Abstract

Noting tension between environmental and aboriginal politics in the Pacific Northwest of North America, this paper explores the historical-geographic constitution of both the Great Bear Rainforest conflict in British Columbia and the Makah whaling conflict in Washington State. By highlighting the uneven production of territoriality between each jurisdiction and tracing these differences though the historical-geographic imaginations of environmental activists and writers of letters to editors of metropolitan newspapers, the paper argues that situated geographies of colonialism inform interactions between environmental and aboriginal politics at their core, thereby demonstrating the centrality of the production of space to the constitution of politics.