An Indigenous Re-invention of Romanticism and the Anthropocene: Paper
Introduction
Whether it is in the suburbs of Canada or the concrete jungle of Toronto, it is clear to those who are cognizant of the integration of nature within the human environment that nature is being manipulated to serve capitalist agendas. I have watched the town I live in, Milton, expand outwards in any way that it possibly can over the last six-eight years. Entire swaths of land and fields are now blocks on blocks of homes, condos, and overcrowded townhouse neighborhoods. The nature that surrounds Milton, particularly our stretch of the Niagara Escarpment, is currently protected by Conservation Halton, but after watching our provincial government pass legislation that streamlines the processes dedicated to environmental protection so as to more quickly approve infrastructure and development proposals (Bill C-5), I knew I wanted to create a project that stood in direct opposition to that mindset.The project I wanted to create needed to show an audience the importance of land not as a capitalist source of profit, but as a home that already harbours enough negative outputs from humanity and requires a complete overthrow of the current human-nature relationship. Indigenous worldview promotes reciprocity in their relationship with the land; the land itself is life and the domain for all life, as such, it should be cared for and looked after to prioritize all cycles of life. My project needed to answer the following questions: How do Indigenous-led conservation efforts that combine traditional and cultural practices as well as relationships with the land impact climate change, environmental protection, and sustainability? Why do these impacts matter? What do Indigenous land relationships demand from Western societies and their relationships with the land?
My approach needed to be a culmination of immersing myself in the literature surrounding Canada’s Indigenous people’s relationship with the land and bringing that knowledge out of the academic’s office and out into my area of study – the many different conservation areas in my home region of Halton. My approach could not be static, it had to be constantly evolving based on my cycle of research and experiential learning. Neither could my approach be solely academic as Western academia often does not consider other forms of knowledge to be qualified. As the academic literature that I referenced mostly consisted of Indigenous scholars, each one of my references served as a guide that pointed me to ongoing Indigenous organizations and movements within Canada that I could further research and learn from. I will delve into how I combined my personal experience, academic research, experiential learning, and the creativity of a contemporary scholar to create my visual exhibit: An Indigenous Re-invention of Romanticism & The Anthropocene.
My Life as a Springboard for the Visual Exhibit
The creation of my project was inspired by the conservation areas that are much closer to anyone living in Milton but are easily accessible to any person living within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I began with the first step of my approach to creating my project, research, to investigate whether any of Halton’s conservation areas involved Indigenous-led conservation efforts or were sites where Indigenous relations with the land could inform on the current human-nature relationship. My research quickly made it clear that the focus of my research as it pertained to Halton Conservation should be Crawford Lake Conservation Area. Crawford Lake had previously been a home for an Iroquois settlement and, as a meromictic lake with two separate layers of water that never mix, it served as a living record of the current geological era, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is the era in which human activity has and continues to shape and alter the natural world. Hours were spent researching Crawford Lake’s soil bed and the different impacts the Iroquois settlement had on it compared to colonialists and the industrialization they brought with them.I used Crawford Lake as the base to gather academic resources with a similar scope of focus. I gathered three academic sources that each focused on Indigenous Protected Conserved Areas (IPCAs), Indigenous-led conservation efforts, and nature-based solutions. I read through each of these resources and took in the verifiable, positive impacts that Indigenous-led conservation, which uses traditional and cultural land practices, has on the land. Indigenous land practices and relationships with the land serve to shape nature in ways beneficial to its cycles of life. I came out of my research with the realization that, at some point, we stopped shaping the land in ways that considered future generations to come. Not future generations of humans, but generations of plants, forests, animals, and natural ecosystems. It was at this point that I switched my approach from gathering research to taking the research that now filled my head out into the conservation areas. As I hiked Rattlesnake Point to one of its outlook sites on the Niagara Escarpment, I looked out across the GTA and its representation of the Anthropocene. In spite of that, I also looked around at all of the life systems I was surrounded by. Drops of rainwater clinging to bare branches, the harmony of birds singing, the fuzz of a small branch shooting up from the ground, the trees that somehow grow out of the cliffs, and a Canada goose on an outcrop just below me looking out in his own way at the same landscape but as an active element of it.
I realized that, regardless of my focus on Crawford Lake, that mere words or maps were not going to create the impact upon my audience that this, this nature that I look out from onto a world working to destroy it, needs to be seen and looked at in the same way. I wanted to make my viewer understand that there is so much life that is intrinsic to nature so that they could perhaps begin to understand the totality of the loss that we are facing in our communities and globally. It was then that my project evolved into bringing Conservation Halton and Crawford Lake into focus through a self-made, self-photographed slideshow. This slideshow would integrate a map of Conservation Halton with photos from the different conservation areas and a self-recorded soundtrack of the sounds from Rattlesnake that inspired me to do so.
Romanticism, Crawford Lake, & Enacting a Different Relationship with Nature
The element of my project that would guide an audience into experiencing the innumerable forms of life that preserved natural environments host evolved my approach to involve a focus on Romanticism and its relationship to my research question: What do Indigenous land relationships demand from Western societies and their relationships with the land? A research dive into Romanticism and its impact on Western society’s relationship with nature allowed me to realize its connection to capitalism and the Anthropocene. One particular research article by Giulia Valpione highlighted how Romanticism, although inspired and largely based upon human reflection in nature, served to transform humanity as those who take nature in and possess it so as to benefit from it whether artistically, professionally, or, now, profitably. Incorporating Romanticism into the scope of my project emphasized how Western society’s manipulative relationship with nature has served to form a sense of dominance over nature that makes the destruction of it acceptable. Unlike Indigenous land practices and relationships which encourage stewardship as humanity’s part to play as beings part of the land, we have separated ourselves from belonging to the life cycles that compose nature and no longer live in ways that serve to sustain a land that gives.I took this knowledge with me as I went to Crawford Lake to walk among the restored Iroquois settlement and walk along the lake whose makeup I had learned about in depth during my first research cycle from a biological sciences academic journal. I thought about how the Iroquois settlement had altered Crawford Lake’s soil bed through natural farming practices and land cultivation practices. I thought about how a nearby saw mill and the nuclear bombings of the 1950s forever embedded heavy metals within the lake’s soil. I brought all of my knowledge on Indigenous worldviews together while looking out onto Crawford Lake. I was not a haver, possessor, or dominator over nature. I was there in it and whatever I was there to do should only bring about a positive effect for the land. I felt compelled to write a poem, which calls back to a Romantic process; however, I wrote the poem about the elements of nature that composed Crawford Lake with intentionality and pointed significance, and for my audience to get involved in the fight to allow an Indigenous re-invention of the Anthropocene.
Finalizing my Research & my Visual Exhibit
After my visit to Crawford Lake, I knew that I wanted to create a visual exhibit that led my viewers on a cycle of learning similar to what I underwent. I wanted to direct them straight to the existing, ongoing efforts being led by Indigenous conservation all over Canada. I wanted to direct them to the places where they could take the knowledge gleaned from my exhibit and engage in experiential learning themselves. Similarly, I wanted to provide the opportunity to learn from Indigenous teachers themselves. If my audience was inspired by Crawford Lake’s history and significance in the Anthropocene, I combined an image/link path to Crawford Lake’s events page which will continuously update throughout the year with Indigenous-led teaching sessions. Currently, there is an upcoming teaching event about seed stewardship and plant medicines at Crawford Lake by Nookomis (Elder) Carol. I decided to create several more image/link paths within my visual exhibit. I re-visited each of my academic sources and began researching the Indigenous-led conservation organizations referenced within each source to use their websites as spaces for continued learning for my audience.From the journal article “Indigenous protected and conserved areas (IPCAs): Canada's new path forward for biological and cultural conservation and Indigenous well-being”, I researched the Dene Tha’ First Nation in Alberta whose major conservation project at the moment is to have Bistcho Lake and its surrounding area comprised of hundreds of kilometers formally conserved as a IPCA (Bistcho Lake). From another journal article, “Indigenous‐Led Nature‐Based Solutions Align Net‐Zero Emissions and Biodiversity Targets in Canada”, I researched the Wahkohtowin Development GP (Guardians Program) Inc. who is actively working with the Canadian government; they are also working to mitigate climate change through forest management and natural climate solutions (Wahkohtowin). Additionally, from that same journal article, I researched British Columbia’s Coastal First Nation’s (CFN) Great Bear Initiative. CFN manages 130 land conservancies and some of its conservation efforts include: stewardship of the rainforests, protecting rare species, and regional marine planning (CoastalFirstNations). I included an image of each First Nation’s emblem / organization’s logo and ended the visual exhibit with an encouragement for each viewer of my exhibit to take action as they hopefully now had both the incentive and the resources to.
Perspective, Position, & Audience
My visual exhibit began with the understanding that Canada’s conservation and land planning policies have been in need of drastic, concrete changes since the beginning and rapid expansion of industrialization. As my visual exhibit evolved, I realized that the avenues my research questions were leading me down demanded more involvement, both from myself and an audience. My visual exhibit ended with an activistic amalgamation of several different creative mediums: photography, video, poetry, and visual mapping. I wanted the implications of my research questions to resonate within my audience in a way that one or two mediums simply could not do. The personal photography and the map of Conservation Halton within the self-created slideshow were meant to position the viewer to recognize the importance of the natural environment and to recognize the implications of current conservation. The text that followed after the slideshow did important work to focus the viewer on the life (Qubert, the Canada goose) that exists within and is dependent on the land and our future relationship with it.The larger, zoomed out map provided after the slideshow was meant to provide a place the viewer could point to as Qubert’s lookout point and, in turn, provide personal, contextual perspective to the viewer’s place within the discussion of conservation and land protection. The text recalls the research questions by discussing Western relationships with the land (past and present) and poses questions that invoke aspects of Indigenous worldview as a template for the viewer to adopt as they are prompted to watch the photographic slideshow again. The poem that follows this section of the visual exhibit was an impactful way of re-inventing Romanticism to drive home the impact that the Anthropocene has already had. The text then identifies the Anthropocene’s impact on Crawford Lake with a visual representation of Indigenous natural impacts versus colonization and industrialization’s impacts on its soil bed. Although the whole exhibit can be regarded as an activistic creation, this is the turning point of the visual exhibit that calls for environmental policy reform.
Crawford Lake is not only identified as representing the Anthropocene but as representing the need for conservation, land planning, and environmental policy reform. Indigenous land relationships and traditional practices that work towards preservation and continuity are referenced to demonstrate that a re-invention of Western ideology, government, and Anthropocene is needed. My visual exhibit calls for the human-nature relationship to be placed in the hands of nature’s stewards. The viewer is directed to three different First Nation websites that each have a plethora of resources contained within them in regards to Indigenous-led conservation efforts all across Canada. Additionally, each website contains a component for visitors of the website to learn more about what part they can play, Indigenous or Non-Indigenous, in these efforts.
My visual exhibit ends with an emotion-invoking final text / image pair. The text establishes the importance and urgency of action being taken before it's too late. My visual exhibit serves as a reminder that we have known about climate change for too long for Western governments to be working towards taking shortcuts in regards to land planning, usage, and environmental protection. My visual exhibit is a demand for change. A change that does not prioritize capitalism or the Western perspective. The exhibit ends with one last photograph. A photograph of Qubert sleeping that, ultimately, represents the millions of life forms, cycles, and beings that exist on the shared land that we call Earth who trust the Anthropocene will not wipe them out. As a contemporary creative writer, I created this activistic, academic, visual exhibit to exist alongside other unique creative works that strive to combine the author’s/artist’s personal perspective, research, and a community perspective to promote and direct much needed social and environmental change.