Strong Hearts, Native Lands: Anti-Clearcutting Activism at Grassy Narrows First Nation by Anna J. Willow (review)

Blockades by Indigenous peoples are a popular research focus for academics, and Anna J. Willow’s analysis is one of several to appear on the topic of the anti-clearcutting blockade at Grassy Narrows, near Kenora, Ontario. Billed as the longest-running blockade of its kind in Canadian history, the blockade was initiated by a group of Grassy Narrows youth and community activists at Slant Lake on 2 December 2002, and its tenth anniversary was celebrated in December 2012.

Willow’s ethnographic account begins with a historical overview that skilfully situates the blockade as the logical consequence of more than a century of colonial actions that have threatened or undermined the sovereignty, health, economy, and cultural identity of the Asubpeeschosseewagong Netum Anishinabek. Through the initial three chapters, she outlines significant colonial incursions, including the negotiation process of Treaty 3 in the 1870s, the imposition of the Indian Act in the 1870s, the flooding of local rice beds in the 1920s, the relocation of the community in the 1960s, the mercury poisoning of the water in the 1970s, and the escalation of logging activities in the traditional territories on which the nation depends beginning in the 1990s. At a time when written sources are often contested as Eurocentric renderings of historical encounters, Willow draws on academic documentary sources but also presents her understanding of how this same history is understood by Anishinaabe people, based on written and oral sources. She does not attempt to adjudicate competing claims but allows conflicting understandings to stand side by side. Indeed, these differences in understanding the past have deep consequences in the present.

The strong historical context sets the stage for Willow’s central argument: that the blockade is much more than an environmental action to stop clear-cut logging in the conventional sense of environmental protection. Rather, it is a complex, integrated action that speaks to the heart of issues of sovereignty, histories, protection of the land, and cultural identity. This layered understanding becomes ever clearer through the remaining five chapters and conclusion, which discuss the establishment of the blockade at Slant Lake and its unfolding over what Willow describes as four phases. With a keen eye for detail, she provides rich descriptions of the key actors, their approaches and strategies, dynamic forces, internal and external relationships, tensions and conflicts.

Willow stresses the importance of global Indigenous political movements that have connected Indigenous activists from around the world. Regardless of location, “Indigenism” has enabled strong international networks of Indigenous activism that both inspire and support others, and are crucibles of learning. Using multiple examples, she illustrates how these networks have been mobilized at the site of the Grassy Narrows blockade, in terms of both learning from others and also acting as mentors for other Indigenous peoples.

Willow is an engaging storyteller, and while some sections of the text dispense theoretical insights, the conversational tone opens it up to multiple audiences. Indigenous studies readers expect the positionality of the non-Indigenous researcher to be well addressed. Despite acknowledging the importance of such a discussion, the author peeps through a seamless narrative only momentarily. This is surprising considering that the researcher spent time in the community in the spring of 2003 and again for about a year in 2004–05. Further, where internal divisions in the community are discussed at some length, the reader is left to wonder how permissions were negotiated to present these materials in the public sphere. Such ethical questions predominate in Indigenous studies research, and engaging with them is often essential in legitimating the work.

Despite a few factual errors in the historical narrative (e.g., the home-lands of the Gitxan and Wet’suewet’en are not the Nass Valley), readers will find that this ethnography offers an important analysis that complements the emerging work on Indigenous activism, decolonization, and resurgence. Her observations about alliance-building with environmental groups contribute to...