starting place for an inquiry into the Anthropocene. Earth’s entanglements of ecologies of excess, environmental legacies of colonialism, the finan- cialization of weather, contemporary catastrophism, politics of sustainability, climate Designer origin and early life are obscure, receding into a distant past some 4.5 billion years justice, and hopeful resilience. It sets out to develop durable visual-cultural literacies and Matthew Hoffman invites publics to create new encounters in the common struggle for a future. The project ago—but as time and the spiral unfold, more details emerge. Depicted is the story flows across the city of Mississauga and is distributed locally, nationally, and interna- Copy Editor of a changing planet and evolving life, a story recovered from the rocks that form tionally through a three-volume book series co-published with K. Verlag and The Society Jeffrey Malecki for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, an innovative public program and publishing platform. the planet’s crust. Human-time barely registers, yet our traces may define the Printer The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) Thistle Printing Ltd. next chapter. The spiral image also calls to mind oft-quoted lines from Yeats’s 1919 poem “The Second Coming.” The sentiment continues to resonate: In order to productively collide with the present crisis, we recognize that ideas cannot be constrained by disciplines. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) composes and circulates an ecology of knowledge based on the relationship and an- Contributors tagonism of “useful” ideas. The name of this innovative platform is borrowed from a Amanda Boetzkes, Civic Laboratory Turning and turning in the widening gyre non-profit society founded in London in 1826, focused on publishing inexpensive texts for Environmental Action Research, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; such as the widely read Penny Magazine and The Library of Useful Knowledge, and aimed The Climate Change Project, Heather at spreading important world knowledge to anyone seeking to self-educate. Both con- Davis, Endocrine Disruptors Action Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold… tinuing and troubling the origins of the society, the Blackwood Gallery’s SDUK platform Group, Lisa Hall, Julie Joosten, circulates research, ideas, and debates from a range of exigent discourses and prac- Elizabeth LaPensée, The LEAP, Yihan Li, tices, including those among the visual arts, environmental humanities, public policy, Morris Lum, Shannon Mattern, political economy, sustainable design, science and technology studies, extinction stud- Andrea Olive, Kika Thorne, Zoe Todd, ies, and the major scientific and cultural debate of a generation—the Anthropocene. Kyle Powys Whyte, Tania Willard

The SDUK broadsheet series brings together contributors from diverse fields in the Staff sciences and humanities, students and faculty from across the University of Toronto Christine Shaw, Director/Curator Mississauga, community organizations and activists, policy makers and policy agitators, Alison Cooley, Assistant Curator How to Read this Broadsheet artist researchers and speculative thinkers, all to advance new forms of literacy around Caitlin Sutherland, Project Coordinator climate change discourse. Joy Xiang, Curatorial Research Assistant Fraser McCallum, Publications and The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea Outreach Assistant The SDUK broadsheet series takes aim Tree Permit TP-2016-00332 Applicant John (p. 20) and then move on to Heather Curated by Christine Shaw D.T. Cochrane, Research Associate at a broad range of concerns—and this Ross… (p. 16) are both excellent points of Davis and Zoe Todd’s “Decolonizing the Presented by the Blackwood Gallery in partnership with the University of Toronto issue, GRAFTING, explores how we come departure for this exploration. Anthropocene” (p. 12). Mississauga, the City of Mississauga, and K. Verlag. to know, define, and interact with nature, 2018–2019 where we see its boundaries and iden- If you are interested in who is taking ac- In the face of environmental catastrophe, tify its needs, and how we understand tion on environmental issues in Missis- many of us are asking, “How do we reck- its entanglement with culture. Following sauga, profiles of the Association for Ca- on with time? How do we repair? What on the origins of The Society for the Diffu- nadian Educational Resources, Credit Riv- can we do?” If you are too, a poem by sion of Useful Knowledge, and in the spirit er Anglers Association, HOUSE Lab, En- Julie Joosten (p. 14) exploring the many of publishing, questioning, and problema- abling Garden, Making Social Knowledge, histories bound up in climate’s present The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is developed in collaboration with tizing “useful knowledge,” we recognize and UTM’s Beehives provide short intro- may deeply resonate with you, and Kyle The Climate Change Project (City of Mississauga, Environment Division). our readers as curious people who may ductions to some important local initia- Powys Whyte’s “Climate Change as an pick up this publication with certain ques- tives (p. 26), and Andrea Olive’s essay on Unprecedentedly Old Catastrophe” (p. 8) tions already in mind. the Credit Valley Conservation Authority may offer some ideas for grappling with (p. 24) offers additional in-depth analysis. the timeline(s) of climate change and Perhaps you are asking, “Where do nature prevention. The Leap Manifesto (p. 10) and the city intersect? What does this Landowners, residents, and entrepre- calls for a Canada based on caring for The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea is one of the 200 exceptional projects funded in part mean for urbanism?” We suggest you neurs may be interested in asking, “What each other and the planet, moving swift- through the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter program. With this $35M investment, begin with Shannon Mattern’s “How to are the implications of environmental ly to a post-carbon future, upholding In- the Council supports the creation and sharing of the arts in communities across Canada. Graft a City” (p. 5); Morris Lum’s photo- degradation on land ownership and digenous rights, and pursuing economic graphic project on Cooksville, a Missis- the economy?” D.T. Cochrane and Fraser justice for all. sauga neighbourhood built on intercultur- McCallum address this question through al relationships and subject to both urban the lenses of economics and biodiversity, Finally, this publication closes with a development and climatic events (p. 6); respectively (pp. 22–23). glossary—a tool designed to help de- or The Climate Change Project’s study fine the unfamiliar, but also describe, de- of natural resource management (p. 25). “How is climate change related to In- velop, connect, and trouble existing ter- Blackwood Gallery digenous knowledge, sovereignty, and minology. Words, too, are shifting ground, University of Toronto Mississauga We often wonder, “How can art and cul- kinship?” is a central, vital question for and each broadsheet’s glossary will re- The Blackwood Gallery gratefully acknowledges the additional support of the Jackman 3359 Mississauga Road ture contribute to an understanding reckoning with our relationship to land spond to its contents, accumulating new Humanities Institute and the University of Toronto Affinity Partner, TD Insurance. Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6 of nature-culture entanglement?” If and the legacies of colonialism. It is tak- language, and attesting to the need for 905-828-3789 you wonder this too, Amanda Boetzkes’s en up by many contributors in this is- a complex, entangled lexicon that equips [email protected] essay on grafting and contemporary art sue, but you might begin with EDAc- us to learn, understand, and confront a blackwoodgallery.ca (p. 18), and Kika Thorne’s artist project tion & CLEAR’s “Pollution is Colonialism” rapidly changing world.

3

How to Graft a City

Shannon Mattern

The machine-learning algorithm processes empires or claimed by colonizers often prints. They’ve swapped neural nets for a training set composed of images of graft- host grafted architectures and infrastruc- compulsive desires, automation for de- ed fruit trees. It watches as gardeners and tures manifesting their mixed lineages— liberation, sublimely exhaustive datasets farmers cut underperforming-but-still- their entangled roots and scrambled ge- for neatness and order. In the end, though, sturdy trees down to a stubby rootstock, netic codes. they’re still grafting city-trees. “When we trim healthy shoots from more desirable think in terms of trees,” Alexander warns, trees, insert those shoots—or scions— The term graft derives from the Greek “we are trading the humanity and richness around the bark of the rootstock, bandage graphein, or stylus—probably because of the living city for a conceptual simplic- it all up, then fashion for our Siamesed those scion shoots looked a lot like writ- ity which benefits only designers, planners, tree-twins a rehabilitative greenhouse from ing implements. The city is grafted in this administrators and developers. Every time a plastic bag. Over time, the rootstock’s graphic sense, too: it’s a polyglot palimp- a piece of a city is torn out, and a tree made and scion’s vascular tissues grow together: sest of codes and scripts and plans. If we to replace the semilattice that was there they “inosculate.” And after a couple of trace its lineage all the way back to Uruk before, the city takes a further step toward growing seasons, the machine observes, and Çatalhöyük, among the earliest large- dissociation.” our gardeners yield sturdier, hardier, dis- scale human settlements, we can see that ease-resistant trees that produce more the city has long mediated between mul- Those planners’ and developers’ interests fruit, at much younger ages, than their tiple modes and means of inscription, trans- remind us that there’s yet another tradi- unadulterated kin. The machine has learned mission, and storage: legal codes and tional grafting technique involved in urban to graft, and it’s observed which methods copper cables, algorithms and antennae, development: the graft of corruption. With generate the greatest yield. public proclamations and system proto- the rise of urban-tech companies, data cols, clay tablets and ceramic type. Over brokers, and black-boxed administrative We then port that grafting algorithm over generations and millennia, urban inhab- platforms, and with the spread of public- to the urban planning lab, where our data itants have grafted code to clay, data to private partnerships, our newly grafted scientists aim to graft a healthier, sturdier, dirt, ether to ore. cities are even more at risk of infection. more fruitful city—an urban scion—onto Urban inhabitants are ever more suscep- some underperforming rootstock. Our But today’s data-grafters tend to cut the tible to surveillance and hacking and data- planning algorithm searches aerial imag- rootstock off at the stump, excising all mining, while the city itself is exposed to Brampton Flood, March 1948. Photograph by Russell K. Cooper. COURTESY REGION OF PEEL ARCHIVES. ery and Street View images to identify bar- inconvenient precedent, erasing legacy corporate rot, and the social contract is ren waterfronts, brownfields, and blighted scripts. A too-low tree graft makes the subject to decay. neighbourhoods with potential for resus- organism susceptible to soil pathogens. citation. It then grafts onto that urban Or it can entice a scion to plant its own Grafting is an integral component of urban rootstock a lattice of urban systems— roots, which can’t defend themselves evolution. But in this newest variation on pipes and cables and roads and buildings— against infection. The scion depends on a well-rehearsed practice, we have to be in patterns it has learned from other suc- the rootstock’s built-up immunities. Sim- wary of our new scions, those offshoots cessful cities (with “success,” of course, ilarly, when our contemporary “urban test of the tech giants. And we must protect determined by the optimization of various bed” prospectors, in their pursuit of tabula the rootstock, which is what keeps us urban indices). Over time, the root’s and rasa, uproot the foundations of the city, grounded and resilient—and, at the same scion’s infrastructural veins and arteries are they forsake the immunities of experience, time, mindful of the many foregoing graft- sutured together. And after a few months, the accreted defenses of history, the em- ings that have produced the thick, tough, the urban machine is able to sustain a bedded and embodied knowledges of local and subtle semilatticed structure of our vibrant ecosystem of people and Dutch communities. organic cities. grocery bikes and King Charles spaniels and vegan eateries. And its yield—of data Yet “a city is not a tree,” as architect and profit—is abundant. Christopher Alexander reminds us.1 He contrasts two urban structures: that of This is how cities are cultivated in an age the “semilattice” and that of the “tree.” in which the “science” in urban science The “organic” semilattice city is a “com- draws more from data and computer sci- plex fabric,” a structure that has “arisen ence than from horticulture and ecology. more or less spontaneously over many, Here, the old art of grafting is algorithmi- many years.” It is thick, tough, and subtle. cized and engineered. The tree city, by contrast, is characterized by its structural simplicity and minimal Yet cities have always been grafted ter- overlap among its urban units—whether rains. Those that have sustained more zones or arteries or superblocks. The tree than a couple generations of inhabitants is the signature form of the “artificial” city, bear layers of their material history. In the city “deliberately created by designers their urban strata we find evidence of the and planners” to reflect their “compulsive

Anthropocene: trash, construction mate- desire for neatness and order.” 1 The following quoted passages are rials, and ruins that chronicle humans’ al- drawn from Christopher Alexander, teration of the planet. Urban facades sport Designers and planners have supposedly “A City Is Not a Tree: Part I” Architectural Forum 122, no. 1 (April shrouds of territorial markings, official evolved beyond the hubris and folly of the 1965): 58–62; and “A City Is Not proclamations, and commercial insignia. master-planned city. Instead, maybe they’ve a Tree: Part II,” Architectural Forum 122, no. 2 (May 1965): 58–62, And enduring cities that, over the course merely sublimated the master plan in the https://www.patternlanguage.com/ of their long lives, have been usurped by machine, grafted algorithms onto blue- archive/cityisnotatree.html.

4 5

Intersections Morris Lum

2545, 2543, 2541 Hurontario St. Morris Lum has been visiting Cooks- ville since his childhood, when he would come to buy Caribbean and Chinese groceries with his family. Reflecting on his family history, he notes the importance of this neigh- bourhood to newcomer communi- 113, 115 Dundas St. W. ties—a fact that is shown in census Sites of global money transfer services data, which indicate that almost sev- are indicated by the flags seen on the enty percent of the ward’s residents left. While flags are at home amid the were born outside Canada. With the bright colours of commercial signage, construction of light rail on Huron- they also indicate the international tario Street, increased attention to scope of familial connections in Cooks- Cooksville Creek amid recent flood- ville. Money links homelands here ing, and renewed belief in the possi- and abroad; it moves transnationally, bilities of apartment towers, Cooks- changing shape along the way through ville is changing. currency exchange.

21 Dundas St. W. The street-facing low-rise buildings along Cooksville’s roads are comple- mented by high-rise apartment tow- ers nearby, as seen above. Over 2,000 of these towers were built in the Greater Golden Horseshoe from the post-war period through the mid- 1980s, and they are increasingly being seen as important in the fight against 2549A, 2547 Hurontario St. climate change. Public and private The layered character of commercial sector specialists, as well as NGOs, signage is a common thread through- are working to modernize the energy out Cooksville, where nearly 600 efficiency of these buildings, aiming at businesses compete for attention in greenhouse-gas reductions of up to one of Mississauga’s densest wards. forty percent. Emissions reductions Nature scenes depicting tropical are one facet of the Tower Renewal beaches or sunrises appear through- Project, which also aims to revitalize out, while Cooksville’s built environ- the green spaces around apartments, ment is itself periodically vulnerable foster urban agriculture, and leverage to the natural floodplain on which financial instruments to incentivize it sits. landlord participation.

3041, 3041A, 3039, 3039A, 3037A Hurontario St. Cooksville’s restaurant culture shows how intercultural exchange is ex- pressed through food: regional cui- sines change and evolve to reflect the movement of people, ingredients, and 25 Dundas St. W. influences. These intercultural rela- Empty storefronts are emblematic of tionships are often touted as prime a neighbourhood in transition, where examples of Canadian multicultural- people and businesses are in frequent ism, a discourse that celebrates di- movement. In Cooksville, newcom- versity but sometimes flattens or ob- ers tend to stay for just one to five scures the more difficult realities of years, and home-ownership is lower migration and upheaval (war, political than the Mississauga average. Nearby, instability, economic necessity, en- on both sides of Cooksville Creek, counters with overt and institutional- vacancies of a different kind are oc- ized racism in Canada, and linguistic curring: the City of Mississauga is and cultural isolation). Cooksville’s attempting to purchase homes to restaurant culture paints a complex create thirty acres of parkland on the picture of change, hybridity, and re- creek’s floodplain. Recent floods at- silience—rejecting the notion that test to the volatility of urban rivers: cultures are static, and attesting to a the 2009 flood of Cooksville Creek wide range of histories that inform registered the highest streamflow the community’s present shape. rate ever recorded in Canada. West Coast of North America are further to Oklahoma in the nineteenth century, stressors, adding to a longer list environ- many Indigenous peoples have already mental stressors occurring because the U.S. experienced the irreversible collapse of has not respected Indigenous treaty rights their ecosystems. They have forever lost Climate Change: to protect fish habitats.4 I already mentioned relationships with hundreds of species. how some Indigenous people in Oklahoma They were forced to ration the commod- are concerned about whether the state will ity foods available to them, separate from respect their self-determination. On the cli- their kinship and family relationships, and mate-mitigation side, some Indigenous peo- lose much of their linguistic and knowl- An Unprecedentedly ples in the Southwest and Mountain regions edge systems. They had to have their have been slow to transition to renewable labour exploited by settlers. Of course, energy because the U.S. re-engineered all the while, it was the settlers who be- their governments in the twentieth century lieved that they—the settlers!—were to promote a dependence on fossil fuels.5 morally superior while oppressing Indig- Old Catastrophe These realities are why Indigenous leaders enous peoples. This is a scenario worthy globally say that climate change and colo- of the most horrific science fiction. nialism are interrelated. Sheila Watt-Cloutier claims that “Climate change is yet another Settler narratives of preventing tomor- Kyle Powys Whyte rapid assault on our way of life. It cannot be row’s ecological catastrophe can be dan- separated from the first waves of changes gerous, for they involve future imagina- and assaults at the very core of the human tions clouded by crisis-mode thinking. spirit that have come our way.”6 I would en- They ignore why Indigenous peoples— courage readers to read her recent book, and other groups too—are threatened The Right to Be Cold. by climate change in the first place. The U.S. and Canada have not yet reconciled While warranted, fears of ecological ca- their laws, education systems, scientific tastrophe must be put in context. Dale institutions, and cultural norms sufficient- Jamieson, who recently published a ly. They have failed to support Indigenous 1 See Rachel Riley, Paulette Blanchard, book, Reason in a Dark Time, emphasizes cultural and political self-determination in Randy Peppler, Bull Bennett, and Daniel Wildcat, Oklahoma Inter-Tribal how human-caused climate change is an climate adaptation, honour treaty rights, Meeting on Climate Variability and “unprecedented problem.” The problem or promote Indigenous leadership in local Change (Norman, OK.: National is driven by “greed, mendacity, ignorance, and global climate-change mitigation. To- Weather Center, 2012). short-sightedness... manifest in the ex- day’s failures stem directly from the lack 2 See Leanne Simpson. "Looking treme power of corporations, the weak- of reconciliation of the original settler colo- after Gdoo-Naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and Treaty ness of government, and the indifference nial legal, educational, scientific, and cultur- Relationships," Wicazo Sa Review 23, of citizens.”7 For Indigenous peoples, the al strategies for dispossessing Indigenous no. 2 (2008): 29–42. See also Victor P. Lytwyn. “A Dish with One Spoon: The current climate change ordeal is bad, but peoples of their lands to make way for the Shared Hunting Grounds Agreement not unprecedented. Jamieson’s list of drivers of human-caused climate change. in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence drivers, starting with greed, sounds a lot Valley Region,” in Papers of the 28th Algonquian Conference, ed. David H. like U.S. settler colonialism. It sounds a Indigenous peoples, of course, are not Pentland (Winnipeg: University of lot like Canadian settler colonialism too, waiting for the U.S. or Canada to change— Manitoba, 1997). which explains why many of my interloc- even though it would be beneficial if they 3 Julie Koppel Maldonado, Christine utors in this article are Indigenous per- did change. Many are making their work on Shearer, Robin Bronen, Kristina Peterson, and Heather Lazrus. “The sons working north of the border. Candis climate change public, which is inspiring Impact of Climate Change on Tribal Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island have minating in the dust bowl period of the change. I have witnessed many hundreds Callison, speaking of Indigenous peoples kindred efforts across diverse Indigenous Communities in the Us: Displacement, already passed through human-caused 1930s. Today, many Indigenous Oklaho- of Indigenous persons testify about the in the Arctic in her book, How Climate peoples. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe has Relocation, and Human Rights,” Cli- ecological catastrophe at least once in mans are seriously concerned about cli- climate change threats their peoples are Change Comes To Matter, writes that we created its climate change plan, organized matic Change 120, no. 3 (2013): 601-614. their history. Speaking of the U.S. here, an mate change impacts, such as drought facing across the globe. My experiences need to recognize what “climate change entirely around relationships of reciprocal 4 Treaty Indian Tribes in Western Washington, Treaty Rights at Risk: integral part of its settler colonial domi- effects on their water, agriculture, health, include participating in or planning events portends for those who have endured a responsibility with plants, animals, spiritual Ongoing Habitat Loss, the Decline of the nation is the infliction of harmful environ- and energy supply. They are doubly con- such as the First Stewards Symposium century of immense cultural, political and beings, and ecosystems, with the plan’s Salmon Resource, and Recommenda- mental changes on Indigenous peoples. cerned that the state and the U.S. still have and the Shifting Seasons Summit, author- environmental changes.”8 sections divided into chapters with titles tions for Change, 14 July 2011, nwifc. org/downloads/treaty-rights-at-risk. For example, in the nineteenth century, not improved their respect for Indigenous ing and advising for scientific synthesis such as “Mother Earth” and “Three Sisters.”10 the U.S. forced some Potawatomi peoples self-determination sufficiently for Oklaho- reports on climate change vulnerability Heather Davis and Zoe Todd argue con- As well, the Lummi Nation has taken action 5 Julie Turkewitz. “Tribes That Live Off Coal Hold Tight to Trump's Promises,” to relocate from the Great Lakes region to ma Tribes to prepare for climate change.1 such as the U.S. Global Change Research vincingly that non-Indigenous persons are to block the establishment of a coal ship- New York Times, 1 April 2017. the Great Plains region, some 1,000 miles Program, and creating educational pro- sometimes rather unreflective when they ment and train railway near its treaty- 6 See Peter Robb, "Q and A: Sheila Watt- south. This relocation required our ances- For Indigenous peoples, it’s by no means grams for dozens of Tribes who are pre- fear future ecological catastrophe or deem protected sacred area of Xwe’chi’eXen, Cloutier Seeks Some Cold Comfort," tors to adjust rapidly to a completely dif- a new notion that human societies can paring for climate change. Indigenous climate change as unprecedented.9 Their citing the U.S. failure to honour treaty The Ottawa Citizen, 27 March 2015. ferent ecosystem and climate in what was inflict ecological catastrophe on one an- peoples are reporting climate-related concern is really that their children may rights as enabling the continuation of dan- 7 "Reason in Our Dark Time: then called the Indian Territory (later Okla- other. Way beyond the experience of U.S. threats to their economies and cultures be harmed by loop-back effects of the gerous fossil fuel industries that commit Interview with Dale Jamieson," homa). Over time, U.S. settlers worked to colonialism, Indigenous intellectual tra- related to rapidly shifting seasonal pat- same capitalist-colonialist-industrialist harms locally (e.g. pollution) and globally 3AM Magazine, 22 Ocobter 2016, http://www.3ammagazine.com/ privatize the land, dispossess Indigenous ditions are rooted in philosophies that terns, sea-level rises, ocean acidification, systems that have hitherto benefited them (e.g. climate change).11 3am/reason-dark-time. peoples of their land, and subsequently work to understand how the actions of thinning sea-ice, and the increased se- and secured their aspirations for future 8 Candis Callison, How Climate steal property held by Indigenous persons. human societies are entwined with en- verity of extreme weather events. well-being. So, when settler Americans In these and many other efforts, Indige- Change Comes to Matter: The They established extractive industries, in- vironmental change. One aspect of these or Canadians express concerns about a nous peoples are drawing on their own Communal Life of Facts (Durham: cluding coal and other mining, oil drilling, traditions concerns political philosophies Yet, in all my experiences, what is notice- coming catastrophe, it’s imagined to be intellectual traditions in preparing for cli- Duke University Press, 2014), 42. agriculture, and livestock. Land privatiza- of diplomacy for peoples who share eco- able is that Indigenous peoples are bracing a catastrophe disruptive of today’s eco- mate change. They are calling on settler 9 Heather Davis and Zoe Todd, "On tion and dispossession stressed Indigenous systems. The ancient Dish with One Spoon for climate change impacts that—in a cer- logical status quo for them. Today’s sta- nations like the U.S. to finally live up to the Importance of a Date, or, Decolo- nizing the Anthropocene," ACME: kinship and gender systems, while resi- treaty between Anishinaabe and Haude- tain sense—would not have been as risky tus quo, of course, is already an Indige- moral and just expectations for diplomacy An International Journal for Critical dential and boarding schools stripped In- nosaunee peoples is one such example in for their ancestors. Many Indigenous peo- nous ecological dystopia. and reciprocal responsibility by taking care Geographies 16, no. 4 (2017): 761–780. digenous children of generations of their Great Lakes region. The treaty establish- ples facing relocation due to sea-level rises of shared environments, including the cli- 10 St. Regis Mohawk Environmental history, memories, and knowledge. Ex- es reciprocal responsibilities for caretak- in the Arctic or Gulf of Mexico are only in Ironically, I have not yet seen any settler mate system. But non-Indigenous leaders Division, Climate Change Adaptation tractive industries also generated pollu- ing of the environment.2 such a position because they were forced American or Canadian offer an imagined in the U.S. and Canada will never be in the Plan for Akwesasne (Akwasasne, tion and contributed to the rise in green- give up their more mobile governance prac- projection of a climate future that is more position to do right by Indigenous peoples St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, 2013). house gas concentrations in the atmo- Today, it is not entirely incorrect to fear tices and instead live permanently on small ecologically dire than what Indigenous until they acknowledge climate change 11 Vincent Schilling, "Lummi Tribal Leaders Rally in D.C. Against Nation's sphere. Unwise farming practices rendered that we are hurtling toward ecological islands to make way for U.S. settlement.3 peoples have already endured due to co- as the unprecedentedly old ecological Largest Coal Terminal," Indian the landscape vulnerable to drought, cul- catastrophe due to human-caused climate Climatic threats to fish populations on the lonialism. Like our peoples who relocated crisis that it is. Country Today, 12 November 2015.

8 9 The LEAP Manifesto

We start from the premise that Canada caretakers of this land. Indigenous As an alternative to the profit-gouging Moving to a far more localized and eco- We declare that “austerity”—which has This is a great deal to take on all at once, is facing the deepest crisis in recent communities have been at the forefront of private companies and the remote bu- logically based agricultural system systematically attacked low-carbon but such are the times in which we live. memory. of protecting rivers, coasts, forests, and reaucracy of some centralized state ones, would reduce reliance on fossil fuels, cap- sectors like education and healthcare, lands from out-of-control industrial ac- we can create innovative ownership struc- ture carbon in the soil, and absorb sud- while starving public transit and forc- The drop in oil prices has temporarily The Truth and Reconciliation Commission tivity. We can bolster this role, and reset tures: democratically run, paying living den shocks in the global supply—as well ing reckless energy privatizations— relieved the pressure to dig up fossil fuels has acknowledged shocking details about our relationship, by fully implementing wages and keeping much-needed revenue as produce healthier and more affordable is a fossilized form of thinking that as rapidly as high-risk technologies will the violence of Canada’s near past. Deep- the United Nations Declaration on the in communities. And Indigenous Peoples food for everyone. has become a threat to life on earth. allow. This pause in frenetic expansion ening poverty and inequality are a scar Rights of Indigenous Peoples. should be first to receive public sup- should not be viewed as a crisis, but as on the country’s present. And Canada’s re- port for their own clean energy projects. We call for an end to all trade deals that How we can pay for all of this? Read “We a gift. cord on climate change is a crime against Moved by the treaties that form the le- So should communities currently deal- interfere with our attempts to rebuild Can Afford The Leap” by Bruce Campbell, humanity’s future. gal basis of this country and bind us to ing with heavy health impacts of pol- local economies, regulate corporations, Seth Klein, and Marc Lee.3 It has given us a rare moment to look at share the land “for as long as the sun luting industrial activity. and stop damaging extractive projects. what we have become—and decide to These facts are all the more jarring be- shines, the grass grows and the rivers Rebalancing the scales of justice, we should The money we need to pay for this great change. cause they depart so dramatically from flow,” we want energy sources that will Power generated this way will not merely ensure immigration status and full pro- transformation is available—we just need our stated values: respect for Indigenous last for time immemorial and never run light our homes but redistribute wealth, tection for all workers. Recognizing the right policies to release it. Like an end to And so we call on all those seeking polit- rights, internationalism, human rights, out or poison the land. Technological deepen our democracy, strengthen our Canada’s contributions to military conflicts fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction ical office to seize this opportunity and diversity, and environmental stewardship. breakthroughs have brought this dream economy and start to heal the wounds and climate change—primary drivers of taxes. Increased resource royalties. High- embrace the urgent need for transforma- within reach. The latest research shows that date back to this country’s founding. the global refugee crisis—we must wel- er income taxes on corporations and tion. This is our sacred duty to those this Canada is not this place today—but it it is feasible for Canada to get 100% of come refugees and migrants seeking safety wealthy people. A progressive carbon country harmed in the past, to those suf- could be. its electricity from renewable resources A leap to a non-polluting economy cre- and a better life. tax. Cuts to military spending. All of fering needlessly in the present, and to all within two decades1; by 2050 we could ates countless openings for similar mul- these are based on a simple “polluter pays” who have a right to a bright and safe future. We could live in a country powered en- have a 100% clean economy.2 tiple “wins.” We want a universal pro- Shifting to an economy in balance with principle and hold enormous promise. tirely by renewable energy, woven togeth- gram to build energy-efficient homes the earth’s limits also means expanding Now is the time for boldness. er by accessible public transit, in which We demand that this shift begin now. and retrofit existing housing, ensuring the sectors of our economy that are One thing is clear: public scarcity in times the jobs and opportunities of this transi- that the lowest-income communities already low carbon: caregiving, teach- of unprecedented private wealth is a Now is the time to leap. tion are designed to systematically elim- There is no longer an excuse for build- and neighbourhoods will benefit first ing, social work, the arts, and public- manufactured crisis, designed to extin- inate racial and gender inequality. Caring ing new infrastructure projects that and receive job training and opportunities interest media. Following on Quebec’s guish our dreams before they have a for one another and caring for the planet lock us into increased extraction de- that reduce poverty over the long term. lead, a national childcare program is chance to be born. could be the economy’s fastest-growing cades into the future. The new iron law We want training and other resources long past due. All this work, much of it sectors. Many more people could have of energy development must be: if you for workers in carbon-intensive jobs, performed by women, is the glue that Those dreams go well beyond this docu- higher wage jobs with fewer work hours, wouldn’t want it in your backyard, ensuring they are fully able to take builds humane, resilient communities— ment. “We call on all those seeking po- leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved then it doesn’t belong in anyone’s back- part in the clean-energy economy. This and we will need our communities to be litical office to seize this opportunity and ones and flourish in our communities. yard. That applies equally to oil and gas transition should involve the democratic as strong as possible in the face of the embrace the urgent need for transforma- pipelines; fracking in New Brunswick, participation of workers themselves. High- rocky future we have already locked in. tion.” We call for town hall meetings We know that the time for this great tran- Quebec, and British Columbia; increased speed rail powered by renewables and across the country where residents can 1 Sustainable Canada Dialogues, sition is short. Climate scientists have tanker traffic off our coasts; and to Ca- affordable public transit can unite every Since so much of the labour of caretak- gather to democratically define what a Acting on Climate Change: Solutions from Canadian Scholars (Montreal: told us that this is the decade to take nadian-owned mining projects the world community in this country—in place of ing—whether of people or the planet— genuine leap to the next economy means McGill University, 2015). decisive action to prevent catastrophic over. more cars, pipelines, and exploding trains is currently unpaid, we call for a vigor- in their communities. global warming. That means small steps that endanger and divide us. ous debate about the introduction of 2 Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, a Providing All Global Energy with will no longer get us where we need to go. The time for energy democracy has universal basic annual income. Pio- Inevitably, this bottom-up revival will lead Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part I: come: we believe not just in changes And since we know this leap is beginning neered in Manitoba in the 1970s, this stur- to a renewal of democracy at every level Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, So we need to leap. to our energy sources, but that wher- late, we need to invest in our decaying dy safety net could help ensure that no of government, working swiftly towards and Materials,” Energy Policy 39, ever possible communities should col- public infrastructure so that it can with- one is forced to take work that threatens a system in which every vote counts no. 3 (2011): 1154–1169. This leap must begin by respecting the lectively control these new energy stand increasingly frequent extreme their children’s tomorrow, just to feed and corporate money is removed from 3 See https://leapmanifesto.org/en/ inherent rights and title of the original systems. weather events. those children today. political campaigns. how-can-we-afford-the-leap/.

10 11 Decolonizing the Anthropocene

Heather Davis and Zoe Todd

The Anthropocene has never been a prop- The ideological presuppositions of the cide met with another one, that of the erly geological concept—it has always Anthropocene were made explicit in the Middle Passage, again premised upon a been political. And, we argue, it has always eponymous article by Paul Crutzen and logic of extraction and violence. Christina been entwined with settler colonialism, Eugene Stoermer (2000), who rely upon Sharpe describes the ongoing reverber- at least on Turtle Island. Other places on the concept of the noösphere to articulate ations of chattel slavery and the rending Earth might have the Anthropocene start- their position.4 The noösphere places of life-worlds in the wake of the ships and ing at different times, with different events, thought above the biosphere and geo- ideologies that transported captured Af- but for us, here, thinking the Anthropocene sphere, and is framed as a teleological pro- ricans across the Atlantic. Sharpe teaches outside of its Eurocentric framings and gression that follows the development of us that “in the wake, the past that is not identifying the interlinking connections the earth’s geological features and biota, past reappears, always, to rupture the between the Anthropocene and colonial- as demonstrated by Pierre Teilhard de present.”9 Building on her work, we can ism helps us begin to name and then dis- Chardin’s writings on the concept.5 This gesture towards how the entangled vi- mantle its ecocidal logics.1 conceptualization assumes that the bio- ciousness of capital and white supremacy sphere cannot, in and of itself, constitute have their direct roots in the epistemic Colonialism, especially settler colonialism— an “envelope of thinking substance,” which violence of discovery, dispossession, ex- which in the Americas simultaneously em- contradicts the millennia-old philosophical traction, and the horrific capture of life, ployed the twinned processes of dispos- traditions of many Indigenous peoples.6 bodies, and worlds. The Anthropocene- Tania Willard and New BC Indian Art and Welfare Society Collective, #haunted_hunted, 2015. Photo: Aaron Leon. COURTESY THE ARTIST. session and chattel slavery—was always In particular, Vanessa Watts elegantly ar- as-disaster narrative in dominant scientific about changing the land, transforming the ticulates the concept of Indigenous Place- and social science discourse must reckon earth itself, including the creatures, plants, Thought, drawn from her own familiarity with the ongoing disaster of the Middle soil composition, and atmosphere. It was with deeply rooted Indigenous philoso- Passage and settler colonialism. This seis- about moving and unearthing rocks and phies still practiced and applied in North mic shockwave has rolled through and minerals. All of these acts were intimately America.7 Place-Thought necessarily dis- across space and time, and is now hitting tied to the project of erasure that is the rupts a concept of knowledge separate those nations, legal systems, and struc- imperative of settler colonialism. The dam- from the geosphere and biosphere, and tures that brought about the rending and ming of rivers, clear-cutting of forests, and posits instead that land and thought are disruption of lifeways and life-worlds in importing of plants and animals remade integral to one another; knowledge is not the first place.10 the worlds of North America into the vi- another technological layer somehow pre- sion of a displaced Europe, fundamentally sumed to be outside of the earth. Indig- Indigenous and Black resistance in the altering the climate and ecosystems. Set- enous Place-Thought thus asserts that life face of apocalypse—including the renew- tler colonialism, in North America and and thought are animated through and al and resurgence of Indigenous and Black elsewhere, is marked by this process of bound to bodies, stories, time, and land. communities in spite of world-ending vio- 1 This is a shortened version of a name of the Noösphere.” Pierre 8 We want to make clear that this 9 Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: longer essay, “On the Importance Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of violence was structural, and as On Blackness and Being (Durham: terraforming.2 As Kyle Whyte of the Pota- Global colonial dispossessions continue lence—is something that Euro-Western of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Man (New York: Image Books/ such even those people from Europe Duke University Press, 2016), 9. watomi Nation argues, “industrial settler to haunt—through bones, bodies, and thinkers should heed as we contend with Anthropocene,” published in Doubleday, 2004), 114. who were fleeing poverty, famine, ACME journal (16, no. 4, 2017), or dispossession (in, for example, 10 For example, as Ta-Nehisi Coates campaigns erase what makes a place eco- stories—and assert the removal of human the implications of the seismic upheaval https://www.acme-journal.org/ 6 See Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers the case of the Highland clearances) has written “the Dreamers have logically unique in terms of human and thought and technology from the earth. of worlds that began back in 1492. In order index.php/acme/article/view/1539. Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial were also complicit in systems of improved themselves, and the Our argument builds upon the Encounters & Social Imagination Indigenous genocide, systems damming of seas for voltage, the nonhuman relations, the ecological history to adequately address climate change thesis advanced by Simon Lewis (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005); through which people of European extraction of coal, the transmuting of a place, and the sharing of the environ- Marking the contiguous histories of co- and other environmental catastrophes we and Mark Maslin in “Defining Eduardo Kohn, How Forests descent benefitted regardless of of oil into food, have enabled an ment by different human societies.”3 Fur- lonialism and the Anthropocene is not an need to seriously think through and enact the Anthropocene” (Nature, 11 Think (Berkeley and Los Angeles: their original reasons for migration. expansion in plunder with no known March 2015) that the Anthropocene University of California Press, 2013); This structured violence was precedent.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, ther, the forced displacement that many academic exercise. It is rather about tak- processes of decolonization. This involves should be dated to 1610 to coincide Rachel Attituq Qitsualik, “Word systematically enacted through: Between the World and Me (New tribal communities suffered involved ad- ing stock, being affected by, and feeling self-governance for Indigenous peoples, with the geologic legacies of and Will—Part Two: Words and the the instantiation of the Canadian York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 150. colonialism. Substance of Life,” Nunatsiaq nation-state as an English and This is the amplification and aptation to entirely new environments, the reverberations of the violence of Euro- the return of stolen lands, and reparations News, 12 November 1998, French colony; the failure to abide globalization of systems that have new climates, new ecosystems, new plants pean settlement.8 Colonialism tore apart for the descendants of captured Africans. 2 See also Eyal Weizman, The Conflict http://nunatsiaq.com/archives/ by treaties; the imposition of private long been underway. and animals. These processes of environ- and disrupted worlds in the places both of It must also fundamentally question the Shoreline (Göttingen: Steidl, 2015). nunavut981130/nvt81113_09.html; property and the reservation Deloria Vine Jr., Red Earth, White system; brutal and violent residential 11 Sylvia Wynter draws attention mental transformation and forced displace- us currently reside—these unceded and bounds and the legitimacy of the nation- 3 Kyle Powys Whyte, “Our Ancestors’ Lies: Native Americans and the schools; the continued over-place- to the ways in which the concept ment can be understood as climate change, unsurrendered lands across North Amer- state structure itself. As we are already Dystopia Now: Indigenous Con- Myth of Scientific Fact (New York: ment of Indigenous children into of Man, which is the “foundational servation and the Anthropocene,” Scriber, 1995); Bawaka Country, the childcare system; the imposition basis of modernity,” serves to or more broadly, a preview of what it is ica—and hit like a seismic shock. The seis- seeing around the world, people will not in Routledge Companion to the Sarah Wright, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, of patriarchy; the obvious disregard deny humanity to many people like to live under the conditions of the mic shock of dispossession and brutality simply sit still in the face of ecological Environmental Humanities, ed. Kate Lloyd, Laklak Burarrwanga, for Indigenous lives as manifested while also divorcing humans from Ursula Heise, Jon Christensen, Ritjilili Ganambarr, Merrkiyawuy by the continued inaction in regards the earth. She calls for an unset- Anthropocene. And so, as Whyte makes that colonialism employed to gain entry destruction, but will move, adapt, and try and Michelle Niemann (London: Ganambarr-Stubbs, Banbapuy to Missing and Murdered Indigenous tling of Man in order to reinscribe clear, the current environmental crises into and claims over Indigenous lands in to find ways of recomposing with their Routledge, 2016), 8. Ganambarr, and Djawundil Women; and immigration laws, a vision of the human in line with named through the designation of the the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries kept kin and companion species. Rather than Maymuru, “Working with and specifically section 38, which social and environmental justice. 4 Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, Learning from Country: Decentering severely restricted access to people Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Anthropocene can be viewed as a contin- rolling like a slinky, pressing and compact- positioning the salvation of Man11—the “The Anthropocene,” Global Human Authority,” Cultural Geog- from places other than Northern Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/ uation of, rather than a break from, previous ing in different ways in different places, as liberation of humanity from the horrors Change Newsletter 41 (2000): 17–18. raphies 22, no. 2 (2015): 269–283; and Western European origins until Freedom: Towards the Human, Elizabeth Povinelli, Geontologies: 1978. Therefore, Canada must be After Man, Its Overrepresentation— eras that begin with colonialism and white colonialism spread outwards into home- of the Anthropocene—in the technics and 5 Chardin writes: “We must enlarge A Requiem for Late Liberalism understood as a white supremacist An Argument,” CR: The New supremacy, and extend through advanced lands of self-determining peoples around technologies of the noösphere, we call our approach to encompass the (Durham: Duke University Press, state in the sense that white Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): the globe. It worked to compact and speed formation, taking place before our 2016). people are systematically given 288. capitalism. In other words, climate change here for a tending once again to relations, eyes and arising out of this factor preferential treatment. On the and the Anthropocene, understood from up time, laying waste to legal orders, lan- to kin, to life, longing, and care.12 This of hominization, of a particular 7 Vanessa Watts, “Indigenous Place- relation between white supremacy 12 See Sharpe, In the Wake, and an Indigenous perspective, are not new guages, and place-stories in quick suc- commitment to tenderness and relation- biological entity such as has never Thought & Agency amongst Humans and the Anthropocene, see Nicholas Kim Tallbear, “Failed Settler Kinship, before existed on earth—the growth, and Non-humans (First Woman Mirzoeff, “It’s Not the Anthropocene, Truth and Reconciliation, and events, but are rather the cyclical recur- cession. The fleshy, violent loss of 50 mil- ships is one necessary and lasting refrac- outside and above the biosphere, and Sky Woman Go on a European It’s the White Supremacy Scene, Science,” 2016, http://indigenoussts. rence of logics of extraction (of bodies, lion Indigenous peoples in the Americas tion of the violent and unjust worlds set of an added planetary layer, an World Tour!),” Decolonization: Or, The Geological Color Line,” in com/failed-settler-kinship-truth- envelope of thinking substance, to Indigeneity, Education & Society 2, After Extinction, ed. Richard Grusin and-reconciliation-and-science/. lands, minerals, fossil fuels) that have am- is something we read as a “quickening” in motion at the beginning of the colonial which, for the sake of convenience no. 1 (2013): 20–34. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota plified to become a global phenomenon. of space-time. This seismic shock of geno- moment. and symmetry, I have given the Press, 2016).

12 13 This, Seeded in a Glance

Julie Joosten

You build a room Thus As the world arrests the world. History, shipwrecked against the matter for me to enter A sentence that means almost nothing. of our bodies, our cultures, ship four walls in the avalanche of shameful livery Almost interests me. wrecking them, stays afloat. of fog assembled from colonial centuries Like how, despite history, we keep falling in love with the world. __ and your thimbleful pulse, I undress – an amorous We see the silence. sequence. Your blood take off my mother’s ermine-trimmed streams so gently coat, my brother’s sugarloaf hat, my it’s a moth pollinating night grandmother’s pomegranate gown with flowers. the gold-embroidered sleeves, my It is the evening. father’s suspenders and blue jeans, my It is the morning, the noon, a new Sinking back, disappearing ruched veil, high-tops, and striped wool evening. See hooves and puddles and like texture’s line, like confusion socks – It is the night. It is the night. It is unavoidable laws dissolving into darting through breakthrough, the night. mathematical equations, caverns, my blood trickles, turns tourniquet in baroque fog a brain, in your gaze __ unlace my bodice – this night, the continents, atmospheric heedful I’m listening to Mozart’s Requiem pressure, breathing, three-dimensional of the filament for the repose of the souls images of the dead – of life. of the dead. I want at the same time to be listening __ __ to a requiem for the souls of We stand naked before a warship the living, A nest sways in its weather Imagination’s energy sprawling on dry ground. envelope. The atmosphere, cropped caresses your __ close, alters – earlobe (soft skin You start to dress (white silk slip, white between my teeth), cotton shift), telling me about a a requiem being a kind of prayer invisibility is the answer too long widening fury – distance (of centuries, continents, and persuasion being a kind of path. ordering what happens. together, we cultivate blood) that ruffles thought (as if tickling doubt as an echo it). Then pricks and burns it. __ __ in an empty field. I try to think of a way to organize Being persuaded is about consenting Hooves gallop to the rhythm __ distance not as time or desire or will, to believe. not of what follows but as a style of living we might call but of the anterior Proof your mouth exists: a moth elation and damage – __ of what was foreseen makes me think of you as following. while this rabbit-fur night You wear white I gather my consent, hold it fast, stare needles solitude, raises honour what distance at a scribbled moon. an unverifiable thought, different dissolves. We’re standing amidst known oceans, from geometry, archeology, seasons, and miseries – time – this fault line is half-memory, half winter beginning unnoticed. A way to give time __ to this time that doesn’t exist Power runs in grooves – The avalanche but presses up We must interfere in the silky exposes the mechanics against my skin habit of dehumanization – of our dying. Memory evokes ruin at different speeds an ugly word for an in different lights, nothingness unspooling ugly concept. contaminated words – body and soul, clear canyon, turbulent sovereignty, impregnated Ugly has its own empire, a flight of divinities – then dis- is to write to you – necessity. Like appearing what I would say to you tonight existence. just like that, its path an inky coastline our proximity imagines – my neurons flex their bodies in – one of your ribs, my left hand, breasts, feet – __ __ Like the cold when morning disappears I have not in the end felt ready. splintering certainty into acts of being –

This, Seeded in a Glance is a long poem included in Julie Joosten's forthcoming manuscript For Nor (BookThug, 2019). Kika Thorne Tree Permit TP-2016-00332, Applicant: John Ross, Application Date: Apr 14, 2016, City of Vancouver. Legal Description: 026-604-124-12 & 15 EXC. OLD COURTHOUSE & SITE INCLUDE VOLUMETRIC PCLS COLOURED CREEN EX PLAN 12829 BLK. Still from mvi_3652.mov April 19, 2016, 5:20:54 PST (left). Still from mvi_3689.mov April 19, 2016, 5:44:07 PST (right). 2018. Digital images, dimensions variable. COURTESY CEDRUS ATLANTICA. Prosthetic Carapace

Amanda Boetzkes

Grafting has emerged as an insistent fig- world of bees. The graft flattened the ex- or intrinsic component of the complete ural operation at a time when sensory en- pressivity of the work to articulate a para- representation; it belongs to the work in vironments are charged with colliding polit- dox: the capacity to communicate across an extrinsic fashion.1 It adorns and veils ical and ecological forces. Indeed, we can ontological difference is shown as the the nudity of the body. But precisely as think of such conflicts as incisions into the sculpture’s incommunicability. The face a supplement on the edge of the work, it defense structure of the subject from which of the female figure was remapped as the naturalizes the representation itself. new material trajectories grow. New cara- bees’ dominion. paces are being constituted at the site of Grafting similarly undertakes this activity ecological wounds. The graft is therefore Grafting crosses realities and binds them of supplementation. As in the case of a ambivalent—neither a suture nor a ban- together by asserting the very material skin graft, a material supplement is applied dage, but a layer that integrates itself to excess of its procedure. It injects exterior in order to (re)constitute the whole organ. form a resilient but receptive shell for a matter into interior content and projects The graft must be absorbed into a seam- new condition. Artistic grafting implants interior content outwards. In this way, a less totality in order for the skin to func- offshoots that propagate outward growth graft behaves like a frame or pedestal to tion as the body’s primary organic bound- in unforeseen directions. But it also involves the work of art, or what Jacques Derrida ary. In grafting, we see the fundamental ingrowth, the corporeal acceptance of calls the parergon: a device that indicates excess of all concepts and terms: the graft foreign material. Grafting is thus an aes- the space of art and without which art points to ruptures and affordances. Like thetic activity that spans epistemological would not be what it is. In The Truth in Derrida’s frame, it forms and deforms, and and ontological concerns. Painting, Derrida argues that framing and we might also consider how grafting in- ornamentation are integral components forms. The excess of the graft feeds back Consider Pierre Huyghe’s Untilled instal- of the meaning of the artwork. The ergon into the work and even has the potential lation at Documenta 13 in 2012. Like much (the work of art) is offset by its parergon, to recast intention and meaning. Grafting of Huyghe’s work, Untilled staged discrete the limit that separates the work from applies a surface that is both sensorial and Nadia Myre, Circle, 2017. Digital Print. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ART MÛR. animal and vegetal Umwelten—lifeworlds— what lies outside it, thus binding the two informational, a bi-directional interface that overlapped but nevertheless main- together. Derrida shows how Kant estab- that grows excessively in the fissures of circulated on trade routes that spanned both perspective and experience. It brings world. Importantly, the ear is rigged with tained gaps of indifference toward one lished a model of aesthetics based on an meaning and orientation. Through its in- the Atlantic. Myre’s recovery of the clay materiality to the horizon’s edge and reso- a wireless internet connection and a mi- another. The outdoor installation was com- elaborate conception of the artwork, using terweaving of that excess, it produces new pipe becomes an act of grafting: she sews nates with what lies beyond the world. The crophone, so that it will serve as a com- posed of a sculptured nude set amidst framing devices as prostheses that are skeins of sense. the pieces into a fabric that supplements graft therefore resounds between the vir- municative organ that both receives and groupings of poisonous nightshade plants, necessarily integral to the work’s internal traditional beadwork with the material tual and the material, generating sensible outputs information. Stelarc envisions that fungi that produce LSD, and toxic flower- subject matter. It is therefore only by virtue Consider Nadia Myre’s work Code-Switch- remains of the tobacco trade. The frag- possibilities at the limits of discursive it could also be a remote sensor, so that ing foxgloves. A greyhound named Human of the external parerga, the scaffoldings ing (2017), comprised of photographic ments bind together the total object but knowledge. When Australian artist Stelarc someone across the globe could tune into with a dyed pink leg lived on the plot of that deliver the work of art as art, that images of clay-pipe fragments woven with nonetheless inform it with a new code: a grew a full-sized ear from his own tissue it and listen to what it hears. Furthermore, land, moving freely about the site with no Kant can make aesthetic judgments based Indigenous beadwork. Set against a black colonial history and decolonizing interven- and surgically inserted it into his arm, he it would be part of a distributed remote constraints. These disparate components— on internal criteria. In other words, the background, the objects call to mind tra- tion. She inflects the visual code of all bead- did so to resituate the body’s sensorial communication system, in which a speaker or as Huyghe describes them, these “alive world of art is upheld by frames. ditional ceremonial dress. Yet the work work, insisting on its historical and mate- orientations and to intervene in the way would be implanted in Stelarc’s mouth so entities and inanimate things, made and switches the visual code of the object, rial specificity in lieu of timeless mythol- that others direct their input. Ear on Arm that he might talk to someone by speaking not made, dimensions and duration vari- The parergon is not a literal frame, but rath- implanting it with inferences of its colonial ogies of Indigenous craft. In so doing, her is one of several prosthesis projects de- into the ear on his arm, and hear the an- able”—were gathered together by a fo- er a procedure of encircling, supporting, history. A Montreal-based artist and mem- graft-work resists the historical masking signed by Stelarc to “augment the body’s swer from the implant in his head. Stelarc calizing agent, a graft at the core of the and presenting the work of art. Derrida ber of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First of colonial violence and deterritorialization. architecture, engineering extended opera- has thus grafted a new sense system into sprawling dimensions: a colony of bees maintains that the relationship between Nation, Myre began the work as a study tional systems of bodies and bits of bod- his body in such a way as to problematize built a massive hive around the head of the artwork and its parergon may be as of the tobacco trade. She and her son But grafting does not merely inflect; it trans- ies, spatially separated but electronically corporeal boundaries altogether. His pros- the sculpture, thus seaming together the close as that between the drapery and recovered the pipe-fragments from the forms through the movement of informa- connected.”2 His work does not intend to theses collapse the naturalized parame- numerous divides in the space. In grafting inferred body of a classical sculpture. The Thames River, debris from a time when tional relay, making incisions into visual reconstitute a body that is missing an ex- ters of the body, closing the spatio-tem- concrete and honeycomb, it joined sites drapery is material excess, a supplement traders would dock in London with ships contextures and recoding them. The ef- isting organ or limb, but rather to explore poral gaps that separate individuals by of meaning and meaninglessness; the without which there would be no sense of full of imported tobacco from the “New fects of such manoeuvres are more than the possibilities of extending, repurposing, building an exoskeleton by which others signifying world of art and the signaletic the body. Yet the drapery is not an interior World,” where goods and resources were instructive, however, as recoding changes and reconnecting the body to the external are assimilated into its fabric.

18 19

Grafting is therefore ambivalent. It an- transmit signals via GPS, cell phone net- are considered acceptable risks even ticipates, speculates, and feeds back, but works, VA goggles, and the internet. though they happen regularly. Canada’s the procedure is not always successful, Additionally, the home would be outfit- Pollution current toxics governance relies on indus- confronting material recalcitrance and ted to inflate in water, with solar panels tries to self-report their emissions and do historical reflexes. Grafting takes place to provide electricity, warming and cool- the research to determine whether their against the repetitions of “nature,” co- ing fabrics, and batteries recharged is own chemicals are harmful. It is thus dif- lonial oppression, the capitalist psyche, through bodily motion by power sensor ficult to get accurate information from and bodily repression. It is anticipatory nodes. Each home would also have thirty Colonialism the government about the past and pres- yet must also protect against grooved pockets to fit the pills necessary for a ent status of environmental harms. patterns of reification; it attempts to reset month of “mood and health monitoring.” the nervous energies bound up in our In short, the affordance of this intelligent There is little accountability about the role perceptual reactivity. Grafting is a “per- membrane is precisely its plasticity: its of pollution in Canadian colonialism; for locutionary gesture,” as Judith Butler endurance through any and all climates— EDAction & example, pollution was not discussed in defines it—a performative act constituted political, environmental, cultural, and Civic Laboratory for the Truth and Reconciliation process. Until by the very possibility of failure, by vir- subjective. Environmental 2016, Canada refused to be a signatory to tue of the existing discourse into which the United Nations Declaration of the Rights it is performed.3 It runs up against the Wearable Homes is a speculative fiction Action Research of Indigenous People, nor recognize the existing contexture in all its extended of the entanglement of the body, climate, (CLEAR) right to free, prior and informed consent. material implications. It is not surprising and aesthetics, which Mattingly sets in This includes consent to be polluted or to note that Stelarc’s implants have suf- moody dystopian landscapes in her pho- not. How might a different environmental fered from necrosis and have had to be tographic series. The Wearable Homes governance system acknowledge the sig- removed and re-implanted. Grafts can appear in the charged environments for Colonialism in Canada is an ongoing struc- nificant and ongoing role of pollution in indeed be rejected and feed their failure which they were designed. Lone individ- ture whereby settler society and govern- Canadian colonialism? back into the host system. Grafting is uals appear against dark, cloudy skies, ment assert sovereignty over lands already therefore a risky practice and not merely craggy cliffs, or churning waters. The occupied by Indigenous peoples. This in- A Call to Action an exercise of the imagination. images thus enact grafting as a response cludes disrupting and exterminating Indig- It took a lot of work to make the state to the systemic interplay between body enous life, values, and self-determination, acknowledge the injustices of residential The feedback of the graft, whether uto- and climate, with all the political and as well as disruption of established rela- schools, but this is essential to decoloniza- pian extension or dystopian infection (or technological entanglements this implies. tionships between bodies, lands, waters, tion and Indigenous resurgence and self- both at the same time), intercedes in the It gives articulation to the form and move- airs, plants, animals, and other beings. determination. Similarly, it will take a lot processes of anthropogenesis by gen- ment of grafting, creating mediatized of work to bring the state, industry, and erating communication with the assem- sense-objects that are at once interfaces Pollution is Colonialism because: others into responsibility for the violences blage of forces that make up the earth’s with possible worlds and hypothetical of pollution. There are already many groups Elizabeth LaPensée, With Songs to Pull Oil from Water, 2017. Digital Illustration. COURTESY THE ARTIST. ecology. In this regard, let us consider objects of those worlds. As grafting en- and nations calling for action and change: Mary Mattingly’s Wearable Homes series, velops and moves between interiorized Land is at the centre of colonialism. Industry and the state disrupt and damage which imagines portable architecture as and exteriorized realities, inverting and • Native Youth Sexual Health Network • Idle No More, The Manifesto, http:// superadded layers to the body, designed extroverting, it weaves a syntagmatic the many relationships that make up the Land when they understand it as a resource. & Women’s Earth Alliance, “Violence www.idlenomore.ca/manifesto. to respond to global climate change. chain that runs through the speculative on the Land, Violence on our Bodies,” Through these fabricated carapaces, she real and feeds back a retrospective sen- They use the Land to extract value, such as in mining, but use the Land as a place 2015, http://landbodydefense.org/. • Indigenous Environmental Justice grafts bodily reflexes and sensibilities. In sibility. Its operation serves as what Félix Project, http://iejproject.info.yorku.ca/. turn, climate is incorporated into individ- Guattari calls a chaoide, an intervention to put pollution—from radioactive waste to urban sewage—as another way to make • Tŝilhqot’in National Government, “In ual movement, habitation, and response to unlock the body from its nervous rep- time of crisis, B.C. makes unbeliev- • EcoJustice, “Exposing Canada’s Chem- capabilities. etitions and open material possibilities.5 economic value. Using the Land for the best interests of industry, profit, settlers, able move to approve drilling permits ical Valley: An Investigation of Cu- for twice rejected New Prosperity mulative Air Pollution in the Sarnia, The Wearable Homes designs take cloth- or colonial governments is a central part of colonialism. mine,” 2017, https://dgrnewsservice. Ontario Area,” 2007, https://www. ing patterns from a variety of cultural org/civilization/ecocide/extraction/ ecojustice.ca/wp-content/uploads/ traditions, information technologies, and Pollutants are material forms of harm. canada-drilling-permits-issued- 2015/09/2007-Exposing-Canadas- portable energy systems. Through these tsilhqotin-lands-wildfires-rage/. Chemial-Valley.pdf. components, the architecture of each Canada’s extraction economy—from fur to fossil fuels—has been at the forefront of Wearable Home is designed for a subject • Mikisew Cree First Nation, “Written • Free Grassy Narrows, “River Run 2016: Canadian disruptions to Indigenous Land that will be exposed to volatile climates Brief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation Healthy river, healthy people,” 2016, and self-determination. The pollution from without an anchored geographic location. to the Standing Committee on Envi- http://freegrassy.net/2015/12/22/river- extraction, as well as from refining, manu- In fact, it anticipates the very undoing of ronment and Sustainable Develop- run-2016-healthy-river-healthy-people/. facturing, and other industries, is often con- cultural identities grounded in environ- ment,” 2015, http://www.ourcommons. mental consistency. Mattingly’s tem- centrated in Indigenous communities, be- ca/Content/Committee/421/ENVI/ • Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia Against plates derive from Inuit garments, Indian coming a form of intergenerational violence. Brief/BR8622379/br-external/Mikisew Pipelines, “Aamjiwnaang Water Gath- saris, Buddhist robes, American chains CreeFirstNation-e.pdf. ering and Toxic Tour,” 2017, https:// like The Gap and Banana Republic, Japa- More than this, persistent pollutants such aamjiwnaangsolidarity.com/. nese kimonos, safari camouflage, and as PCBs, methylmercury, and radioactive • Gwich’in Council International, Arctic military uniforms. The synthesized tex- isotopes have no respect for jurisdiction, Athabaskan Council, Climate Action • Stop Alton Gas, https://stopaltongas. tiles protect the body and provide it with distributing harm and death to people, fish, Network Canada – Réseau action cli- wordpress.com/. a general global form. animals, plants, water, and other parts of mat Canada, Ecology North, Pembina 1 Jacques Derrida, “The Parergon,” the Land, disrupting relationships between trans. Craig Owens, October 9 Institute, “The Inuvik Declaration on • Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, Mattingly relates the general globality (Summer 1989): 21. them. Pollution is a significant and ongoing Arctic Climate Change and Global “#NoLine9,” http://www.cottfn.com/ of the Wearable Home to an understand- form of colonial violence in Canada, a vio- 2 Stelarc, Ear on Arm: Engineering Action,” 2008, http://bit.ly/2FKuMul. pipeline/. ing of the clothing’s sheltering capacity, Internet Organ, http://stelarc.org/?- lence that overflows legal jurisdiction and insofar as she notes that one wearer catID=20242. point sources. As Native Youth Sexual • NYC Stands with Standing Rock Col- • Nunatsiavut Government, “#Make- would be indistinguishable from the other. 3 Judith Butler, “Performative Agen- Health Network has shown, “Violence on lective, “#StandingRockSyllabus,” 2016, MuskratRight” and “Lake Melville: At the same time that this would provide cy,” Journal of Cultural Economy 3, the Land is Violence on our Bodies.” https://nycstandswithstandingrock. Avativut, Kanuittailinnivut (Our for privacy and anonymity, however, she no. 2 (2010): 152. wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/. Environment, Our Health),” http:// notes that “the pervasiveness and scru- 4 Mary Mattingly, Wearable Homes, The state gives permission to pollute. makemuskratright.com/. tiny of high-powered networks would http://www.marymattingly.com/ It is legal for some pollution to occur under • Xapuri Declaration, “We reject any html/MATTINGLYWearableHomes. still catalog our movements and where- html. Canadian and U.S. environmental law. Un- form of climate colonialism,” 2017, • Chippewas of Georgina Island First This text was first published in pamphlet abouts.”4 The home would be outfitted der the permission-to-pollute system in http://www.ienearth.org/xapuri- Nation, “Stand with #GIFNLake- form, and online at Discard Studies 5 Félix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethi- (www.discardstudies.com) and the with an information technology main- co-Aesthetic Paradigm (Blooming- Canada, some effluents can be released declaration-we-reject-any-form-of- Guardians,” http://georginaisland.com/ Endocrine Disruptors Action Group frame, so the wearer could receive and ton: Indiana University Press, 1995). to a certain amount, and spills and leaks climate-colonialism/. protect-the-lake-simcoe-watershed/. (www.endocrinedisruptorsaction.org).

20 21

exonerated from producing climate change— the calculation of real GDP has numerous which is not to say it is not implicated. In- problems that require continual tinkering What is deed, the material circulations that The with to resolve.5 For example, to account Serpentine Economy is intended to describe in their for changes in quality that get expressed entirety generate waste products that are in price changes, statisticians adjust the The the engine of global warming and climate values used to construct real GDP. One of Galleries change. More importantly, the calculative the consequences of these adjustments practices that constrain our attention to is the inability to compare real GDP values Economy? economic matters have systematically over long periods of time. failed to account for those waste products. Fraser McCallum This is why we continue to have defenders Debates around carbon pricing are the of economic growth when the pursuit of most visible deployments of The Economy, D.T. Cochrane growth has arguably resulted in the climate particularly by those who assert that their crisis. rejection of the scheme is a defence of The Economy. Conflicting studies contend that Timothy Mitchell argues that the idea of carbon pricing will boost or damage The The Economy began to emerge “toward Economy, provoking qualitative transfor- The Economy does not take place. the end of the 1930s” with the development mations that will have a financial expres- Emerald Ash Borer, the iridescent green As social scientist Nigel Clark argues, in- change. Itself a passenger in human affairs, of national accounting.2 The ascription of sion. That expression may indicate a fall beetle feeding on the ash trees of Ontario, vasive species reveal the turbulence in- this invader requires us to reckon with our In 1991, Jean Baudrillard provoked outrage timelessness to The Economy derives, in in economic performance. However, it is Quebec, and the eastern United States, herent to ecosystems: transplanted life beliefs about the natural environment. Its when he proclaimed, “The Gulf War did not part, from the much older components fundamentally predicated on calculative carves winding paths beneath the bark of provokes “disaster,” which “stimulates the serpentine galleries map out paths of com- take place.”1 The outrage was based on a out of which the idea was assembled. Of practices, determined by what is included its host tree. These wandering lines (“ser- pressures of selection, at once testing life’s merce, globalization, agriculture, and ur- willful misunderstanding of what Baudrillard principle importance are monetized trans- and excluded from the calculations. pentine galleries,” plant biologists call them1) tolerance and galvanizing its creativity.”4 ban development. Tracing these lines, we meant. He was not claiming that the vio- actions, dating back millennia and offering trace the fatal effects of the beetle, whose Whereas environmental education often are forced to ask: What constitutes a stable lence visited upon Iraq by the U.S. military the means for calculating national accounts, The misunderstanding of Baudrillard’s prov- feeding inhibits the movement of nutrients compartmentalizes ecosystems into dis- ecosystem? How can our ideas of conser- had not happened. Rather, he argued that which economists claim measure The Econ- ocation is related to the popular misinter- throughout the tree. tinct units (wetlands, forests, plains), move- vation and preservation account for in- the object of “The Gulf War” referred to by omy. But, economic processes have always pretation of “construction” to mean “not ment and migration potentially dissolve and vasion, migration, and destruction? And military spokespersons, government offi- been seen as exceeding monetary exchange. real.” Although The Economy does not take The patterns cut by this invasive species recompose ecosystems. As Clark writes: which forms of life are being preserved cials, reporters, and pundits—and known At least since David Hume, money has been place in the way presented in popular dis- have been used to aesthetic effect in wood- “If it is in the ‘nature’ of life to stick to its at the expense of others? by the publics of Europe and North Amer- considered a distraction; a nominal expres- course, it is very much real. When we hear working projects made from reclaimed home turf, why exactly are there species ica—was not synonymous with the actual sion of value that obscures the real mech- that The Economy is doing poorly, ex- ash wood. Beginning in 2014, Mississauga’s from all across the taxonomic spectrum events in the region. Western powers me- anisms of commodity exchange.3 Since pressed in coverage of political declara- Partners in Project Green and Sawmill Sid that seem so eager for relocation, and so diated and systemically distorted informa- then money has predominantly been the- tions about statistical constructions, we spearheaded a region-wide reuse project well-disposed to it?”5 tion such that what was offered to viewers orized as a mere intermediary, and the dis- factor that into our behaviours. Rather for dead ash that has yielded a wide variety was not an accurate representation of a tinction between real and nominal is now than representing the processes deemed of wood products, and similar efforts are A fuller picture of the Emerald Ash Borer war effort. Instead “The Gulf War” consti- a fundamental component of The Economy.4 economic, The Economy is grafted back underway across the GTA. Such upcycling infestation requires an understanding of tuted a novel entity manufactured out of onto them through the impacts it has on aims to create positive outcomes from the plantations and invasive species in the images of military violence. The declarations of politicians and pundits government policies, as well as on the plans infestation, and in some cases these proj- context of global commerce. The beetle, about The Economy continually reconsti- and habits of businesses and the public. ects symbolically retain the traces of the after all, is relatively benign in its places The same non-representation applies to tute it as an actually existing object, as do As such, there is no unfettered Economy beetles’ movements. of origin: Asian ash trees evolved to resist The Economy. Political rhetoric, govern- the policies justified by national account- that simply takes place, separate from its fatal effects. It is only in a new ecosys- ment policy, economic theory, and statis- ing—and gross domestic product (GDP), either the global ecosystem or government Whereas reclamation projects take advan- tem—one intensively mediated by human Illustration by Yihan Li. tical calculations all transform economic calculated by aggregating economic policies. tage of fine woodworking and carpentry, activity—that the beetle’s devastation is 1 Kenneth R. Marchant, “City of events, rendering The Economy as a new transactions, is the key ingredient in that it is believed that a much humbler wood made possible. In Mississauga, these fac- Mississauga Emerald Ash Borer object. To say “The Economy does not take Management Plan,” City of Mississauga, reconstitution. Simply put, when GDP is product originally transported the beetle tors converge: ash trees make up an es- place” is not to deny the existence of buy- 2012, http://www7.mississauga.ca/ increasing The Economy is growing. 1 Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did to this continent. A wooden crate carrying timated ten percent of the tree canopy, documents/parks/forestry/2014/ ing and selling, jobs and wages, goods and Not Take Place, trans. Paul Patton Management_Plan_Final_22Jan12.pdf. Japanese car parts allegedly caused the and all are at risk if left unattended.6 As services. Rather, it is to assert that The It is possible to add together the sales of (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). infestation in the Windsor–Detroit area in early growers in the forest life cycle, ash 2 Oliver Rackham, The Ash Tree (Dorset: Economy does not unify or determine all trees with the sales of armoured vehicles the early 1990s.2 A passenger on the cir- trees thrive in disturbed ecosystems, and Little Toller Books, 2014): 132–133. of the entities and processes widely deemed with the sales of massages because each 2 Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: cuits of global trade, the Emerald Ash Borer they were historically planted as street trees to be economic. is given a monetary value, which exists Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity 3 Anna Tsing, “Earth Stalked by Man,” (Berkeley: University of California owes its fortune to the mobility of com- during the city’s urbanization process.7 The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology because each of these things has a price. Press, 2002), 82. 34, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 4. modities. In 1992, while campaigning for U.S. Pres- However, within the calculative-rhetorical 3 David Hume, “Of Money,” in Essays, Rattray Marsh Conservation Area, on the 4 Nigel Clark, “The Demon-Seed: ident, Bill Clinton adopted the slogan “It’s framework of The Economy, nominal in- Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Mitigating the problem demands the op- shore of Lake Ontario, forcefully testifies Bioinvasion as the Unsettling of The Economy, stupid.” According to the creases in GDP are not a suitable indicator Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Environmental Cosmopolitanism,” Clinton campaign, The Economy is unde- of growth. Nominal GDP will increase if Liberty Fund Inc., 1987 [1752]), posite: a regional quarantine to prevent to the devastation wrought by the Emerald Theory, Culture & Society 19, http://www.econlib.org/library/ the further spread of the beetle. These reg- Ash Borer. The marsh was used as farm- no. 1–2 (Spring 2002): 113. niably people’s primary, if not singular, prices increase, but this does not mean LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL26.html. matter of concern. Clinton’s declaration that people are actually better off. To re- ulations are most evident at national and land from the nineteenth century through 5 Ibid., 112. 4 Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon provincial parks, where firewood is under to the 1950s, and afterwards ash spread was the culmination of Margaret Thatcher’s move inflation, statisticians have derived Bichler, “Capital Accumulation: 6 “Emerald Ash Borer,” City of Missis- earlier insistence that “there’s no such a measure known as real GDP. Breaking the Duality of ‘Economics’ strict scrutiny. Such constraint—where widely on the disused fields—thus the end sauga, http://www.mississauga.ca/ thing as society.” The two slogans express and ‘Politics’,” in Global Political resources are compelled to remain near of plantation agriculture laid the ground- portal/residents/parks-emerald- Economy: Contemporary Theories, their place of origin—is rare in a world work for another fragile ecosystem.8 The ash-borer. a substitution that occurred within main- The quarterly proclamations by Statistics ed. Ronen Palan (New York: stream political opinion: Society was re- Canada about the country’s real GDP are Routledge, 2000), 67–88. where plants and soils are transnational 95-acre conservation area contained over 7 Marchant, “City of Mississauga travellers among nurseries and plantations. 2,000 ash trees before hundreds of infested Emerald Ash Borer Management placed with The Economy. One of the con- reported by the media as a snapshot of 5 Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen Plan,” 18. sequences of this substitution was the The Economy. A tenth of a percentage point and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Report by Anthropologist Anna Tsing identifies the ones were recently removed.9 Mitigation closure of public debate on the boundaries up or down gets leveraged as an indication the Commission on the Measurement latter as a root cause of the devastating and conservation practices at Rattray have 8 Ruth Hussey and Judith M. Goulin, of Economic Performance and Social Rattray Marsh Then and Now and content of human well-being, which of sound stewardship or wanton misman- Progress, September 2009, environmental effects of modernity. Plan- necessitated dynamic, laborious, and tech- (Mississauga: Rattray Marsh Protec- was to become increasingly calculative. agement by the government. However, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ tations, she writes, “are machines of rep- no-scientific processes. Tree pruning, re- tion Association, 1990): 80–81. documents/118025/118123/ lication, ecologies devoted to the produc- moval, and wood-chipping, alongside on- But this closure constitutes a paradox: while the very construction of “real” GDP under- Fitoussi+Commission+report. 9 Kevin DeMille, “Emerald Ash Borer Thatcher rejected outright the existence mines the implicit notion that it offers an tion of the same.”3 This phenomenon am- going treatments with biological insecti- Impact to Rattray Marsh Conser- of an emergent social being that exceeds objective measure of an objective entity. Part one of a serial column on the plifies the destructive effect of invasive cides for living trees, attest to the fact that vation Area,” presentation for Credit fundamental concepts of commerce Valley Conservation, 2014, https:// the individual, in its place Clinton deployed and exchange as driving forces that species, which can surge through mono- conservation is largely a process of human cvc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/ another emergent being, this one the prod- Statistical agencies are large, complex propel climate change. cultural plantations unimpeded by natural intervention in human-caused situations. 05/Rattray-EAB-Meeting3.pdf. uct of individualist economic theory and barriers to their advance. apparatuses devised for data collection, Issue 01: What is the Economy? Part one of a serial column by a its calculative practices. sorting, and adjustment, all of which are Issue 02: What is the Market? In the challenges it poses to conservation member of The Society for the needed to construct the measure. While Issue 03: What is Growth? Plantations and invasive species challenge practices and large-scale agriculture, the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge team Issue 04: What is Innovation? on the physical and material traces The non-existence of The Economy means statisticians standardize procedures to Issue 05: What is a Price? the conventional understanding of eco- Emerald Ash Borer infestation raises im- of climate change and environmental it can be neither entirely blamed for nor instill confidence in their constructions, Issue 06: What is Value? systems as cyclical and harmonic entities. portant questions for the era of climate violence in the region.

22 23 Credit Valley Learning from Natural Assets Conservation Authority: Nature/Culture/Nature The Climate Change Project The City of Mississauga is currently under- ing volumes of water, and the speed with to investigate the value of natural assets taking The Climate Change Project, devel- which those volumes present. Both infra- by assessing the services they provide. Andrea Olive oping the first ever comprehensive Climate structure and natural systems have built- This complex process will assign a mon- Change Action Plan (CCAP), which aims to in mechanisms to deal with excess water. etary value to natural assets, which can address the realities of climate change in They both give us a better understanding then be used by municipalities to assess Mississauga. Over recent years there has of how to cope with large, and sometimes the potential for using them in place of hard been a growing recognition of the impact sudden, amounts of water. Armed with infrastructure to provide the same services. The Credit River flows from its headwa- Conservation Authorities, like the CVC, ruins. These areas thus double as nature climate change could have on the city. We this knowledge we can then build infra- ters outside Orangeville at the Niagara now seek to balance human needs with conservation sites and culture preserva- can now point to first-hand experiences of structure that uses characteristics from Through this project, CVC is working with Escarpment into Lake Ontario, and the a flourishing natural environment. All thir- tion sites, grafting together a unique land- extreme weather locally—from the ice storm nature to inform infrastructure—and vice the City to determine the cost of the in- river’s entire watershed drains close to a ty-six CAs share the same four objectives: scape experience. in 2013 to floods in July of the same year and versa—to lessen the effects of flooding. frastructure that would be needed to re- thousand square kilometres. The area— to safeguard rivers, lakes, and streams; as recently as February 2018. Mississauga, place the services from existing natural with the river as a main artery—contains to protect woodlands, wetlands, and nat- Stewarding culture as part of the natural like many other municipalities around the The following are two examples that illus- areas and assign a value to those services. unique landscapes, from farms to mo- ural habitats; to protect life and property landscape is not an objective laid out in world, has identified the need to take action trate how the City is working with Con- By assigning this monetary value to nat- raines, and nourishes a vast array of bio- from natural hazards like flooding; and to the 1946 CAA. In fact, the legislation does to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and servation Authorities to better integrate ural assets, municipalities can better man- diversity, from individual species like the provide opportunities for the public to not make a single mention of culture or position the city competitively in the tran- and understand the value of natural sys- age them, making business cases for their rainbow trout, to larger ecosystems, like enjoy nature. They meet these objectives heritage. The CAs’ work in this area is not sition to a low-carbon economy while work- tems that help mitigate flood risk. maintenance and future enhancement. the community of Streetsville in Missis- through a variety of land-management through any specific legislated mandate, ing to increase the city’s resilience and It also allows cities to assess other oppor- sauga. The river and its watershed also tools like erosion control, reforestation, but through their work as protectors and capacity to deal with and respond to the In Ontario, intensification is the primary tunities to use naturalization, rather than sustain a rich history that reaches back and groundwater monitoring, as well as stewards of the land. However, it is not physical, social, and ecological effects of scheme for development, which consists build new infrastructure. This would allow thousands of years to the Huron-Wendat by creating windbreaks, drainage areas, always easy to preserve heritage when it a changing climate. of building in areas of existing development, natural assets to be considered in conver- and Seneca peoples, and more recently to wildlife habitats, and wetlands. These belongs to so many people and its pieces as opposed to building where no devel- sations and processes that traditionally the Mississauga, an Anishinaabe-speaking programs are undertaken in collaboration are split among different municipalities: Recognizing that many citizens, organiza- opment exists. This is especially true in were exclusively about engineering and peoples who inhabited the region when with different partners, and by self-initi- the Credit River Watershed includes nine tions, and businesses have major stakes in Mississauga, which is largely built out. infrastructure. French fur traders set up a trading post ated grants, in addition to municipal lev- of them. Importantly, the nine municipal- local climate action, a crucial first step in Traditional intensification also results in at Port Credit. When Great Britain decid- ies. CAs vary in size and funding depend- ities are all members of the CVC, and coun- this process has been to establish a stake- an increase in hard surfaces, which can- Both low-impact development and the val- ed to colonize the area now known as ing on their population base and their cillors from each are appointed to the CVC’s holder panel to serve as a platform to con- not absorb excess amounts of water. The uation of existing natural areas blur the southern Ontario in the late eighteenth ability to secure partnership funding. In Board of Directors. By bringing together sult with stakeholders in the community. result is what we call urban runoff; that is, line between traditional approaches to century, they purchased land from the 2017, the province updated the CAA to all the people and resources of the water- Key partners in this process are Missis- the surface runoff of rainwater. Conser- nature and infrastructure. They consider Mississauga, including the Credit River strengthen protection of the watersheds, shed, the CVC is then able to identify pri- sauga’s Conservation Authorities. vation Authorities have been leading the nature alongside infrastructure and en- watershed region. Today, the watershed and to embolden CAs to work on climate ority areas for protecting the landscape— way on the research, development, and gineering, rather than separate from it. The remains part of the traditional land of the change adaptation. These legislative including its history—although as of yet, Conservation Authorities are local water- implementation of low-impact develop- environment has a built-in capacity to cope Mississaugas of the New Credit, a nation changes also included updates to fund- the governing structure of the CVC does shed management agencies that deliver ment (LID). LID involves a set of site design with flooding and water, so instead of just that continues to practice stewardship of ing mechanisms by allowing CAs to alter not include representation of the water- services and programs to protect and man- strategies, infrastructure choices, and dis- relying exclusively on hard infrastructure the waters, and in 2016 filed an Aboriginal and adapt their own fee system. shed’s Indigenous stewards. age impacts on water and other natural tributed small-scale practices that minimize we need to find ways to integrate infra- Title Claim to the Waters within the Tra- resources. While independent organiza- runoff and mimic the way nature deals structure and the environment. By under- ditional Lands of the Mississaugas of the Today the Credit River watershed is home Since 1956, the CVC has been envisioning tions, Conservation Authorities work in with stormwater.2 This includes permeable standing, mimicking, and valuing these New Credit.1 to 1,420 plant species, 264 bird species, a trail along the entirety of the Credit River close partnership with all levels of govern- paving, green roofs, and rain gardens, which natural assets, we will be in a much better seventy-nine fish species, fifty-five mam- that would bolster local tourism and em- ment, landowners, and many other organi- all help to capture, filter, and slow the position to create a resilient, low-carbon In the 1940s, Ontario was experiencing mal species, seventeen amphibian species, phasize the cultural significance of the river. zations to ensure Ontario’s water, land, flow of rainwater instead of runoff quickly community. the impacts of environmental misman- five turtle species. With about one million To bring this 113-kilometre trail into ex- and natural habitats are conserved, re- overwhelming sewers and other storm- agement by the early (re)settlers who de- human beings living in the area, it is also istence, the CVC has formally partnered stored, and responsibly managed through water infrastructure. By mimicking the If you want to learn more about the forested, drained, irrigated, and cleared one of the most densely populated areas with Credit Valley Heritage Society (CVHS), watershed-based programming.1 flood-management services that nature themes of the Climate Change Project, land. With the Mississaugas of the New of Canada. As a consequence, the CVC is a non-governmental organization under provides within the context an increasingly provide input, or get involved, visit us at Credit formally relocated outside of their one of the largest CAs in the province in the Ontario Historical Act, whose primary Flooding is a very real concern in the City urbanized community, we can build much theclimatechangeproject.ca. traditional territory and provincial and terms of staff and resources. This enables mission is to promote conservation of the of Mississauga. In August 2009, July 2013, more resilient systems that reduce flood municipal governments looking to estab- them to run numerous programs, and to natural and cultural heritage of the Credit summer of 2017, and as recently as Feb- risk and provide resiliency during extreme 1 For more on conservation authorities lish new modes of stewardship, the Cred- conduct research on the local flora and River watershed. Together the CVC, CVHS, ruary 2018, Mississauga residents expe- rain events. and the history of Credit Valley Con- it Valley Conservation (CVC) Authority fauna. They also monitor air and water and roughly fifty other collaborators are rienced flooding events. In light of this, servation, see Andrea Olive’s profile was established in 1954 to protect and quality at about 175 forest, wetland, and working to establish a cultural heritage of the CVC in this broadsheet, p. 24 and the expectation that we are likely to Constructing infrastructure is traditionally Further discussion of conservation manage the watershed. Today, Ontario stream sites across their land base. trail. This footpath is significant for the see an increase in the intensity and fre- the first choice of cities and conservation authorities is available via Conser- has thirty-six Conservation Authorities CVC because it aims to fulfill the CAA’s quency of heavy rain events, flooding is a authorities to reduce flooding. Natural vation Ontario “About Conservation Authorities” http://conservationon- across the province (thirty-one in the Beyond land management, the CVC also mandate of protecting and restoring land significant focus within the City and the areas, also known as natural assets, can tario.ca/conservation-authorities/ south and five in the north), which were prioritizes the links between nature and by preserving nature with culture. Land’s Climate Change Project in particular. often provide the same flood reduction about-conservation-authorities/ legally established under the 1946 Con- culture. It owns and oversees nine cul- memory stretches across time, carrying Working collaboratively with Conservation services as infrastructure, which is why we 2 Credit Valley Conversation, “Low servation Authorities Act (CAA). Conser- tural heritage sites and six archaeological the past into the present. This is why the Authorities on this issue is an important need to find a way to quantify the benefit Impact Development,” https://cvc.ca/ vation Authorities (CAs) are semi-auton- sites. For example, hikers can walk through mission of the CVC states: “It’s our nature part of how we are responding to climate of these services in order to understand low-impact-development. omous non-profit organizations. They are the ruins of Ontario’s limestone industry to conserve and our future to shape.” change impacts in the City. the role they can play in flood-mitigation 3 Municipal Natural Assets Initiative, tied to Ontario’s government structure at the Limehouse Conservation Area or strategies. A natural asset is defined as the “Making Nature Count: Defining and Scoping Municipal Natural As- by way of the CAA and a funding scheme walk down an old railway line on the Elora One of the ways the City is working with stock of natural resources or ecosystems sets,” 15 March 2017, https:// that levies about half of their funding Cataract Trailway. Similarly, visitors to CVC 1 Joan Holmes & Associates Inc. Conservation Authorities to combat climate that are relied upon, managed, or could www.assetmanagementbc.ca/ from municipalities. CAs are run by a board lands can stroll along river trails that were for the Mississauga of the New change, and flood risk in particular, is to be managed by a municipality, regional wp-content/uploads/ Credit, Aboriginal Title Claim to the definingscopingmunicipalnaturalcapital- of directors, and work closely with mu- significant trade routes, visit sacred sites Waters within the Traditional Lands of challenge the traditional line between in- district, or other form of local government final-15mar2017.pdf. nicipalities, landowners, environmental of Indigenous peoples, and also visit areas the Mississaugas of the New Credit, frastructure and the environment. Adapt- for the sustainable provision of one or more March 2015, http://mncfn.ca/ Part one of a serial column on the and other non-government organizations, where early European (re)settlement is wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MNC- ing to climate change from a flooding per- municipal services.3 Credit Valley Conser- work guiding the City of Mississauga’s and the province. still visible in the form of old mills and farm Aboriginal-Title-Report.pdf. spective is largely about managing increas- vation (CVC) currently has a pilot project Climate Change Action Plan.

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Biographies ernor General’s Award. Her next book, spaces; media infrastructures; spatial For Nor, is forthcoming from Book Thug epistemologies; and mediated sensation Local Useful Knowledge: in the spring of 2019. It explores percep- and exhibition. She is the author of The Amanda Boetzkes is Associate Professor tual styles, affect, form, and politics. New Downtown Library: Designing with of Contemporary Art History and Theory Communities; Deep Mapping the Media Resources, at the University of Guelph. Her first book, Elizabeth LaPensée is an award-winning City; and Code and Clay, Data and Dirt, The Ethics of Earth Art (University of Min- designer, writer, artist, and researcher and she contributes a regular long-form nesota Press, 2010) analyzes the ethics who creates and studies Indigenous-led column about urban data and mediated Research, Initiatives and aesthetics of the earth art movement media such as games and comics. She is infrastructures to Places Journal. from the 1960s to the present. She is co- Anishinaabe from Baawaating with rela- editor of Heidegger and the Work of Art tions at Bay Mills Indian Community, Métis Andrea Olive is an Associate Professor History (Ashgate, 2014), and her upcoming named for Elizabeth Morris, and settler- of Political Science and Geography at the book Contemporary Art and the Drive to Irish. She is Assistant Professor of Media & University of Toronto Mississauga. She is The Port Credit-based Association for The Household-level Urban Socio- ates inclusive space for people of all ages Waste (MIT Press, 2019) analyzes how Information, and Writing, Rhetoric & Amer- the author of two books, Land, Steward- Canadian Educational Resources (ACER) Ecology Laboratory (HOUSE Lab), di- and abilities. It is animated by planters art defines and aestheticizes waste in ican Cultures at Michigan State University. ship and Legitimacy and The Canadian En- works with educators to foster environ- rected by Tenley Conway, Associate Pro- that accommodate mobility devices, the age of global capitalism. She is cur- Her ongoing contributions have been rec- vironment in Political Context. Her main mental observation and literacy among fessor of Geography at the University of raised beds, and ramps; wide-edged rently working on a project entitled Eco- ognized with the Serious Games Commu- areas of research are conservation policy, youth. Their recently launched Citizen Toronto Mississauga, examines the diver- planters that support sitting, resting, and logicity: Vision and Art for a World to Come, nity Leadership Award (2017). She was a Canada-US environmental policy, and oil Science program equips participants sity of human-environmental interac- leaning; and sensory gardens with red, which considers modes of visualizing en- Research Assistant for Aboriginal Terri- politics in the grasslands ecosystem. While with the technical tools, scientific exper- tions in cities, suburbs, and exurban sites. white, yellow, and orange plants for peo- vironments and ecological phenomena. tories in Cyberspace and continues to not writing or teaching, Olive can be found tise, and leadership skills necessary to con- Conway’s lab has studied a variety of ple with vision loss. At the core of River- collaborate as a Research Affiliate in the wandering the trails of the Niagara Escarp- duct local studies of environmental change. local issues in Mississauga, including the wood’s educational programming is the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. She is a ment in the Credit Valley and Halton Con- Founding President Alice Casselman notes impacts of the 2013 ice storm, residents’ notion that participation in urban wilder- Civic Laboratory for Environmental Ac- 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. servation Authority areas. that citizen scientists adopt this role attitudes toward municipal tree policies, ness, horticulture, and conservation is tion Research (CLEAR) is a feminist, anti- through ACER’s training, which encour- urban agriculture, and urban forestry. not simply about building skills in envi- colonial, marine science laboratory. This The writing of The LEAP Manifesto was A settler living in Tkaronto, Kika Thorne ages sustained observation and measure- HOUSE Lab uses diverse methodologies, ronmental sciences, biology, or geology, means our methods foreground values of initiated in the spring of 2015 at a two- oscillates between action and abstraction. ment of local surroundings. For instance, including digital mapping, remote sens- but also about integrating the natural equity, humility, and justice. We specialize day meeting in Toronto attended by rep- Casselman notes the importance of ing (such as satellite imaging), interviews, world into everyday wellbeing. Embrac- in community-based and citizen science resentatives from Canada’s Indigenous “ground-truthing,” the practice of direct surveys, and historical data. This multi- ing this commitment, the Enabling Gar- monitoring of plastic pollution, particularly Zoe Todd (Métis/otipemisiw) is from rights, social and food justice, environ- observation that verifies or elaborates on faceted approach is crucial to the study den roots access and inclusion into the of plastics in food webs. Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton), Alber- mental, faith-based, and labour move- satellite imagery. In this process, citizen of human-environmental interactions, giv- cycles of seeding, planting, and harvest- ta. She writes about fish, art, Métis legal This Changes Everything scientists can mobilize large volunteer en that residents’ positions are informed ing. Making space for nature beyond the Heather Davis is an itinerant writer and ments. The team traditions, the Anthropocene, extinction, teams—as in the case of annual bird by diverse motivations—be they eco- cultivated space of the garden, Enabling editor. She has written widely for art and convened the meeting but did not deter- and decolonization in urban and prairie counts—to obtain data that would other- nomic, emotional, historical, scientific, Garden programs feature opportunities academic publications on questions of mine any outcomes. The idea was to contexts. She also studies human-animal wise be unfeasible for professional sci- or spiritual. HOUSE Lab’s work observes to engage with birding, tree and plant contemporary art, politics, and ecology. create a space to not just say “no” to the relations, colonialism, and environmental entists to gather. Equipped with mea- growing urbanization amid environmen- identification, rocks and fossils from the She is the co-editor of Art in the Anthro- worst attacks on human rights and en- change in north/western Canada. suring tape, binoculars, notepads, and tal change—two converging issues that banks of the Credit River, as well as pro- pocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, vironmental standards, but to dream to- smartphones, citizen scientists docu- are acutely felt with the rise of extreme grams focused on healthy eating and Politics, Environments and Epistemolo- gether about the world we actually want Kyle Powys Whyte holds the Timnick Chair ment their local environments in ways weather events—as well as increased personal renewal, as well as the man- gies (Open Humanities Press, 2015) and and how we could get there. The Mani- in the Humanities at Michigan State Uni- that are important to professional scien- interest in urban agriculture, and rising agement of trauma, grief, and anxiety. editor of Desire Change: Contemporary festo went through several drafts and versity. He is Associate Professor of Phi- tists and policymakers alike. The growth challenges to urban forests caused by Throughout these programs, the Enabling Feminist Art in Canada (MAWA and McGill was shaped by the contributions of doz- losophy and Community Sustainability of citizen science comes not only from invasive species and climate change. Garden encourages participants to re- Queen’s UP, 2017). ens of people. there, as well as a faculty member of the the necessity to document climate change, Conway’s lab provides data and studies spond to the land beyond information Environmental Philosophy & Ethics grad- but also from a desire for greater embod- to inform citizens, scientists, urban plan- gathering and scientific analysis: as a Endocrine Disruptors Action Group Yihan Li is a multimedia artist originally uate concentration, the Geocognition Re- ied connections with natural spaces. ners, and policymakers about issues con- space for re-envisioning embodied and (EDAction) is a coalition of academic re- from Guangdong Province, China. She is search Lab, and a faculty affiliate of the cerning natural urban environments. spiritual connections to our surroundings. searchers concerned with the wide- interested in presenting one concept in dif- American Indian & Indigenous Studies and For the Credit River Anglers Associa- spread presence of endocrine-disrupting ferent form of expressions, such as sculp- Environmental Science & Policy programs. tion, fishing is largely the final outcome Making Social Knowledge is the collab- With growing concern over Colony Col- chemicals (EDCs) in our bodies, commod- ture, drawing, and design. Her recent work Whyte is Potawatomi and an enrolled mem- of an ambitious program aimed at restor- orative project of Elizabeth F. Hall, Assis- lapse Disorder (the disappearance of large ities, built environments, industrial emis- is inspired by the global problem of “inva- ber of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. His ing fish populations in the Credit River. tant Professor at the University of Toron- numbers of worker bees from otherwise sions, ecologies, waters, and atmo- sive species.” In June 2018, she will obtain research, teaching, training, and activism Over nearly three decades of operation, to’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, stable honeybee colonies) since the mid- spheres. EDAction investigates ways to her HBA in Art and Art History from both address moral and political issues con- the CRAA has faced the challenges of and Todd Sanders, Associate Professor 2000s, many environmentalists, beekeep- improve Canadian toxics governance and the University of Toronto and Sheridan cerning climate policy and Indigenous ecological restoration for a river that has of Anthropology at the University of To- ers, and citizens are turning their atten- seeks to advance critical discussions College. Her drawings and sculptures have peoples, as well as the ethics of cooperative been degraded by human activities for ronto Mississauga. Its central concern is tion to urban methods for conserving and about the regulation, science, and moni- been presented in group exhibitions at relationships between Indigenous peoples two centuries through pollution, ero- to explore how natural scientists, social sustaining pollinators. At the University toring of endocrine-disrupting chemicals Sheridan College Gallery and in published and climate science organizations. sion, deforestation, and damming. Con- scientists, and humanities scholars pro- of Toronto Mississauga, a project to guided by the values of reproductive and artistic catalogues, including Project (2015 scious that fish are a key indicator of duce “useful,” impactful,” and policy-rel- introduce beehives to a green roof atop environmental justice. and 2017) and BUFF (2017 and 2018). Tania Willard, Secwepemc Nation, has overall ecosystem health, the CRAA’s evant knowledge about global environ- the Instructional Building was launched been a curator-in-residence with grunt activities are diverse: members plant mental change, as well as how their knowl- in 2017, and aims to increase food sus- Lisa Hall is an Assistant Professor at the Morris Lum is a Trinidadian-born photog- gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. Willard’s native species on riverbanks, optimize edge practices relate to others within tainability on campus and support pollina- Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Uni- rapher/artist whose work explores the curatorial work includes the national fish ladders for migration, and operate a and beyond the academy. The statement tors and the plant communities that rely versity of Toronto. Her current research hybrid nature of the Chinese-Canadian touring exhibition Beat Nation: Art, Hip fish hatchery that requires daily over- published on their website reads: on them. The University’s Facilities Man- explores the production of scientific knowl- community through photography and doc- Hop and Aboriginal Culture co-curated sight year-round. In doing so, the CRAA agement and Planning Team identified edges and social imaginaries relating to umentary practices. His work also exam- with Kathleen Ritter, and, more recent- maintains partnerships with municipali- “We live in a knowledge society, where- the rooftop as an under-utilized and ideal energy, the environment, and health. Draw- ines the ways in which Chinese history is ly, Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul ties and regional governments, conser- in knowledge of every sort makes the apian habitat, and together with Hospi- ing on the anthropology and sociology represented in the media and archival Yuxweluptun, Nanitch: Historical BC pho- vation areas, private partners, and the world go round. We produce and man- tality & Retail Services and beekeeper of knowledge, she engages these issues material. Morris’s work has been exhib- tography, BUSH gallery, and LandMarks Ministry of Natural Resources and Fish- age knowledge. We commodify and sell Don Forster (who works with hives across empirically through a set of related proj- ited and screened across Canada and 2017/Repères 2017. eries. Although the latter oversees fish it. We use it to know and to govern our- Southern Ontario), introduced about 5,000 ects on global environmental change and the United States. He is currently work- populations, the CRAA’s activities pro- selves, others, and the planet. But what bees to the campus last June. Since then, fracking. She previously worked as a pub- ing on a North American-wide project mote fish stewardship practices that go is this thing we call ‘knowledge’? How is the population of Buckfast bees has risen lic health physician and epidemiologist that looks specifically at the transforma- beyond the animals’ characterization as it made? How does it work? What’s it to over 15,000. Honey produced by these in London, UK. tion of the continent’s Chinatowns. a natural resource. Paying close attention worth? When is it new? Or useful for bees has been made available to the cam- to the diversity of ecological stressors, policy? And who says? […]” pus community, with the bees’ growing Julie Joosten is a poet, essayist, and Shannon Mattern is an Associate Pro- the CRAA intervenes in waterway envi- numbers facilitating the reproduction editor who lives and works in Tkaronto. fessor of Media Studies at The New ronments in ways that work to reverse The Riverwood Conservancy’s Enabling and diversity of plants well beyond the Her first book of poetry,Light Light (Book School. Her writing and teaching focus human-caused harms. Garden is a teaching garden that cre- bounds of the university. Thug, 2013), was short-listed for the Gov- on archives, libraries, and other media

26 27 GLOSSARY 6. Catastrophe: A disastrous and often sud- ture is closely related to land development, den event. How sudden? Many disaster re- which can include redevelopment (see An entangled lexicon for a searchers argue that ecological catastro- Kika Thorne’s artist project, p. 16, which rapidly changing world phe is significantly different fromnatural pictures the meeting of landscaping, gal- disaster, because human-caused environ- lery, and courthouse at the site of the Van- mental degradation slowly lays the ground- couver Art Gallery), and asset valuation 1. Accounting: The process of measuring work for collapse. See Whyte’s Climate Change: (see the Climate Change Project, p. 25). an economic entity. Often used in a finan- An Unprecedentedly Old Catastrophe (p. 8) cial sense (see Cochrane, p. 22), accounting and the LEAP Manifesto (p. 10), or consider 14. Methylmercury: A toxic form of mercury can also refer to systems of value, includ- the invasion of the Emerald Ash Borer (Mc- often formed in aquatic systems through ing “natural asset valuation” (see Climate Callum, p. 23), and the 2013 Mississauga the action of bacteria in sediment, and his- Change Project, p. 25), or other methods ice storm (Climate Change Project, pg. 25). torically produced through various indus- of calculating and assessing the quantity, trial processes. Predatory fish in methyl- worth, or substance of something (see LEAP, 7. Chaoide: A philosophical concept coined mercury-polluted waters accumulate high- p. 10; Local Useful Knowledge, p. 26). Ac- by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to de- er rates of the toxicant through their di- counting assumes stable and agreed-upon scribe a linguistic or artistic form (includ- ets, making fish-eating species (including understandings of something’s value, but ing poetry, science, or performance) that humans) vulnerable to methylmercury can also refer to a testimony, an account is capable of moving us from chaos to com- poisoning (see EDAction & CLEAR, p. 20). of the facts, a narration. Who is counting? prehensibility (see Boetzkes, p. 18). The Who determines an asset’s value and use- concept of chaoide may be effective in de- 15. Noösphere: The concept of a “sphere” fulness? Whose account of the facts counts? scribing how attempts to grasp and dis- in earth sciences describes the systems cern the scale of environmental crisis may that compose the earth: the lithosphere 2. Adaptation: In environmental policy, is emerge from a sense of overwhelm—and (or geosphere, containing all the earth’s a strategic process of adjusting to climate move towards an understanding of eco- surface’s rocks), the hydrosphere (its wa- change and managing risks associated with logical complexity, human entanglement, ters), the atmosphere (its gases), and the known consequences. Adaptation is often and opportunities for action. biosphere (its living organisms). Encompass- discussed in tandem with Mitigation, which ing and moving beyond these, the philo- aims to tackle the root causes of climate 8. Effluent: Water pollution; often waste- sophical concept of noösphere describes change (see Climate Change Project, p. 25; water, sewage, or gas released into a nat- the sphere of thought and knowledge— Local Useful Knowledge, p. 26). In biology, ural body of water. The term comes from and its capacity to alter and transform the adaptation refers to features that evolve in the Latin effluere, “to flow out,” and refers other four spheres (see Davis & Todd, p. 12). a population because they offer some ad- to any flowing offshoot of a river or lake— vantage. In each sense, adaptation refers now much more sinister (see EDAction & 16. Plantations: Large-scale farms, partic- to the capacity for change—in a cultural CLEAR, p. 20). ularly for monocultural cash crops, but context, it may also align with notions of re- sometimes including tree farms and refor- silience, or track necessary, long-endured, 9. Era: In geology, a subdivision of geologic estation efforts (see McCallum, p. 23). In and under-recognized shifts (see Whyte, time (for example, the Phanerozoic eon proposing the “Plantationocene” as an p. 8). Adaptation and mitigation are impor- contains the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Ce- alternative term to the “Anthropocene,” tant corrective measures, but they cannot nozoic eras). Historians use the concept scholars implicate corporate capitalism and function without a collective reckoning with of an “era” to organize time around a spe- slave labour in environmental depletion the systemic and historical foundations of cific event or ruling regime (e.g. “The Roman and devastation. environmental violence. era”), often privileging, naming, and struc- turing knowledge around power and con- 17. Reforestation: The process of replant- 3. Anthropocene: From the Greek anthro- trol. See Davis & Todd (p. 12), Hall (p. 3), ing an area with trees—in contrast with pos for “human” and cene for “new,” this Joosten (p. 14), and Whyte (p. 8) on seeing Deforestation, the mass removal of trees proposed term describes the current epoch time across human and geological scales. (for human purposes such as agriculture, of major human impact on Earth. This ne- urban development, and logging, or by nat- ologism is hotly contested—both by those 10. Extraction may refer to the physical ural means including forest fires). Defor- who contend that we remain in the Holo- process of extracting resources, but also, estation without reforestation can have cene (as our official current geological as Davis & Todd describe, to “logics of ex- drastic effects, including disease outbreak, epoch is termed), and by those who sug- traction (of bodies, land, minerals, fossil habitat loss, changes to climate conditions, gest that the term “Anthropocene” does fuels)” (p. 12) that see everything as a and the displacement of plant and animal not do enough to describe how human resource available for capture (see also species (see Olive, p. 24; Thorne, p. 16; and impact on the earth has been unevenly in- EDAction & CLEAR, p. 20; and LEAP, p. 10). McCallum, p. 23). fluenced by the distribution of power, capi- tal, and time across the globe. Alternative 11. Fault line: In geology, a visible fracture 18. Self-determination describes a nation suggestions include Capitalocene (in order in the ground caused by the shifting of the or people’s right to self-governance (see to reflect capitalism’s responsibility for en- earth’s tectonic plates. In general usage, a Davis & Todd, p. 12) and autonomy. For vironmental devastation), Chthulucene (a place of friction and potential failure, often Indigenous peoples in Canada, this refers future epoch where human and animal when opposing forces are brought into to the recognition of a people’s power to kinships are renewed in response to climate tension—this can be physical, but may also make decisions about land, resources, and change), and the Plantationocene (see refer to fissures in systems of knowledge social programs, as well as the right to Plantation in this glossary). See Davis & Todd (see Joosten, p. 14). negotiate “nation-to-nation” with the Fed- (p. 13), and Hall (p. 3), who put the Anthro- eral government (see EDAction & CLEAR, pocene in temporal and decolonial contexts. 12. GPS, or Global Positioning System, p. 20; LEAP, p. 10; and Andrea Olive’s dis- is navigation technology that comprises cussion of the Mississaugas of the New 4. Brownfield: In urban planning, a site that satellites, ground stations, and receivers. Credit First Nation’s Water Claim, p. 24). has been previously developed but is not Originally a military technology, GPS’s currently in use. Often used in reference to popularization in the 2000s has had signifi- 19. Settler-colonialism is a form of colo- sites that have been contaminated, brown- cant impacts—in terms of convenience, nialism. While “colonialism” generally refers field land contrasts withgreenfield land, efficiency, infrastructure, and surveillance to the creation or maintenance of colonies which has intentionally been left undevel- (see Boetzkes, p. 18). in other lands, often by exploitation of their oped (see Mattern, p.5). peoples and lands, “settler-colonialism” 13. Infrastructure refers to the basic phys- describes settlers supplanting Indigenous 5. Carapace: An outer shell (see Boetzkes, ical structures of a society (see Lum, p. 6 peoples, with colonizers cultivating settler p. 18)—either metaphorically (e.g. a psy- for a portrait of Cooksville’s infrastructural identity and sovereignty in order to support chological defense mechanism), or literally relationship with the floodplain), but can their continued occupation of land (see Davis (e.g. the shell of a turtle, or the dorsal sec- also describe digital frameworks and data & Todd, p. 12; Joosten, p. 14; Olive, p. 24; tion of a crustacean’s exoskeleton). circulation (see Mattern, p. 5). Infrastruc- EDAction & CLEAR, p. 20; and Boetzkes, p. 18).