Landmarks Journal 2022 by geo_uoft

Landmarks T H E J O U R N A L O F U N D E R G R A D U AT E G E O G R A P H Y

VOLUME VIII

Landmarks T H E J O U R N A L O F U N D E R G R A D U AT E G E O G R A P H Y VOLUME VIII 2023

MANAGING EDITOR Allison Yung EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Alex Wilson Mrinmayee Sengupta DEPUTY EDITOR Rebecca Skoll EDITORIAL BOARD Nick Chan Yumna Khan Finn Meiklejohn Sabrina Mukhida Clair Ruatos Teagan Sharrock CONTRIBUTORS Jyotsna Kumar Finn Meiklejohn Grace Pawliw-Fry Tyler Riches Dk Nursyazwana Nabillah Pg Saiful Rizal Mrinmayee Sengupta with Clayton Chan, Lucas Kammer, and Sabrina Wong Taylor Simsovic-Peters Rebecca Skoll Ava Taborda Sofia Villafuerte SPECIAL THANKS TO Dr. Matthew Farish Dr. Victoria Nimmo The Toronto Undergraduate Geography Society (TUGS)

landmarksjournal.geog.utoronto.ca

CONTENTS

Editors’ Note

Bonifacio Global City: Dispossession and the Creation of a Citadel for the Elite Finn Meiklejohn

Rallying Against the Faceless Villain: How Cold War Films Renew American Exceptionalism Jyotsna Kumar

The Chixoy Dam: Racial Capitalism and Accumulation by Dispossession Rebecca Skoll

Seaside, Florida: Suburban Fantasy and The Disneyfication of New Urbanism Dk Nursyazwana Nabillah Pg Saiful Rizal

New Models of Land Relations: Post-Capitalist Visions of Communal Land Stewardship Tyler Riches

Contrapuntal Cartographies of the Qu’Appelle Valley History Grace Pawliw-Fry

Milkweed: More Than Just a Plant Ava Taborda

Comparing Forest Carbon Stocks at the Koffler Scientific Reserve Mrinmayee Sengupta with Clayton Chan, Lucas Kammer, and Sabrina Wong

No One Is Illegal: A ‘Politics of Listening’ Within Migrant Activist Slogans Taylor Simsovic-Peters

Hombres y Tierra de Maíz : Maya Heritage, Corn, and Agribusiness in Guatemala Sofia Villafuerte

EDITORS’ NOTE Much has changed since our last published issue of Landmarks in 2021: the aftermath of a global pandemic, worsening conflicts around the world, and the coalescing of climate and humanitarian emergencies are proving to be the rule rather than the exception. As these ongoing crises promise to reveal more about the world and its deepening entanglements, the broadening field of geography is uniquely suited to examine these relationships. In this eighth volume of Landmarks, we present a selection of ten undergraduate papers which we feel best reflect the human and physical geographies today. We investigate the makings of a Global City in the Philippines and follow the links between hydro energy development and indigenous dispossession at the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala. We explore alternative land relations through a survey of collective property models and reconsider land histories through a counter-mapping (contrapuntal cartography) of the Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan. This year we have included three articles which consider how ‘place’ is made through culture and media including Hollywood’s efforts to renew American exceptionalism through Cold War nostalgia, the satirization of Florida’s New Urbanist developments in Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show, and the role of activist slogans in negotiating social movements and relationships of solidarity in Canada. On the ground, we salute the oft-overlooked Milkweed plant and its eco-social significance before undertaking a thorough study of forest carbon stocks at the Koffler Scientific Reserve. Our last paper traces the history of the Guatemalan Maya through their spiritual understandings and iconographies of corn; the drawings presented in this paper by Sofia Villafuerte are featured on our cover. The two cover illustrations come from the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, a sacred 17th century text from the Maya of Yucatan: they refer to the stages of corn growth (¢yaxkin 2, November 13th, left) and gathering (Yaax, January 12th, right) in the Maya calendar. Indeed, a good amount of growing and gathering took place in the making of this year’s journal, so we would like to express our thanks to the many who submitted their work to us, to those who contributed their exceptional writing and ideas to this issue, and to our editorial board for their thoughtful reviews and steady committment to the journal over the past months. A very special thanks to the Toronto Undergraduate Geography Society (TUGS), to Dr. Matt Farish for his support in producing this issue after a year-long hiatus, and to Dr. Victoria Nimmo for offering her expertise and editorial support. We hope that the papers in this issue inspire more questions and reflections on the many facets of our field.

Allison Yung, Alex Wilson, and Mrinmayee Sengupta 9

BONIFACIO GLOBAL CITY D I S P O S S E S S I O N A N D T H E C R E AT I O N O F A C I TA D E L F O R T H E E L I T E

Finn Meiklejohn

Bonifacio Global City (BGC) is a district located in Taguig, Metro Manila, that was developed in part by the Philippine government’s Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) and the Zobel de Ayala family’s Ayala Land corporation (Ayala Land, 2019). As a financial business centre featuring buildings accredited by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (KMC Global Research, 2017), the district is home to transnational corporations, high-income expatriates, and elites from the Philippines. With a complex history as a former American military base under the name of Fort McKinley (Gu et al., 2020, p. 30), BGC is suspended in globalised networks of power that (re)produce socioeconomic inequality. BGC can be used as a site to analyse the grip of coloniality, the implications of neoliberal globalisation, and the production of anti-relationality through the framework of racial capitalism. By examining BGC, we can begin to understand the construction of exclusive geographies and Harvey’s (2006) concept of accumulation by dispossession as phenomena entrenching globalising cities worldwide.

Introduction Simon Kuper (2013) of the Financial Times frankly states that cities are becoming “vast gated communities where the one percent reproduces itself ” (para.7). In Manila, as is the case across the world, this wealth is intensely concentrated in certain geographies. Walking through Bonifacio High Street in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), it is not hard to guess where Manila’s wealthy have laid their claim. With banyan trees rustling in the warm breeze, neoclassical condominiums in the distance, and big brand names plastering storefronts, BGC exudes wealth and has become, as Kuper (2013) aptly surmises, a citadel for the elite (para.2). Constructed with the distinct purpose of contrasting with much of the rest of Metro Manila, BGC is an enclave of capital within the city. However, this is no accident. BGC is a magnet for multinational corporations, wealthy Filipinos, and the international elite. How have the elite utilised geographical and social exclusion along the lines of race and class to facilitate accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2006), specifically in the context of Bonifacio Global City within Metro Manila? It is no coincidence that a recently built highway flyover in Manila bypasses informal settlements between BGC and other central business districts. Creating islands among a sea of multi-coloured roofs, the flyover is representative of the calculated hierarchies created in space and society by the wealthy. Smooth, black asphalt with crisp white lines slices through homes built of metal sheets and haphazard concrete blocks. The Kalayaan flyover rose under former President Duterte’s infrastructure programme called “Build! Build! Build!” (National Government Portal, 2021). Using a racial capitalist framework, I 11

examine Bonifacio Global City as a site enmeshed in coloniality, saturated neoliberal globalisation, and the production of anti-relationality. I argue that these processes lead to geographies of exclusion while reinforcing capital accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2006). Bonifacio Global City in Context Bonifacio Global City is located within Taguig in Metro Manila. Initially a village of farmland and fisheries along Laguna de Bay, Taguig was under Spanish rule from the 1500s until the Philippine Revolution in 1898 (City Government of Taguig, 2013). BGC is named after the leader of the Philippine Revolution, Andrés Bonifacio (Gu et al., 2020, p. 30). The United States involved itself in the Philippine Revolution due to disputes with the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean, which ended in the imperial cessation of the Philippines to the United States after the 1898 Treaty of Paris (Library of Congress, 2011). During this period of American colonial rule, Fort McKinley was established in Taguig on the outskirts of Manila as a strategic military base, operating until Philippine independence in 1946 (Gu et al., 2020). Fort McKinley, named after former United States President William McKinley, later became Fort Bonifacio; under the Philippine government’s Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), would be sold to developers in the early 2000s (Roy & Ong, 2011, p. 88). After the 1997 Asian financial crisis which dramatically influenced economic strength across Asia, many cities in the region sought to compete for what Douglass (2000) describes as “world city status” (p. 2322). This motivated governments to fashion curated built environments to be seen as suitable “investor climates” above all else, which would strip the rights of many of those already dispossessed (Bonilla, 2018). However, as the BCDA produces investor-friendly sites oriented to the global financial

Fort McKinley

Figure 1 Fort McKinley military base. (Source: U.S. Army Air Forces, 1935)

Forbes Park

Manila Golf and Country Club Kalayaan Flyover

Manila American Cemetery and Memorial

Bonifacio Global City

Figure 2 Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Southern Manila (Source: Apple Maps, n.d).

system, it states that it was founded as a “prime mover of national development [to] create sustainable urban communities to uplift the lives of Filipinos” (BCDA, n.d.). The Philippines, like many other countries across the world, was faced with the question of what to do with former nodes of colonial power. Postcolonial governments have often taken the opportunity to transform these sites as an exercise of using architecture and urban design in the service of coercive politics (Vale, 2014, p. 10). This also comes with the control of public space; examples of “developmental state” regime maintenance coming hand in hand with “strong-arm” governance (Douglass, 2005, pp. 544-545). In the case of BGC, rather than apply a certain Indigeneity in design and sentiment, ideals of globalised cities were implemented instead. This may be indicative of the desire of the Philippine government to create a renewed national identity on the global stage. As the idealised “modern” global identity of the Philippines is constructed in BGC, whose lives are truly uplifted, and what is the cost? Coloniality and the Transformation of Urban Form By investigating the path dependencies that Spanish and American colonisation have created within Philippine society and its built environment, it becomes clear that dispossession is at the core of sites such as BGC. Aníbal Quijano’s concept of coloniality is defined as the structure of power that motivates colonialism (1992, as cited in Mignolo, 2011, p. 2). This concept links today’s BGC, Fort McKinley, and the land on which these sites were erected. Coloniality consists of the colonisation of space and time (Mignolo, 2011, p. 6). Inherently tied with (neo)colonial Spanish and American development discourse, coloniality is what Mignolo describes as the “darker side” or “hidden agenda” of modernity (Mignolo,

2011, p. 2). Under the Eurocentric definition of modernity, each nation is differently positioned on a linear developmental path, a notion that has been fuelled by the idea that it is up to Europeans to “civilise” and “develop” inadequately “modern” nations (Mullings, 2022a). Modernity’s insistence on development relies on the implication of outside inferiority. The transformation of Fort McKinley into Bonifacio Global City is a realignment of colonial (re) productive power produced by an intermeshed global financial market. The Manila American Cemetery and Memorial was established in 1960, adjacent to what was by then called Fort Bonifacio. The Philippines’ government granted free use in perpetuity to the cemetery and memorial to commemorate the lives lost during “operations in the Pacific” from 1941 to 1945 (ABMC, 2018). The cemetery is an ever-present reminder of American imperial involvement—especially as there is limited access to greenspace elsewhere in the area. Sandars (2000) views the post-WWII American global security system as a “leasehold empire” instead of an all-encompassing imperial project like that of European colonial powers (p. 15). While this perspective minimises America’s colonial influence, the concept of a “leasehold empire” is helpful in examining how control has been established by private multinational corporations (MNCs) and the actors they enrich in BGC. The built form that houses MNCs in BGC can be linked back to the City Beautiful movement in planning, which embraces idealistic European urban form as the epitome of modernity (Kirsch, 2017, p. 335). During colonial rule, the United States government commissioned Chicago urban planner Daniel Burnham to create a “landscape vision of U.S. empire” that would alter “social structures and everyday relations of power” (Kirsch, 2017, p. 318). William Cameron Forbes, who was responsible for bringing Burnham to the Philippines, believed that the American colonial project lacked a “moral and political force for dealing with ‘less civilised peoples’” (Kirsch, 2017, p. 327). Burnham’s plan was a way of inhabiting landscape aesthetics as a form of cultural imperialism to support political prowess, subordination, and elite consumption. Burnham’s vision consisted of monumental government buildings, vast public parks, and a redesigned street system. Although proposed in 1905, the plan was never built (Kirsch, 2017, p. 331). Nevertheless, the principles of Burnham’s plan were absorbed in the 21st century by BGC. Rather than imposing government buildings, BGC features soaring corporate towers—the architectural typology symbolic of capital accumulation. MNCs appreciate the abstraction of sleek, contemporary skyscrapers as they are visually detached from past colonial projects (Clarke, 2022). Yet, towers are conceptually entrenched in the ideology of neoliberal capitalism, as seen by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority appealing to foreign investment through lenient economic restrictions within specific buildings (KMC Global Research, 2017). Global capital remains unrivalled in shaping BGC and sites like it in cities around the world. Producing a Bastion of Capital Accumulation How did capital become paramount in shaping Fort Bonifacio into BGC? The Philippine government transformed sites crucial to the colonial enterprise into international business centres and lavish gated communities. With elite capital accumulation prioritised, this calculated evolution of urban space embeds the Philippine government in what Melamed (2015) calls the “state-finance-racial violence nexus,” which ties governments and corporations to subjugation and dispossession (p. 78). Neocolonial endeavours that seek to find profitable geographies for capital-surplus production reproduce a fragmented society. The construction of BGC was and continues to be both physical and political, utilising imagined

narratives of global cities. Sassen (2002) illustrates how many cities have areas that are transformed to become more intimately linked to the global economy, creating negative local externalities that exclude those who do not have access to the internationalised sector (p. 27). Surrounding BGC, interspersed between elevated roadways and tall security walls, informal communities can be found. Bayat (1997) looks at the informal livelihoods of these communities as displaying immense resiliency in the face of constant cycles of dispossession and survival (p. 66). Informal communities are a typical by-product of the creation of global cities, a process driven by neoliberal globalisation and financialisation in support of the internationalised elite. The linchpin of this process in the Philippines is the BCDA (n.d), a development corporation “vested with corporate powers”(para.1) signed into law by the government to “strengthen the Armed Forces while building great cities,” (para.2) in part by developing Special Economic Zones (SEZs). SEZs act as the gateway of neoliberal states into the globalised economy. Touted as friendly for investors and foreign corporations, SEZs, among other neoliberal practices, bolster the role of urban centres as key sites of exploitation in “developing” countries (Mullings, 2022c). One of the BCDA’s private sector partners in developing BGC is the Zobel de Ayala family’s Ayala Land, Inc. (Ayala Land, 2019). The Zobel de Ayala family has immense influence in the Philippines, running an expansive conglomerate dating back centuries controlling real estate development, banking, telecommunications, water, healthcare, and power (Mohr, 2020). The family is a profound expression of the capacity of concentrated capital to shape a nation, with BGC being just one of many projects (re)producing neoliberal globalisation in the Philippines, in collaboration with the government. Harvey (2005) defines the neoliberal state as one that holds the facilitation of capital accumulation as paramount, reflecting the interests of private property owners and multinational corporations (p. 19). Privatisation is seen by the neoliberal state as the pathway to modernisation, reshaping the globe into a mosaic of potential private properties for the globalised elite to use for spatial and capital accumulation (Mullings, 2022b) According to Harvey (2005), although the neoliberal state champions limited government intervention in the market, it is willing to reverse neoliberal theory to cultivate power for elites, as seen with the government creation of the BCDA (p. 21). Stein’s (2019) “real-estate state” helps illustrate how actions of the state aim to increase profits for developers, landlords, and speculators. In this process, the elites of the global south act as “agents propagating the interests of external capitalism,” holding immense control over their local municipal government (Sheppard, 2009, p. 87). By contextualising BGC within neoliberal globalisation and narratives of development, the use of social and economic stratification to fuel these practices is laid bare. Division, Dispossession, and the (De)valuing of Livelihoods Melamed (2015) shares that in their current form, democracy, nationalism, and multiculturalism all contribute to racial capitalist spatial and social differentiation (p. 79). Gilmore (2002, as cited in Melamed, 2015) notes this division as anti-relationality, which is the reduction of collective life to relations that support neoliberal democratic capitalism (p. 78). Through this lens, it is possible to explore how BGC divides and bounds potential human relations, creating a hierarchy conducive solely to capital accumulation. Where capital gain exists, so does diminishing social well-being through “partition, dispossession, and appropriation” (Melamed, 2015, p. 82). The BCDA’s (n.d.) statement that they “uplift the lives of Filipinos” is clearly not so straightforward. The goals of the BCDA align with many global responses to informal settlements known as “slums.” Rather than uplifting livelihoods through community-based interventions and strengthened social support networks, governments are

using negative notions of “slums” to justify austerity, elite urban planning experiments, and clearance programs (Mullings, 2022c). It is essential to approach these questions through the lens of racial capitalism, a term Robinson (1983, as cited in Melamed, 2015) uses to define capitalism as necessitating racial violence (p. 76). Racial categorisations created during Spanish and American colonialism help explain some of the current divisions in welfare today. For the majority of Spanish rule in the Philippines, Manila was segregated through the use of bloodlines classified along varying scales of whiteness. By the 19th century, racial hierarchies were disrupted by interracial communions that created a new class of “mestizo,” or Filipinos with both white European and Indigenous Philippine ancestry. Under American colonial rule, whiteness was weaponised and used to create a class of bourgeois mestizos while subjugating “uncivilised” populations (Gonzalez, 2020). With these historical distinctions in mind, the socioeconomic strengthening of local elites and transnational expatriates in Metro Manila is done on the precipice of racial division. In BGC, accumulation under racial capitalism relies on exploiting communities, labour, land, and resources. A 20th century American political scientist, Williams (1914), stated that “if the hands can be brought to the work and applied intelligently to exploiting the islands, there is reasonable assurance… of a happy outcome to our great enterprise” (p. 128). Referring to the American colonial project in the Philippines, exploitation is constructed as the ‘happy outcome’ of imperialist intervention. At the core of BGC is the dynamic of accumulation by dispossession, which Harvey (2006) defines as capital accumulation reliant on the “appropriation” of the assets and rights of others (p. 43). Under racial capitalism, neoliberalism dispossesses through the weaponisation of privatisation, financialisation, and the state removal of collective rights (Harvey, 2006). These market sanctioned acts of dispossession, which take place in Bonifacio Global City today, reflect the logic of coloniality. With low-income populations further disenfranchised, and high-income populations supplemented, sites like BGC exacerbate inequalities of constructed racialised and classed categories. Typical of sites given the “global city” moniker is the invisibility of the disenfranchisement on which they were and continue to be built, causing states and corporations to look favourably upon repressive measures against “informality” and poverty (Michel, 2010, p. 400). Such practices only further entrench inequality, concealing the realities of strife that underlie globalising cities. On its website, Ayala Land Inc. (2019) describes BGC as “centrally located, with tidy roads, vibrant open spaces and parks, and access to international schools,” adding that BGC “fulfils the residential dreams of growing families and professionals on the rise.” This curated image of an affable lifestyle, devoid of the perceived mars of the rest of Metro Manila as noted with the mention of “tidy roads” and “international schools,” is only afforded by a select few. Sites like BGC, together in their globally networked manner, breed “specific social geographies” which support the (neo)colonial lifestyles of expatriate urbanites and “local elites who now dominate these spaces” (Farrer, 2017, p. 199). Michel (2010) explains that any global city that transnational elites inhabit can only be “realised and sustained by strategies against informal economies and informal settlements” (p. 397). Not only do elites sustain their livelihoods on the physical infrastructures of capitalist society, but also an infrastructure of poor bodies at work. Simone (2004) brings forth the view of “people as infrastructure” to embolden city governments to greater value the livelihoods of residents. This perspective can be applied to the current way in which low-income communities are exploited to support the wealthy. The exploitation of the already disenfranchised is part and parcel of the reconfiguring of coloniality, transforming the desired livelihoods of the international elite into neocolonial endeavours of global capital accumulation and leisure. The class of transnational

elites that benefit from networks of global cities, infrastructures for expatriates, international finance centres, and SEZs do so only on the shoulders of low-income local populations and foreign labourers (Michel, 2010, p. 394). Yeoh (2006) emphasises the existence of stratified societal constructions that lock transnational elites and locals alike into “structurally determined sectors of society and the economy, with no possibility of interpenetration” (p. 26). Conclusion Bonifacio Global City is covered in gleaming towers that are set behind rolling lawns dotted with white crosses of memorial, metres away from informal settlements. This geographical landscape is symbolic of the complex relations that have been constructed in today’s highly populated and internationally-oriented cities. BGC is built on a foundation of coloniality, supported by neoliberalism and financialisation under globalisation—breeding anti-relationality through racial capitalism. Consummately, all these processes sustain accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2006). To envision urban areas under the “global city” moniker that do indeed benefit local populations with some sense of equity, governments must detach themselves from the idealism surrounding notions of modernity, progress, and development. The outlook of Gibson-Graham & Miller (2018) on battling anti-relationality demands individuals reimagine themselves as co-constitutive of each other—thinking of ways an individual’s livelihood shapes those of others. All urban dwellers are suspended in complex and life-changing global networks of connection, yet at this current moment, these networks are largely used for exploitation and the consolidation of power for those who already have plenty. Thus, urban communities must learn to centre interdependence and responsibility, creating communities that celebrate union with each other. Bonifacio Global City claims to be what the future of the Philippines should look like, but a future that represents inequality at its core is no promising future at all.

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R A L LY I N G A G A I N S T T H E F A C E L E S S VILLAIN HOW COLD WAR FILMS RENEW AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Jyotsna Kumar

This paper discusses how popular films such as Bridge of Spies, Creed II, and Red Sparrow reproduce American nationalism through the use of nostalgic Cold War motifs such as the Soviet foe and American hypermasculinity. By harnessing race, masculinity, and gender, American studio films attempt to bolster contemporary belief in its position as the “world’s policeman.” However, these depictions often come at the cost of removing agency from the narrative of the groups villainized to spread nationalist messages, amplifying an ahistorical perspective on America’s position in the world.

Introduction For decades, Hollywood movies have entrenched political discourse in American entertainment. All films have underlying messages that can often reflect their political era, whether intentional or not. Such is the case with many contemporary movies depicting the Cold War or portray its critical actors: the United States or Russia (Prorokova, 2020, p. 24). These movies disseminate Cold War nostalgia, the notion that between 1945 and 1991, America was seen as the “world leader,” the “bringer of the free world,” and a country that could stand against any foe (Prorokova, 2020, p. 24). As Russia is currently a neoliberal state with a privatized economy, Cold War nostalgia does not desire to return to the specific era ideologically, but rather recreates Russia as a foe using modern themes (Rutland, 2013, p. 332). More commonly, the lens of Cold War nostalgia is used to refract imaginings of the United States itself. It does not matter who the foe is, only that in defeating them, the United States can position itself as a bringer of peace and an unfailing influential world leader. Cold War nostalgia attempts to re-establish nationalist sentiments among contemporary Americans who have lost faith in “free world” ideology. This causes many people to feel nostalgic for a past where the country they reside in had more power (Prorokova, 2020, p. 26). However, this idea of America as the bastion of the “free world” during the Cold War is distorted. I will discuss how Cold War nostalgia intentionally warps the past by including narratives initially left out of the war, such as those of people of colour and women, while villainizing other nations to bolster American nationalism. To support this, I will explore how concepts of whiteness in Bridge of Spies, masculinity in Creed II, and gender in Red Sparrow are used to reconstruct a patriotic American image.

Effects of Cold War Nostalgia Cold War nostalgia highlights the ease with which the media can distort the past. Nostalgia is frequently deployed as a propaganda technique to evoke strong emotions, blurring the truth to convey an intentional message. In the context of the Cold War, this has profound consequences, as it makes a binary distinction between “good” and “evil” nations (Prorokova, 2020, p. 17-18). Selective nostalgia paints countries like Russia as directly opposite of American values, ‘othering’ in the process and constructing other nations as a constant enemy. This othering is used to justify America’s self-appointed role of the “global peacekeeper” or “peacemaker.” The idolizing term “peacemaker” was first used in the context of Ronald Reagan’s actions during the Cold War, and continued to describe America’s militarized role in foreign intervention afterwards (Weinrod, 1993, p. 148). It must be kept in mind that history cannot be boiled down to “rights and wrongs” (Said, 1978, pg 2). Othering is a necessity for Cold War nostalgia as it creates a shared, distant enemy that the American people are invited to rally against. According to Chandra Mohanty (1988), these processes of othering are thus required for the United States to uphold its supposed national identity as the world’s “core” nation (p. 81). The othering of nations in popular culture(s) creates uneven imagined global geographies. The danger in this worldview comes when audiences can adopt it into their beliefs, with little thought about what this representation of the past constitutes (Dittmer, 2005). Movies can justify American aggression to the everyday viewer, influencing their politics. Such influences, like the nationalist messaging in Bridge of Spies, Creed II, and Red Sparrow are the bedrock of Cold War nostalgia. It does not matter if such messaging is historically correct, as long as a worldview that produces America as superior, a “peacemaker,” and the “core” is disseminated. Merciful White America Many Cold War films reproduce the belief that America should be positioned above other nations and save other countries from their plight. This conceptualization is often tied to race, with films portraying how America’s whiteness makes them morally correct. Bridge of Spies initially set out to create a more nuanced portrait of the American government during the Cold War (Prorokova, 2020, p. 183).

Figure 1 East Berlin is often shown in dark snowy conditions. (Source: Krieger et al., 2015)

However, the film’s critiques of the American government failed to be precise, possibly feeding into the xenophobic agenda of white American conservatives. The movie, in the end, still portrays the Soviet Union as evil. This includes vivid imagery of a direct parallel between people being shot at for trying to climb a fence in East Berlin, and then children freely doing the same in America, producing the image that all Americans are “free”. However, it is important to note that Bridge of Spies only showcases the stories of white Americans and their freedom. By focusing solely on the narratives and struggles of white men, most of them being American, the film opens itself to the repurposing of right-wing ideology. Bridge of Spies showcases the idea that the United States is “pure,” and will always act in the name of justice, yet fails to include racial justice in this mission. Bridge of Spies does make some attempts to dismantle Cold War nostalgia by showcasing the communists as intelligent alongside Americans, and by offering some critique of American mob justice (Prorokova, 2020, p. 186). Regardless, the CIA and the United States are portrayed as merciful saviours. Bridge of Spies reproduces notions of America built on selective representations of race that appeals to nostalgic conservatives who wish to see America “reclaim” its power through international domination (Figure 1). Masculinity and the “Frontier” Race can also help contemporary audiences relate to Cold War themes that may have excluded specific demographics in the past, such as ‘the masculine hero’. One such example is Creed II, a 2018 American film about the character Adonis Creed, son of Apollo Creed, who goes after a Russian character, Viktor Drago, son of Ivan Drago, for killing Adonis’ father. The film uses the retro cinematic aesthetic of the Rocky franchise, portraying the clash between socialism and capitalism by showcasing a rivalry between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. in a contemporary context (Yuskel, 2018). For this reason, many Cold War sentiments remain in Creed II, such as the idea of a Russian foe who exists solely to fight Americans (Sandu, 2022). Throughout the film, Adonis is depicted with a family and support network, whereas Drago is only shown in darker settings and/or with his competitive father. This builds on concepts of the American dream and American superiority, working to establish nationalist exceptionalism. Creed II emphasizes a worldview that ties hegemonic notions of masculinity to “adequate” behaviours of Americans in protecting their national “frontier” from threats (Sandu, 2022). Adonis Creed represents the American “real man,” with a family and substantial physical strength, willing to revolt against anyone who comes in the way of his life (i.e. any threats to America). Drago’s main motive is to defeat Creed as his lack of fame and experience of poverty is seen as the fault of the United States; Drago is not given any other character traits (Sandu, 2022). Creed II attempts to capture new audiences by centering a Black boxer, which has been a historical rarity. Previously, any films that portrayed Black boxers were often bleak and cynical; the Creed movies stand in contrast as they are full of hope for the main character (Clark, 2015). Creed II expands upon the traditional ideas of masculinity and exceptionalism by showcasing a Black character that stands for the same values that the central white characters in Cold War films have previously done—a need to protect the “homefront” and display enduring strength and gentleness towards their family (Sandu, 2022). However, it is still a nostalgic film that attempts to pit America against the “other” as Black characters in Creed are used to rewrite the Cold War and make viewers feel nostalgic for a time of confidence in American exceptionalism (Sandu, 2022). In reality, the Cold War period was characterized by

discrimination and delegitimization of the civil rights movements to maintain an ideal of American unity against communist forces (Skrentny, 1998, p. 241). Discriminatory acts continue to this day, as seen with police brutality and disproportionate incarceration levels of Black Americans (Skrentny, 1998, p. 245). The proliferation of racial discrimination is distorted to portray a picture of America using notions of idealized racial unity and notions of hypermasculinity that can extend to all races. In Creed II, twentieth-century ideology is updated to capture contemporary audiences, expanding rather than dismantling Cold War nostalgia rooted in American exceptionalism (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Adonis Creed’s training in American neighbourhoods and deserts is made to showcase how the real American man fights to protect those he loves (Source: Chartoff et al., 2018)

Gender and Making the CIA “Cool” Again Hollywood films often work to depict governmental bodies such as the CIA in a better light, especially in the present-day context where the CIA is no longer seen as an institution that can protect the general public (Davidson Sorkin, 2023). The agenda of Cold War nostalgia expands to the realm of gender in the 2019 film, Red Sparrow, which paints the CIA as progressive and liberal, by showing women characters as vocal supporters of the organization. The film’s women characters are often seen as having no autonomy beyond service to the state. The main character, Dominika, is abused by the Russian government, eventually finding solace and refuge in becoming a CIA informant. In this case, Russia is pictured as taking away her autonomy while America gives it back. Either way, Dominika is always tied to buttressing a nation through self-sacrifice as her freedom in America is tied to her successfully providing information on her homeland. Dominika only has agency in deciding which American institution she must work for. The Russian “spy school” that abuses Dominika in the film does not exist, even though the film was supposedly based on actual events (Prorokova, 2020, p. 124).These fictional institutions are shown as excessively ruthless, making the CIA look benign by comparison. In an ahistorical retelling, the movie shows the CIA as a refuge, bringing Dominika to safety when she needs it in order to support the greater good. The film neglects to mention any harm the CIA perpetuated during the Cold War, such as the hiring of known Nazi Party members to spy on the Soviet Bloc (Prorokova, 2020, p. 124). Such behaviour points to the immorality of the CIA as an institution (Davidson Sorkin, 2023). Further concealing this immorality is the use of marginalized bodies, like women, to rewrite the CIA

as an institution that helps others (Prorokova, 2020, pg 126). Revisionist history and contemporary understandings of the CIA support American exceptionalism, distorting the image of American federal bodies to depict them as always protective of Americans or anyone fleeing their abusive homelands. These Hollywood portrayals of gender inclusion rehabilitate institutions such as the CIA to erase their scrutiny and reposition them as an institution that should be trusted. Why Does Nostalgia Start in the 1980s? Cold War nostalgia is heavily tied to the recent emergence of media nostalgically themed around the 1980’s. Films, such as Creed II and Red Sparrow, are relevant here as well. However, the 1980s are a peculiar era to fixate on, considering that America was not at the height of its supposed exceptionalism. Near the end of the Cold War, many Americans had lost confidence in their government due to an ongoing recession, with 26 percent of the American population stating that their financial situation had worsened since 1982, and 51 percent stating that their own government was the greatest threat to the United States (Auxier, 2010). Filmmakers often ignore the cynicism of this time to push the narrative that America was strong and unwavering. American revisionism only takes place to depict globalized capitalism positively, rather than the citizen disapproval that came before. Rewriting history to build up internalized nationalism of American residents is also used to censor parts of American history that may cast a shadow over the nation. For example, the Vietnam War was a significant failure for America, resulting in a large uptick in white nationalist sentiments (Illing, 2018). To white supremacists, American participation in the Vietnam War was an act of betrayal as they believed that America’s defeat made them look weaker compared to a nation composed of people of colour. In an attempt to separate their image from that of white nationalists, American films adopted stories about women and people of colour, although these were mostly inaccurate depictions (Illing, 2018). During the mid-1960’s, the U.S.S.R. made a case for socialism, and in conjunction with its nuclear arsenal, its influence further spread across Europe and Asia (DeDominicis, 2021). This was constructed as a significant threat to the United States, so American government and media created an oversimplified, stereotypical image of the Soviet Union, with Reagan claiming them to be the “empire of evil” (DeDominicis, 2021). At the time, the U.S. government believed that communism would take hold in one country and proliferate to other countries, a phenomenon known as the “Domino Theory” (Storey, 2009). Cold War nostalgia intentionally revises the 1980’s. By many accounts, the 1980’s were characterized by recession, distrust of the government, and the rise of white supremacy. The American government and media effectively made it a time of triumph for capitalism by labeling the U.S.S.R. as a villain. Out of fear that America was losing its power, the United States government disparaged other nations to rebuild its image. Rhetoric that degrades other nations in the name of American nationalism is consistently reproduced in Hollywood film today. Conclusion Mainstream American movies are a powerful tool in spreading ideology, as it is accessible to mass audiences and can reignite nationalist beliefs and stoke irrational fears about other countries. This paper has discussed how contemporary Cold War nostalgia films distort themes of whiteness, masculinity, and

gender to portray Cold War America as the benevolent savior of the world. Benedict Anderson (1991), when writing about “imagined communities,” states that media plays a pivotal role in producing national identity, uniting people from a variety of backgrounds under the same banner (p. 34). With the media often perpetuating false histories that can quickly be taken as truth, viewers can be shaped to align with American nationalism and notions of America in the Cold War being merciful, peacekeeping, and strong. These films emerge at a time when the American state is coming under scrutiny for its treatment of citizens, poverty, and healthcare (Wike, Fetterolf, & Parker, 2016). A principal effort to regain national support is to band people against a stereotypical villain, which is what Hollywood films do by propagating anti-Russian media, depicting them as an “other” in an uneven imagined geography. Contrasting America with a constructed villain in order to regain an audience for nationalist sentiments, stokes a patriotism that hopes for a return to the false ideal of a 1980’s superpower (Dittmer, 2005). Such patriotism and American exceptionalism propagates discriminatory attitudes and xenophobia directed to other nations and their citizens, eliminating space for American self-critique. Audiences justify America’s military pursuits when they believe the quest for power is noble, a notion depicted in Bridge of Spies, Creed II, and Red Sparrow. Cold War nostalgia should be rejected in popular media as it ideologically vilifies other nations, idealizing a timeframe of American exceptionalism that never was. Bibliography Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities. London, United Kingdom: Verso Books. Auxier, R. C. (2010, December 14). Reagan’s Recession. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https:// www.pewresearch.org/2010/12/14/reagans-recession/ Chartoff, W., King-Templeton, K., Stallone, S., Winkler, C., Winkler, D., Winkler, I. (Producers), & Caple, S. (Director). (2018). Creed II [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Bros. Entertainment. Chernin, P., Ready, D., Topping, J., Zaillian, S. (Producers), & Lawrence, F. (Director). (2018). Red Sparrow [Motion picture]. United States: 20th Century Studios. Clark, A. (2015, November 24). Creed: Why do so few boxing films have black heroes? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/24/Creed-boxing-film-stars-black-heromichael-b-jordan-rocky-spinoff Davidson Sorkin, A. (2023, October 3). Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good?. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/has-the-cia-done-moreharm-than-good DeDominicis, B. E. (2021). The Vietnam War and American Nationalism: The Institutionalization of Stereotypes in the Postwar US Foreign Policy Making Process. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies, 16(1), 65–88. https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-0071/CGP/ v16i01/65-88

Dittmer, J. (2005). Captain America’s Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(3), 626–643. Illing, S. (2018, April 13). How the Vietnam war created America’s modern “white power” movement. Retreived from https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17215492/white-supremacy-ideology-racism-trump Krieger, K. M., Platt, M. (Producers), & Spielberg, S. (Director & Producer). (2015). Bridge of Spies [Motion picture]. United States: Touchstone Home Entertainment. Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Boundary 2, 12/13, 333–358. https://doi.org/10.2307/302821 Prorokova, T. (2020). Cold War II: Hollywood’s renewed obsession with Russia. Jackson, United States: University Press of Mississippi. Rutland, P. (2013). Neoliberalism and the Russian transition. Review of International Political Economy, 20(2), 332–362. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York, United States: Penguin. Sandu, O. P. (2022). New Cold War Nostalgia in Recent U.S. Cultural Productions: Retro and Irony in the Transnational Postsocialist World. Comparative Literature Studies, 59(3), 612–630. Skrentny, J. D. (1998). The Effect of the Cold War on African-American Civil Rights: America and the World Audience, 1945-1968. Theory and Society, 27(2), 237–285. Storey. (2009). International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Retrieved from http://p5070-www. sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780080449104/international-encycopedia-of-human-geography Weinrod, W. B. (1993). Peacekeeping: Two Views: The U.S. Role in Peacekeeping-Related Activities. World Affairs, 155(4), 148–155. Wike, R., Fetterolf, J., & Parker, B. (2016, October 24). Even in Era of Disillusionment, Many Around the World Say Ordinary Citizens Can Influence Government. Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/10/24/even-in-era-ofdisillusionment-many-around-the-world-say-ordinary-citizens-can-influence-government/

THE CHIXOY DAM R A C I A L C A P I TA L I S M A N D A CC U M U L AT I O N B Y D I S P O S S E S S I O N

Rebecca Skoll

In 1972, the Chixoy Dam was designed by Guatemala’s National Institute of Electrification (INDE) to address the country’s repeated blackouts. However, this development project, along with others in the energy sector, became a source of violence and contributed to a period known as La Violencia in Guatemalan history. This era was characterised by instability and coincided with the global push for free-market policies and development. The Chixoy Dam Massacre is a tragic example of this violence and it illustrates how coloniality and racial capitalism empower the state to accumulate capital through Indigenous dispossession. The Guatemalan state, INDE, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are all agents of what Harvey (2003) calls accumulation by dispossession: these institutions prioritise capital gain over Indigenous survival and autonomy, justifying violence against them through the colonial frame of development. This article will examine the Chixoy Dam Massacre and its connection to coloniality and racial capitalism. It will also expose the complicity of various institutions in this violence and conclude with a discussion of the relationship between hydro energy development, racial capitalism, coloniality, and accumulation by dispossession.

Introduction Guatemala’s National Institute of Electrification (INDE) designed the Chixoy Dam in June 1972 amidst repeated blackouts throughout the country (Einbinder, 2017). The 1970s to the 1980s would later become known in Guatemalan history as La Violencia, characterised by terrible and unpredictable times, and happened to coincide with the global push for development and free-market policies (Einbinder, 2017). The Chixoy Dam is just one example of a development project that contributed to La Violencia, as it would later become known as the Chixoy Dam Massacre. I argue that coloniality and racial capitalism empower the state to become an agent of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey 2003), where violence toward Indigenous populations is justified for capital gain and development. The Chixoy Dam development project, and many other energy development projects, produce violence because of unequal power dynamics between those who accumulate and those who are dispossessed. The first section will outline the violent events of the Chixoy Dam Massacre and its connections to coloniality and racial capitalism. I will continue by exposing the Guatemalan state, the INDE, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as agents of accumulation by dispossession. Lastly, I conclude with a discussion of the relationships between hydro energy development, racial capitalism, coloniality, and accumulation by dispossession. 28

The Chixoy Dam Massacre In 1976, the World Bank and the IDB granted loans totaling US$177 million to the INDE. Río Negro, an Indigenous Maya Achi community, was informed that the dam would flood their village, forcing them to relocate (Einbinder, 2017). The INDE had no social impact assessments or plans for resettlement until the World Bank required a resettlement plan as a condition to receive their loan. In January of 1980, Río Negro community leaders were brought to the resettlements site, Pacux, where they were presented with non-arable land and poor construction (Einbinder, 2017). Río Negro residents refused to leave their land unless presented with the basic resources they needed to settle elsewhere, but as recorded in a survivor interview by Pacenza (1996), they were told they would be met with an “army to drive [them] out with bullets” (para. 16). The first act of violence between Río Negro residents and the military police was in March 1980, when two Río Negro residents were arrested and tortured after being accused of stealing beans, leading to an interrogation of the entire village which left 7 residents dead (Einbinder, 2017). One police officer drowned in the river after being chased by angry residents, for which Río Negro residents were accused of being murderers and guerillas (Einbinder, 2017). Soon after, the INDE required Río Negro residents to hand over land claims, which they later claimed to have never received (Einbinder, 2017). In July 1980, two Río Negro committee members were asked to bring the Libro de Actos (the only records of the resettlement and cash payment agreements) to the dam site. Both the Libro de Actos and the committee members disappeared, until their tortured bodies were found one week later (Pacenza, 1996). By 1982, the dam project was near completion, but Río Negro residents refused to leave, so as promised, they were met with violence (Pacenza, 1996). After being forced to hand over their ID cards, 74 residents were ordered to report to Xococ, a nearby village where they were tortured and accused of being guerillas, leaving 71 dead in February of 1982 (Einbinder, 2017). One woman escaped and walked through the night to reach Río Negro by morning to warn the remaining villagers (Pacenza, 1996). The men of the village went into hiding in the surrounding hills, thinking the women and children would be safe to remain in the village. One month after the massacre in Xococ, the national army and the Xococ local police arrived in Río Negro and gathered the women and children. They were then forced to walk up the mountainside to the Pocoxom pass where 107 children and 70 women are raped and murdered while 18 children are taken as slaves (Einbinder, 2017). Survivors of the February and March massacres fled the area, many hiding in nearby villages. A group of 84 Río Negro refugees were discovered in Los Encuentros and killed by army soldiers who were conveniently driving an INDE truck (Pacenza, 1996) while 15 Río Negro women were taken by helicopter and never seen again (Einbinder, 2017). The last massacre occurred on September 13, 1982, when 92 people (35 of which were children refugees from Río Negro) were killed in Agua Fria, a nearby village (Einbinder, 2017). In 1982 alone, 369 Río Negro villagers were murdered and their village was destroyed while survivors fled the area (Pacenza, 1996). The dam reservoir began to fill in 1983 and by March 1985, the World Bank granted another US$44 million to the INDE as commercial use of the dam begins in 1986 (Einbinder, 2017). The World Bank claimed they had no information about Río Negro villagers being attacked, yet Johnston (2005) found that both the World Bank and the IDB regularly sent staff to the area to “evaluate performance” (p. 17). According to a study by the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala, the Chixoy Dam will likely cease to function by 2030 due to unanticipated sediment erosion (Einbinder, 2017). The Chixoy Dam will have 44 functional years of electricity production compared to the 200 promised

by the World Bank. In 1991, the World Bank admitted to its poor decisions, stating that the Chixoy Dam was an unwise and uneconomic investment (Pacenza, 1996). Río Negro residents who survived the massacres restarted their lives on the steep slopes above the reservoir that was built through their dispossession. Chixoy Dam Massacre and Coloniality The Chixoy Dam Massacre was the result of state-sanctioned violence towards Indigenous Maya Achi people. Coloniality rationalised the Guatemalan state, the INDE, the World Bank, and the IDB’s administration of violence toward the residents of Río Negro for the development of the Chixoy Dam. Coloniality, as defined by Mignolo (2011), is the underlying logic of the creation of Western societies and is constitutive of modernity. With coloniality came the commodification of natural resources and through slavery, the commodification of humans. If coloniality cannot be separated from modernity, then modernisation efforts, such as the Chixoy Dam, are deeply colonial. Mignolo (2011) argues the colonial matrix has Christian theology as its foundation, which located racial, hierarchical, differences between people by blood, and later by skin. Along with race, coloniality privileges males over females because the European patriarchy is legitimised. Coloniality rationalises the violence towards Río Negro residents because of racial and gendered hierarchies, where indigeneity and femininity are inferior. The Chixoy Dam project, by extension of La Violencia, was accompanied by the global push for colonial modernisation in the Global South (Einbinder, 2017). Violence was not felt by all people equally due to the racial and gendered hierarchies created by coloniality. The Maya Achi people of Río Negro do not fit into the colonial frame of a white “modern subject”, (Mignolo, 2011, p. 19), which rationalised their disposal. Sieder (2017) argues that land and resource dispossession in Guatemala is part of the “colonial continuum”, which denies Indigenous communities the means to survive (p. 372). Additionally, the gendered aspect of the violence toward Río Negro residents points to the legitimisation of the European patriarchy. Río Negro women were victims of rape and sexual violence because the patriarchy deems women’s bodies inferior to men’s (Mignolo, 2011). Inés Hernández-Avila notes that Indigenous women are disproportionately harmed because they have “the potential through childbirth to assure the continuation of the people” (as cited in Women’s Earth Alliance and Native Youth Sexual Health Network, 2016, p. 20), but the continuation of Indigenous Peoples’ challenges the colonial modernisation ideology. By specifically harming Río Negro women, the Guatemalan state was attacking the continuation of the Maya Achi Peoples. Coloniality rationalises the violence toward the Maya Achi Peoples, and more specifically women because indigeneity and femininity do not fit into the colonial modernisation paradigm. Along with coloniality, racial capitalism formulates the power dynamics between the state and Río Negro residents during the process of capital accumulation from the Chixoy Dam. Chixoy Dam Massacre and Racial Capitalism The power inequalities between the state, the INDE, the World Bank, the IDB, and Río Negro residents are largely due to the inequalities that racial capitalism creates and depends on. Melamed (2015) argues that capital is only capital when it is accumulating, and can only accumulate through severe inequalities between human groups (p. 77). Racial capitalism requires and reproduces racism and the devaluing of certain human groups; which originates from coloniality (Melamed, 2015; Mignolo,

2011). Accumulation under racial capitalism includes the exploitation of labor, land, and resources for profit, which Melamed (2015) argues has only intensified with neoliberalism and free-market policies. The intensive accumulation of resources that is associated with neoliberalism has brought Indigeneity into representation within the neoliberal capitalist structure of inequality because so much of the world’s natural resources are found within Indigenous lands (Melamed, 2015). Neoliberal racial capitalism reproduces and requires inequalities between human groups, so as the Chixoy Dam project is the product of capitalist neoliberal policies, it will inevitably reproduce inequality. The idea of the Chixoy Dam was sold to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IBD) with a total cost of $340 million (Einbinder, 2017). It was intended to provide 60% of Guatemalans with electricity, but also be the energy source for copper, nickel, and oil exploitation in the Northern Transverse Strip (Einbinder, 2017). Through neoliberal policies that allowed for private international investment, profits would be collected by international entrepreneurs, and therefore the Chixoy Dam project led to private enrichment over local public good (Einbinder, 2017); the Indigenous Peoples of Río Negro are facing displacement and violence while private investors profit. It is evident that the lending organisations are aware of the violence happening in Río Negro (Einbinder, 2017), yet Stewart (2004) reveals that INDE officials found it was more “cost-efficient” to eliminate Río Negro residents rather than compensate them (p. 206). The Chixoy Dam project is designed through neoliberal racial capitalist ideologies, which produce and require inequalities; while private investors gain, Indigenous Río Negro residents are dispossessed in the name of cost-efficiency (Stewart, 2006, p. 206). Guatemalan State as an Agent of Accumulation by Dispossession Through colonial, capitalist, and neoliberal ideologies, the Guatemalan State along with the INDE, the World Bank, and the IBD, have become agents of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2003), which occurs when government policies prioritise foreign investment and capital extraction of resources. This process often forces local community members to be separated from their land and means of production (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2018). When foreign investors and agents of extractive capital have the right to acquire these resources such as land, they deny the local community members access to what had previously been for the commons. In the context of neoliberal racial capitalism, the Guatemalan State, the INDE, the World Bank, and the IBD are agents of accumulation by dispossession. Petras and Veltmeyer (2018) argue that privatisation has long been used by the World Bank as a method of accumulation by dispossession, and the Chixoy Dam project is no exception. Typically, the privatisation of land in Latin America targets villagers who have land without a legal title. In the case of the Chixoy Dam, Río Negro residents were asked to turn in their land titles leaving them with no legal rights and allowing them to be violently dispossessed of their land and resources (Einbinder, 2017). Many Indigenous Peoples, contrary to Western worldviews, do not view the natural world as a commodity, but rather as something to have a relationship with, sacred and fundamental to the human identity. In dispossessing the Maya Achi of their land, the Guatemalan State along with the INDE, the World Bank, and the IBD have also dispossessed them of their culture, identity, and livelihood. Violence and dispossession associated with hydroelectricity development are not unique to the Chixoy Dam, especially in Latin America.

Hydro Energy Development: Racial Capitalism and Accumulation by Dispossession Hydroelectricity is often portrayed as the “modern” solution to energy in a “climate-constrained” world (Del Bene et al., 2018, p. 617). It is seen as a way to reduce carbon emissions while also supporting economic development, but with 220 dam-related conflicts recorded in 2018, it is worth questioning who this development is for: whose ideas of development are being legitimised? Western ideas of development include production and accumulation of capital but to many Indigenous groups, development is the preservation of customs and livelihood (Einbinder, 2017). As argued by Del Bene et al. (2018), dams provide energy not only to cities but also to other industries such as mining and agriculture, so dams are key elements in extractivism, capital accumulation, and growthoriented economies. Therefore, dams and hydroelectric development cater to the Western ideologies of coloniality, capitalism, and neoliberalism, all of which produce and require inequalities (Mignolo, 2011; Melamed, 2015). These inequalities can be seen in the high number of violent incidents surrounding hydroelectric development, especially when Indigenous Peoples are involved (Del Bene et al., 2018). Hydro projects have severe impacts on the land and the livelihood of local communities which results in structural, direct physical, and cultural violence. Activists opposing hydro projects are also often met with violence: Noé Vasquez, an activist opposing the Naranjal project on the Rio Blanco was shot dead while commemorating victims of extractivist projects; Berta Caceres and numerous Indigenous activists were murdered when challenging the Agua Zarca project in Honduras, and the list goes on (Del Bene et al., 2018). The violence associated with hydro development is not unknown to developers. In 2000, the World Commission on Dams published a report which concluded that “large dams are both socially unethical and environmentally unsustainable” (Del Bene et al., 2018, p. 620), yet hydro development has not slowed down. The decision to ignore opposition to hydroelectric developments delegitimises varying understandings of sustainability and development (Del Bene et al., 2018). Ultimately, violence associated with dams is not a coincidence; dam developments are often reproductive of coloniality, racial capitalism, and accumulation by dispossession because only Western worldviews of development are legitimised. While Indigenous Peoples and local communities continue to be dispossessed of their land and culture, the dam’s profiteers remain indifferent because “capital must always be accumulating” (Melamed, 2015, p. 77). Conclusion The Chixoy Dam Massacre was a tragic chapter of La Violencia, during a time when the Global South felt pressure to adopt Western modernities and free-market policies (Einbinder, 2017). The violence that came from the Chixoy Dam project was the result of coloniality and racial capitalism empowering the state to become an agent of accumulation by dispossession, where violence toward Indigenous populations is justified for capital gain and development. The global push for neoliberal policies in the Global South meant that the Chixoy Dam project would prioritise private enrichment over local public good (Einbinder, 2017). Many other hydroelectric development projects follow the same violent pattern. Western worldviews produce and require inequalities (Mignolo, 2011; Melamed, 2015), so when development is only acknowledged through the Western paradigm, other understandings of development are delegitimised (Del Bene et al., 2018). Western ideas of development such as capitalism and neoliberalism are rooted in coloniality, so those who are devalued in the colonial paradigm will continue to be dispossessed while agents of colonialism will accumulate.

Bibliography Del Bene, D., Scheidel, A., & Temper, L. (2018). More dams, more violence? A global analysis on resistances and repression around conflictive dams through co-produced knowledge. Sustainability Science, 13(3), 617–633. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0558-1 Einbinder, N. (2017). Dams, displacement and development. SpringerBriefs in Latin American Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51511-3 Harvey, D. (2003). The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnston, B. (2005). (rep.). Volume One: Chixoy Dam Legacy Issues Study: CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES and REPARATION: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REMEDY (pp. 1–47). Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Political Ecology. Melamed, J. (2015). Racial Capitalism. Critical Ethnic Studies, 1(1), 76–85. https://doi.org/https:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/jcritethnstud.1.1.0076 Mignolo , W. D. (2011). Coloniality: The Darker Side of Western Modernity. The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822394501-001 Pacenza, M. (1996). A People Dammed: The Chixoy Dam, Guatemalan Massacres and the World Bank. Multinational Monitor, 17(7/8). Petras, J. F., & Veltmeyer, H. (2018). Accumulation by Dispossession - And the Resistance. In The class struggle in Latin America: Making history Today (pp. 40–58). Routledge. Pulido, L. (2018). Racism and the Anthropocene. In Future remains: A Cabinet of curiosities for the anthropocene (pp. 116–128). The University of Chicago Press. Sieder, R. (2017). Indigenous sovereignties in Guatemala: Between criminalization and revitalization. NACLA Report on the Americas, 49(3), 370–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2017.1373971 Stewart, J. (2004). When local troubles become transnational: The transformation of a Guatemalan indigenous rights movement. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 9(3), 259–278. https://doi. org/10.17813/maiq.9.3.y5230w89x54793m0

SEASIDE, FLORIDA S U B U R B A N FA N TA S Y A N D T H E D I S N E Y F I C AT I O N O F N E W U R B A N I S M

Dk Nursyazwana Nabillah Pg Saiful Rizal

“The New Town…The Old Ways” is the motto of Seaside, Florida—a town recognised by planners and architects worldwide as the first New Urbanist town ever built combining elements such as walkability, compact communities, mixed-use development, and public commons at the forefront of its design (LaFrank, 1997, p. 111). This piece was prompted from an assignment that asked to make a case for a twenty-first century cultural landscape worthy of critical study by cultural geographers. The rationale behind choosing Seaside is because of its recognizable New Urbanist architecture and aesthetics, as well as its influence on popular culture by being the setting of Peter Weir’s 1998 film, The Truman Show. In this piece, I explore the ways in which Seaside romanticises the suburban experience which idealises the past and attempts to retreat from “immoral” contemporary urbanism issues (Macy, 1996, p. 436). Part of Seaside’s suburbia also attaches itself to the urban configuration of the idealised landscapes of Disneyland (Helphand, 1998). Using The Truman Show and Disney’s master-planned community of Celebration, I argue that Seaside’s New Urbanist utopian and suburban fantasy perpetuates the cultural homogeneity present in the Disneyland spectacle. This erases any historical substance, class differences, and racial differences, in exchange for commercialised nostalgia (Kates, 2000). Thus, cultural geographers will find this worthy of further study as they can look for ways to decommodify the landscape, enriching it with multifaceted histories to create more genuine and dynamic (sub)urban identities.

Introduction Founded in 1981 by Robert Davis and designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the town of Seaside, Florida is widely recognised by planners and architects as the first New Urbanist town ever built (Rowley, 2015). The planned community, which has been described as “charming, restful, and friendly” (Willet, 1996, para.1) features New Urbanist elements such as walkability, compact communities, mixed-use development, and public commons at the forefront of its design. Architects view Seaside as representative of the “places we used to have before cars took our streets away from us” (Massengale, 2013, as cited in Walljasper, 2019, para. 12). In this paper, Seaside is examined against Macy’s (1996) notion of idealised suburban nostalgia unfolding as utopian fantasy. In this case, nostalgia is used to romanticise the suburban experience, as the town’s planning and landscape architecture upholds the imaginings of this utopia. This positions Seaside as an escapist retreat from discourses of supposedly immoral noir urbanisms that depict a dystopian image of the contemporary city (Prakash, 2010). Seaside’s suburbia attaches itself to the urban configuration of the idealised landscapes of Disneyland, as Helphand (1998) argues, is one of the most distinct contemporary American landscapes. With 34

reference to Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show which uses Seaside as a backdrop, and Disney’s promotional brochures for the master-planned community of Celebration, I argue that Seaside’s New Urbanist suburban fantasy uses tropes from the Disneyland spectacle to perpetuate cultural homogeneity (Kates, 2000). This production of homogeneity works to erase any historical substance, class, and racial differences, in exchange for commercialised nostalgia. As Disneyfication erodes cultural authenticity, Seaside reveals the broader postwar suburbanisation processes that have led to the formation of specific racial geographies and suburban white identity (Avila, 2006, pp. 5-10).

Figure 1 Seahaven is touted as “the best place on Earth”; this message is reproduced through the the town’s imagery, radio broadcasts, and daily newspapers. (Source: Weir, 1998)

Constructing Nostalgic Suburbia as Utopia The community of Seaside is commonly depicted as a nostalgic suburban landscape that acts as the antithesis to the disordered and chaotic climate of the modern city. The journalist Kurt Anderson describes Seaside as “amazing...that such a sweet, earnest, idealistic project would come to fruition in the bombastic, cynical, anti-utopian 1980s” (Anderson, 1991, as cited in Macy, 1996, p. 435). Anderson’s words suggest that Seaside offers a utopic nostalgic retreat that is unattainable in contemporary American cities, providing protection from the immorality of “noir urbanisms” (Prakash, 2010). According to Prakash (2010), “noir urbanisms” are depicted in film, art, literature, and architecture as sites of disorder, immorality, corruption, and catastrophe, all of which are seen to characterise the contemporary urban experience. Seaside’s motto, “The New Town - The Old Ways”, is one that aligns with the small towns of America’s pre-WWII era which are seen as spaces for social cohesion, order, and master planning (Rowley, 2015). In a world of mass-production, Seaside represents a re-investment in authenticity of objects and environments to become a historical utopia of uniqueness (Macy, 1996). The commitment

to this type of planning features perfect streetscapes, white picket fences, and traditional housing designs that adhere to strict zoning and design codes that inform American historical districts (Hamer, 2000). To illustrate the extent of Seaside’s utopian vision, I look to Weir’s depiction of “Seahaven” as the backdrop to his 1998 film, The Truman Show (Weir, 1998). In the film, Seahaven is touted as “the best place on Earth”; this message is reproduced through the the town’s imagery, radio broadcasts, and daily newspapers (Figure 1), reminding the protagonist how Seahaven is a paradise. Seahaven is comically exaggerated as the perfect town, yet when the protagonist thinks of leaving or travelling, he is overwhelmingly bombarded with reminders that there is no possible reason to leave. With reference to Prackash’s (2010) “noir urbanisms”, the film posits the outside world as a “sick place” against the “paradise” of Seahaven. At the same time, the film presents an artificial side of Seahaven, which is seen when the “set” starts falling apart as the protagonist realises his reality is not so real after all. Weir’s decision to choose Seaside as the fictional “perfect” landscape was precisely because the aesthetic of the town “looked fake” (Kates, 2000, p. 93). Weir’s portrayal of Seahaven attempts to dramatise the ideas of nostalgic suburbia and comments on the spectrum of utopic and dystopic suburbia. The parallels between the fictional town of Seahaven and the actually existing town of Seaside are both of symbolic importance because they present how suburbia is often spatially constructed between a utopian memory and dystopian reality. As I will argue below, in an attempt to recreate the nostalgic suburbia utopia, Seaside perpetuates the cultural homogeneity present in the Disneyland spectacle. This could be seen as a warning to planners and individuals who attempt to look to an idealised past as ways forward for urban design. Disneyfication of New Urbanist Approach Parallels between Seaside, Seahaven, and the idealised landscapes of Disneyland are also clear. Helphand (1998) describes Disneyland as holding significant influence in representing a “modern” America because of how it is reproduced and consumed through many mediums (films, television) and landscapes (theme parks, planned towns). As with Seaside, Disneyland is described as “an idealized… pristine, innocent, [and] problem free” landscape that represents the “ideals, dreams and hard facts that have created America” (Helphand, 1998, p. 44); both incorporate nostalgia as a main design principle. Looking closely at the promotional brochure for Celebration, a master-planned community by the Disney corporation, the design is described as “a return to a more sociable and civic-minded way of life” (Celebration, 1996). Two challenges emerge when connections are made between Seaside’s New Urbanism and the idealised landscapes of Disneyland. Firstly, the neighbourhoods that are meant to be intimate spaces for residences become spectacles and sites of consumption (Nunn, 2001). As Kates (2000) notes, this commodification transfigures towns into places to visit rather than places to live, as seen with Celebration’s guide maps which organise spaces like a theme park (Disney, 1994) (Figure 2). As for Seaside, the town commercialises and sells merchandise in their store, “The Seaside Style” (Seaside, n.d). The realities of commercialised Seaside contradict the “authentic” experience that was intended by architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk who sought to move away from mass consumption through their design approach. The next issue arises when the idealisation of suburban American histories homogenises aesthetics in an effort to replicate them. This idealisation simplifies a complex history of racial and class components,

whitewashing them as they are deemed as sources of disorder and conflict (Rowley, 2015, p. 156). Avila (2004) attempts to historicise the Disneyfication of New Urbanism by looking more broadly towards the trends of postwar suburbanisation and how political and economic decisions have contributed to creating a racial geography that encouraged “white flight,” which describes the movement of white residents away from urban cores towards suburban peripheries due to the arrival of Black residents. Avila (2006) termed these movements as the creation of “Vanilla Suburbs and Chocolate Cities,” ideas that are void in Seaside’s depiction of a suburban utopia (p. 16), valuing “unity” over diversity. Weir’s (1998) Seahaven is a critique of this “erasure of class and race difference”, which can be seen through the lack of racial diversity in the film. According to the U.S Census, Seaside is a majority white neighbourhood. Ultimately the connection between the Disneyland spectacle and the New Urbanism approach in Seaside is that its nostalgic suburban fantasy is devoid of any racial differences while encouraging white heteronormative ideals (Cunningham, 2005). Such ideals, revolving around the white, heteronormative nuclear family, are derived from the construction of childhood memories and experiences of privileged individuals who were raised in the suburbs during 19th century America (Macy, 1996). The tight-knit, compact community that Seaside attempts to create produces homogeneous groups, resulting in uniformity without diversity or division.

Figure 2 Guide to Downtown Celebration (Source: Downtown Celebration: Archtiectural Walking Tour, 1996)

In summary, a close analysis of Seaside’s New Urbanism approach reveals its connection to the homogenised landscapes of Disneyland, positioning Seaside as a nostalgic suburban fantasy, in contrast with the immorality of Prakash’s (2010) “noir urbanisms”. An analysis of “Seahaven,” in Weir’s The Truman Show, and Disneyland’s promotional brochures for Celebration, reveals the artificial consumer aesthetic evoked by Seaside’s New Urbanist approach. This is as a result of failing to incorporate any historical depth that presents the reality of racial and class differences in Seaside. Moreover, this nostalgic suburban model only attempts to address certain contemporary urban problems such as carcentric culture and countless parking lots, but fails to address environmental sustainability, systemic socioeconomic conflicts and cultural diversity (Macy, 1996, p. 438). Cultural geographers will find this worthy of further study as they can look for ways to decommodify the landscape, enriching it with multifaceted histories to create more genuine and dynamic (sub)urban identities.

Bibliography Avila, E. (2006). Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles. University of California Press. Downtown Celebration: Architectural Walking Tour [Photo of brochure]. (1996). Disney Collector Archives. Retrieved 7 April 2022 from https://themousemuseum.com/2018/01/12/celebration-floridainformation-package-1996/ Cunningham, D. A. (2005). A theme park built for one: the new urbanism vs. disney design in The Truman Show. Critical Survey, 17(1), 109-130. Hamer, D. (2000). Learning from the past: historic districts and the new urbanism in the United States. Planning Perspectives, 15(2), 107-122. Helphand, K. I. (1988). McUrbia: The 1950s and the birth of the contemporary American landscape. Places, 5(2). Kates, R. (2000). New Urbanism Meets Cinematic Fantasyland: Seaside,”The Truman Show”, and New Utopias. Studies in Popular Culture, 23(2), 93-98. LaFrank, K. (1997). Seaside, Florida:” The New Town: The Old Ways”. Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 6, 111-121. Macy, C. (1996). The Invention of Nostalgia for Everyday Life: A Critical Analysis of Seaside, Florida. 84Th ACSA Annual Meeting And Technology Conference Proceedings, 435-438. Retrieved 6 April 2022, from https://www.acsa-arch.org/proceedings/Annual%20Meeting%20Proceedings/ACSA.AM. 84/ACSA.AM.84.94.pdf. Nunn, S. (2001). Designing the solipsistic city: Themes of urban planning and control in The Matrix,

Dark City, and The Truman Show. C Theory: Theory, Technology and Culture, 24, 1. Prakash, G. (2010). Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1515/9781400836628 Rowley, S. (2015). Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs: Building Hollywood’s Ideal Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. The Seaside Style. The Seaside Style. Retrieved 7 April 2022, from https://theseasidestyle.com/. Walljasper, J. (2019). How a Florida beach town changed how we live. Public Square: A CNU Journal. Retrieved 6 April 2022, from https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2019/05/14/how-florida-beach-townchanged-how-we-live Weir, P. (Director). (1998). The Truman Show [Film]. Paramount Pictures Willett, R. (1996). Oh, the waves of nostalgia. The Independent UK. Retrieved 6 April 2022, from https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/oh-the-waves-of-nostalgia-1349674.html.

N E W M O D E L S O F L A N D R E L AT I O N S P O ST- C A P I TA L I ST V I S I O N S O F CO M M U N A L L A N D ST E W A R D S H I P

Tyler Riches

The crisis of affordability in Ontario’s housing and rental markets has been linked to rising houselessness, and has only worsened due to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the late-stage capitalist city, real estate has seen increasing financialisation as capital accumulation is further enabled by the contemporary urban planning regime. This paper uses an anti-capitalist lens to explore relevant literature and examine the relation between property, land value, and urban planning in order to determine how an alternative arrangement of land management could effectively deprioritise the profit motive. It explores various non-market forms of land stewardship including community land trusts, common property, housing co-operatives, and Indigenous epistemologies of land relations. These arrangements describe how property and land stewardship might operate when removed from the real estate market. Ultimately it suggests that these property arrangements provide us with a blueprint to decouple land from the capitalist profit motive: an essential step in the struggle to provide housing for all.

Introduction The contemporary system of urban planning in Ontario is the result of the evolution of the planning profession over the 20th century, as governments assumed responsibilities in the oversight and regulation of public and private development; this is most pronounced in cities and urban spaces (Hess, 2021). Planning regulations such as zoning bylaws act as tools that planners use to organise private development and the real estate market to ostensibly make it more efficient. The relationship between regulation and real estate markets strikes at the core of this planning regime: private property, or the private ownership of rights over land, and the structures built upon that land. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many pre-existing social and class inequities, including the housing and houselessness crises in Toronto. A report by City of Toronto staff in November 2020 estimated that approximately 9,000 to 27,000 residential units were sitting vacant, excluding condominium units (Chief Financial Officer et al., 2020, p. 9). Around the same time, in October 2020, hundreds of people were living in temporary encampments in public parks across Toronto (Draaisma, 2021). This suggests that despite the role of government planning in managing private development to maximise efficiency, the current system is nevertheless insufficient in meeting the needs of society.

Viable alternatives to current profit-oriented land management and property regimes, and alternative models of land stewardship and ownership, can be expanded upon in urban planning to decouple the profit motive from land as it is conceptualised in Western society. This paper uses an anti-capitalist lens to examine the relation between property, land value, and urban planning in order to determine how an alternative arrangement of land management could effectively remove the profit motive. To do this, I examine various alternative land use regimes including community-owned land trusts, housing co-operatives, state-owned public property, land designated as a commons, and Indigenous notions of land stewardship as both historical and contemporary examples of each where relevant. Ultimately, this paper asserts that implementing these alternatives will contribute to prioritising collective and social needs over individual profit. Precursory Literature Review It is necessary to first undertake a precursory review of existing literature to establish an understanding of the role of land value and profit. This will establish how an alternative land use regime could effectively prioritise the needs of society. In a market-based economy, planning is a form of market intervention and therefore has impacts on the supply and prices of land and any housing on that land (Gurran & Bramley, 2017). Land value is assessed by property valuers and developers according to the potential income that could be obtained if the land was converted to its “highest and best use” (Gurran & Bramley, 2017, p. 91). Since the land itself is finite and fixed in space, land values reflect the land’s unique attributes, plus an innate scarcity value. In Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State, Samuel Stein (2019) argues that the price of land has become a central economic determinate, with housing tied to a global market that sees housing and rent prices increase. Governments increasingly set on raising property values and “redistributing wealth upwards through land and rent,” ultimately signalling the rise of the “real estate state” (p. 5). This framing links land value to numerous other social issues in urban planning and public policy, including access to housing, transit, and public health. Ireland & Meng (2017) draw upon German philosopher and economist Karl Marx’s observations on the capitalist law of value, in which production is subjected to market forces, to argue that this process of commodification necessitates that all things, including life, land, and housing, be seen through the lens of capitalist expansionism and profit. Therefore, any anti-capitalist form of land stewardship needs to divorce itself from this profit motive and from processes of capital accumulation. This requires an examination of alternatives to private property, including both public and not-for-profit arrangements. Community Land Trusts In Canada, the majority of existing non-governmental land trust organisations exist for the purpose of protecting the natural environment, in many cases serving as a bulwark against urban sprawl (Bunce & Aslam, 2016). However, urban community land trusts do exist, and commonly focus on securing equitable access to affordable housing by removing land from the speculative market and placing it in community control; urban land trusts can also secure other community amenities, including “community gardens and social enterprises for localised economic development” (Bunche & Aslam, 2016, p. 24; DeFilippis et al., 2018, p. 756). In contrast to their conservation-oriented counterparts, 41

these urban land trusts serve as a protection against rising land values, housing prices, and rental rates, and allow for the residents in a given neighbourhood to assume a direct role in the stewardship of land in their community (Bunce & Aslam, 2016). One such urban community land trust is the recently-established Kensington Market Community Land Trust (KMCLT) in Toronto, Ontario. Incorporated as a non-profit corporation in late 2017, the KMCLT’s focus is three pronged: the provision of affordable housing, maintenance of the historical built form and its uses, and the continued social and economic diversity of the Kensington Market community (Kensington Market Community Land Trust, n.d.). The KMCLT acquired a building in the community in 2021 with funding from the City of Toronto; the building went up for sale and the organisation mobilised to ensure rent remained affordable for units in the building (CBC News, 2021; Neufeld, 2021). Since then, the group has been fundraising and working towards further acquisitions in Kensington Market, to ensure affordability in the community. Organisations such as the KMCLT can serve as a model for other neighbourhoods and communities across the province, and indeed the country, by emphasising community control and collective ownership over affordable housing, thereby protecting it from rising land values and unaffordability. However, widespread adoption of the land trust model must remain centred on radical politics and maintain a focus on community control. As the community land trust model becomes more widely adopted, emphasis is placed on its utility as an affordable housing model rather than a conduit for community control and engagement (DeFilippis et al., 2018, p. 755-763). Community land trusts must remain true to their emphasis on community control in order to empower low-income communities rather than enrolling them into private homeownership, as government policies prescribe. Housing Co-operatives Housing co-operatives are residential units that are owned and controlled by their residents, wherein members participate in the operations and governance of the co-operative (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2018). This model can ensure affordability and housing security, since “housing charges are set [...] by the members to cover the costs” of operations, and members can continue to reside in their units provided they pay these charges and abide by the community-established rules (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2018; Sousa & Quarter, 2004). This targeted appeal to low and moderate income residents is explicit in the foundations of Canadian housing co-operatives, and was developed during the 1970s and 1980s during an expansion of government social housing programs (Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, n.d.). However, during the 1990s, the federal and provincial governments began to withdraw their support for social and cooperative housing to pursue neoliberal agendas ( Hackworth & Moriah, 2006; Sousa & Quarter, 2004). Devolving responsibility to the municipalities eliminated major regulatory obstacles, effectively incentivising the private housebuilding industry in the province. Reliance on the private market prioritises profit over the housing needs of low-income people. This created uncertainty for housing co-operatives who could no longer rely solely on government funding, which has in turn affected the operations and maintenance of these co-operatives (Sousa & Quarter, 2004). This led to some co-operative housing services, such as rent collection, being contracted out to the private sector, alongside an overall lack of investment in new co-operative facilities. In order to maintain

the viability of co-operative housing as an alternative to the private housing and rental markets, stable and adequate public funding is crucial. The recently announced National Housing Strategy includes a $500 million Federal Community Housing Initiative that seeks to maintain the federally-administered community housing stock, which includes around 55,000 households (Government of Canada, 2021). This commitment will support the needs of existing housing co-operatives, however further public investment is necessary to reverse the legacy of neoliberal austerity and expand the availability of housing co-operatives. Collective Models of Land Ownership & Stewardship State-owned property In contrast to private property which assumes a private bundle of rights over a parcel of land, common property refers to non-exclusive rights held by any individual to make use of a public good (Eidelman, 2016). Eidelman writes that state-owned property incorporates characteristics of both private and common property, wherein “the state, acting as [an] individual legal entity, exercises exclusive rights over a public good, enabling it to buy, sell, protect or dispose of property held in the public trust as if it were a private good” (p. 123). Since this definition situates state-owned property within the broader private real estate market, it does not alone challenge the status quo regime of land relations that centres private ownership and the real estate market. However, the other aforementioned alternatives, such as community land trusts, would also operate within this framework until their widespread adoption spurred a reorientation of planning and land use regulations. In the meantime, it would be shortsighted to dismiss the important role that state-owned property can play in de-centering private land ownership. Ireland & Meng (2017) assert that Marx’s theory of property would see a blend of individual and socialised property rights in post-capitalist and non-capitalist systems. Collective property rights would be exercised via common and state-owned property rights, rather than the false choice between fully privatised open markets and state-owned, centralised planning. Indeed, state-owned property already plays a crucial role in our contemporary urban context: municipalities hold ownership of properties for the purpose of providing public amenities such as housing, public transit services, and libraries, and building and maintaining streets, parks, squares, civic buildings, and other public facilities (Eidelman, 2016). It is a consequence of the current capitalist regime of land use and property rights that stateowned land in Canada is monetised via the private real estate market to raise government revenue. For example, Infrastructure Ontario has a mandate to “profitably manage or dispose of the province’s 33,000 [hectares] portfolio of real property, much of which is concentrated in urban areas” (Eidelman, 2016, p. 124). Despite the presence of the capitalist profit motive within the contemporary framework of state-owned land in Canada, the stewardship of land by the state can play a significant role in governing and caring for land in the best interests of society. The Commons In addition to state-owned public property, there exists a third category of land management known as common land, also known as common property or “the commons.” This form of relations with the land predates capitalism, and some form of these relations existed throughout much of the world prior to the rise of European settler colonialism (Brantlinger, 2017). There is, however, no universal definition 43

for “common land.” The term itself arose in feudal Europe to describe land that technically belonged to the lord of the manor, but was “territory that by custom or law came under the collective control of a specific community or group” ( Brantlinger, 2017, p. 120; Natural England, 2010). This category of land use, when viewed through the understanding of property as a bundle of rights, is distinct from the more commonly understood frameworks of private land and state-owned land, in that non-exclusivity and collective regulation is a key feature of common property. In England, regulating livestock grazing on a commons, or ‘stinting,’ was frequently practiced, as were regulations restricting the use of firewood from a commons for strictly personal use (Brantlinger, 2017). In the late Middle Ages, landowners and nobles began a process known as “enclosure” wherein commons were enclosed, or fenced off, cutting the peasantry off from the common land they relied upon for pastures, firewood, and more. This type of land use still exists throughout England today, but is much less common than in the Middle Ages (Natural England, 2010). Enclosure and the logic of privatisation set the stage for the rise of capitalism. Brantlinger (2017) notes that “today, under the aegis of neoliberal economics, capitalism’s goal is to privatise or enclose as much as possible, the entire planet and even beyond, if some amount of profit can be made in doing so” (p. 4) Thus, the commons represents direct opposition to the profit-oriented forms of land use under capitalism that are commonplace in Canada and much of the Western world today. If the commons fell under the purview of the state, distinct from state-owned property, this alternative titling would be a step towards prioritising the needs of society over private profit. Indigenous Epistemologies of Land Relations The commons bears similarities to pre-colonial Indigenous understandings of land use and land relations around the world. Indigenous societies in both North America and Australia did not view land as something that could be owned by an individual, but rather viewed it as something that ‘belonged,’ to families and communities (Brantlinger, 2017, p. 119). The British colonists used the concept of private land ownership to justify the doctrine of terra nullius, declaring it “nobody’s land” to justify British territorial possession and colonisation. European colonial legal orders have been used to dispossess Indigenous peoples from their territory and limit their access to it, in pursuit of extraction, industrial development, and conservation (King et al., 2019). This conflict between the colonial legal order and Indigenous laws and epistemologies is visible today in the contemporary conflicts in Wet’suwet’en territory in the province of British Columbia. Construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline through the unceded territory of the Wet’suwet’en has faced months of protests from land defenders supporting the stance of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who do not consent to the construction of the pipeline. While Coastal GasLink has signed deals with numerous First Nations elected band councils along the route of the pipeline, these band councils derive their authority from the Indian Act, 1876, while the authority and title of the hereditary chiefs predates colonisation and has never been ceded to the British or Canadian Crowns (Poucette, 2018). This conflict exemplifies the goal of the capitalist settler colonial state: to enclose and extract from the land through privatisation in pursuit of profit (Brantlinger, 2017). Reimagining a land use arrangement that prioritises people over profit necessitates the dismantling of the settler colonial legal structure. Traditional Indigenous systems of governance and land management must be recognised as sovereign if

common land use is to be more widely understood and adopted into the existing land use framework, otherwise the process of enclosure for the sake of profit will continue to displace and commit violence against Indigenous peoples. Conclusion Alternatives to the prevailing system of land relations - the system that is tied to land value, speculation, and private property - can be pursued to ensure that planning and land use management in our cities prioritise the needs of society over the pursuit of profit. These can take the form of broadening alternative arrangements that exist within the current legal structure, such as through community land trusts, housing co-operatives, and an expansion of state-owned property, or through revisions to the current legal structure, such as the legal recognition of the commons and the affirmation of Indigenous sovereignty. By pursuing a blend of these alternatives, affordable housing stock can be protected from private speculation and expanded upon, which in turn will help strengthen communities as residents learn to collaborate in order to jointly manage and protect the land and its resources. These alternatives will be more conducive to upholding and respecting Indigenous sovereignty. Though seemingly insignificant on their own, these alternatives can each play a significant role in building a more just society for all in a post-capitalist world.

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CONTRAPUNTAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF T H E Q U ’A P P E L L E V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y Grace Pawliw-Fry

Canadian nationalist histories of the prairies feature the celebration of the rugged immigrantpioneer who perseveres against the wilderness in order to render the “Last Best West” productive. Indigenous actors are either sidelined or skipped over entirely in these histories, contributing to myths of terra nullius and a naturalisation of the colonialscape. The purpose of this article is to undertake a contrapuntal cartography (Hunt, 2014): holding up the colonial immigrant history against a narrative land-based Indigenous history of Treaty Four territory. Grounded in a Cree Narrative Memory methodology as put forth by McLeod (2007), I discuss the territory’s intergenerational, land-based, and relational histories, drawing on collective memory, or nêhijawêwin in Cree (p. 6-9). I also highlight Indigenous histories of resistance and resurgence in Treaty Four territory.

Introduction In nationalist narratives, the story of the Canadian prairie is told from the perspective of a European immigrant-pioneer who arrives on ‘empty’, ‘virgin’ land, keeping with the colonial ideology of terra nullius (Hunt, 2014, p. 63). The dominance of this discourse creates a particular cultural landscape or ontology, described by Hunt as the colonialscape – “a way of seeing that naturalises the relations of domination and dehumanisation inherent in colonial relations” (Hunt, 2014, p. 7). Colonial amnesia is essential for the success of the colonialscape. In the immigrant narrative, the previous two hundred years of history are treated with ignorance, disinterest, or purposeful forgetfulness. Through colonialscape erasure, land theft and reserve spaces are naturalised; blame is laid on the ‘Indian’ and white supremacy is upheld. Growing up, I absorbed the immigrant narrative at school and at home. My paternal ancestors were Ukrainian farmers who arrived on Treaty Four land in the early 1900s as part of the colonial push to ‘Open the West.’ I was raised on the valorization of my Baba (grandmother) and Gido (grandfather)’s parents, and their grandparents’, difficult lives dedicated to ‘breaking’ the land for agriculture. Although I may reject its premise today, I remain the beneficiary of the immigrant story of the prairies. The following project began when I was offered the chance to ‘decolonise’ my family history and learn the stories that had been obscured by the trials of my immigrant pioneer ancestors. As such, I centre my discussion on the square of land in South-eastern Saskatchewan assigned to my Baba’s parents which sits in the Qu’Appelle Valley on Treaty Four lands near the town of Ituna, the traditional territory of the Cree, Assiniboine, and Saulteaux Peoples (Figure 1).

This article is thus a contrapuntal cartography, defined by Hunt (2014) as the act of “bringing together the dominant colonial discourse and other, older histories against which the dominant discourse acts” (p. 79). I am not attempting to bring Indigenous people of the plains’ history back to them. McLeod (2007) speaks of the importance of locating oneself as a storyteller while engaging in narrative memory. My role as a storyteller here is to speak to an audience that told me stories as I grew up. This project is for my family, who came to Turtle Island and never asked why it was ‘empty.’

Figure 1 Map depicting historical, linguistic, and territorial boundaries and migrations of Indigenous peoples on the plains. (Source: Pawliw-Fry, 2021b)

Part I: Pre-Treaty History As McLeod (2007) elaborates, land is central to Indigenous people’s collective memories (p. 6). Through colonisation, the Canadian government replaced place names, obscured trails, and limited the movements of Indigenous peoples (McLeod, 2007, p. 6). These geographic knowledges are aspects of a cultural perspective which white colonisers sought to supplant with their own. Those who write history have the power to not only hide peoples, but also worldviews. To decolonize this erasure, the following section engages with the pre-Treaty four Qu’Appelle Valley region as a relational and landbased narrative.

Since time immemorial, the landscape and non-human environment of the Qu’Appelle Valley has shaped Indigenous patterns of settlement and movement (Johnson, 2021, p. 110). In fact, many Indigenous groups in Southern Saskatchewan participated in seasonal migrations between sheltered wooded grounds in the winter and grassland hunting grounds in the summer. As Johnson (2021) notes, the Cree word piciw, meaning a person who moves camp, is the etymological root of the term ‘pitching trail’, which refers to the landmark-based navigational routes used by plains people prior to the 20th century (p. 122) (Figure 2). Johnson (2021) theorises these trails as a “sentient ecology” whereby performative movement through space constitutes social networks, cultural landscape creation, and shared knowledge practices (p. 121-126). Early histories of the Qu’Appelle Valley were thus shaped by the non-human environment and mapped onto the landscape and language. Concurrently, relations with the beaver and buffalo shaped the demographics and livelihoods of Indigenous people in the Qu’Appelle Valley. In the 1700s, Westward migrations of the Cree and Anishinaabe in search of beaver pelts brought them to the region (Logan, 2021), where they mingled with the groups already present, including the Blackfoot, Assiniboine, and Chipewyan (Johnson, 2021, p. 121) (Figure 1). Métis, the children of European and Indigenous parents, also formed culturally and linguistically distinct groups in the prairies following the spread of the fur trade (Logan, 2021, p. 6). Furthermore, the beaver-human relationship was instrumental in the formation of the Nehiyaw-Pwat (Iron Confederacy), a coalition of Cree, Saulteaux, Métis, and Assiniboine middlemen in the fur trade, as a group with major economic and political power in the region from the 1700s to the mid-19th century (Logan, 2021, p. 17). In the grasslands, the human-buffalo relationship was highly influential. Scholars have estimated that prior to the 19th century, the population of buffalo in the prairies was as high as 30–75 million (Bednasek, 2009 2010, p. 29). These large grazing animals were central to the subsistence and livelihoods of many prairie Indigenous groups. The File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council website (2021) describes the symbolic significance of buffalo: For thousands of years, we relied upon the Buffalo for everything. We used the animal to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves and the people. The File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council chose the buffalo as the central figure because it’s an animal that represents strength and survival. Like the FHQ Tribal Council, McLeod (2007) describes the Cree’s profound respect for the buffalo. He notes that Cree people honoured Grandfather Buffalo in land-based practices centred around boulders known as mistasiniy or “big stones” (p. 19). These landscape markers were ceremonial places for Cree people to pray, honour, and give gifts to the buffalo including tobacco and wêpinâson (cloth offerings) (Figure 2). By the late 1870s, however, buffalo herds had all but disappeared from the prairies due to over-hunting and extermination campaigns by European settlers (Bednasek, 2009, p. 49). As a result of the loss of the buffaloes, many Nations faced hunger and starvation, putting them on uneven grounds with the Europeans. It was in this context that Qu’Appelle Valley First Nations eventually signed Treaty Four, one of the numbered treaties between the British Crown and Western Indigenous peoples (Figure 3). My ancestors were said to have confronted untamed wilderness when they arrived here, but the Treaty Four lands they encountered were instead a distinct cultural landscape, imbued with manifold human and non-human relationships.

Prairie Grasslands Aspen Parkland Moist Mixed Grassland Fescue Grassland Mixed Grassland Cypress Upland Lake Manitoba Plain Boreal Transition Tall-Grass Prairie

Pitching Tails and Sites in Saskatchewan 1

Fort Qu’Appelle

Regina

3 4

Nakota Fort Qu’appelle to Wolf Point Trail Chemin des Guerriers

Pole Trail

Cypress Hills to Fort Qu’Appelle Cypress Hills to Wood Mountain Trail

Figure 2 Map depicting ecological and linguistic human and non-human land-based networks and cultural landscape of the Qu’Appelle Valley. (Source: Pawliw-Fry, 2021b).

Part II: Treaty History The British Royal Proclamation of 1763 established treaty making as the only legal method of land acquisition in Canada (Stark, 2016, p. 11). While treaties created a legal relationship of rights and responsibilities between Canada and Indigenous First Nations, the emergent Canadian state engaged in various strategies to achieve the eventual extinguishment of Indigenous title. Discursively, Canada’s primary tactic was to rhetorically transform treaties from relationship-building contracts to land cession contracts (Stark, 2016, p. 2). In this section, I examine Indigenous oral histories that contest the eventual colonial discourse of treaties as land sales, a narrative thread that is audible in the immigrant story. In kipahikanihk (Fort Qu’Appelle), the British crown and several First Nation chiefs signed Treaty 4 in September of 1874 (McLeod, 2007). Of the signatories included, five were Chiefs whose reserves would later be established in the File Hills region of the Qu’Appelle valley (File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council, 2021). According to oral history, Treaty Four was signed to ensure land sharing and was facilitated by the formation of a relationship between local First Nations and the “Great Mother,” Queen Victoria (McLeod, 2007). Within a Cree worldview, the rhetoric of a “Great Mother” did not convey an inferior relationship but rather one of “mutual respect and reciprocal duties of nurturing, caring, loyalty and fidelity” (Bednasek, 2009, p. 56; Carter, 2004, p. 39).

Following Confederation in 1876, the nascent Canadian state assumed responsibility for CrownIndigenous relations and quickly disregarded its legal treaty obligations. Although the provisioning of agricultural assistance and rations was central to treaty negotiation, colonial narratives discursively reframed these requirements as charitable contributions that could be withheld (Bednasek, 2009, p. 55). The practice of withholding rations was intended to incentivize Treaty Four signatories to relocate, freeing the Canadian state to pursue its nationalist strategies of railway construction and white settlement in the region (Johnson, 2021, p.137). Facing starvation, bands responded with a number of strategies, including cattle slaughter, political organisation, and violent confrontation. As Chief Peepeekisis’s widow stated: “every time that I went over to the Agent to ask for grub he didn’t give me any, then I killed the cattle” (Bednasek, 2009, p. 118). Between 1882 and 1884, Cree came into tense confrontations with the Canadian Mounted Police over the lack of provisions (Johnson, 2021, p. 135). In this period, the Allied Bands, a political organisation of several Qu’Appelle Valley First Nations, was created to preserve sovereignty and assert the Queen’s treaty obligations (File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council, 2021) (Figure 4). During the annual Powwow in Fort Qu’Appelle in 1883, this coalition engaged in negotiations with the Canadian state. Through these tactics, Qu’Appelle First Nations refused to be pushed off their lands. Eventually, the Canadian government accepted that it could not achieve its nation-building aims illegally and in 1885 it officially re-initiated Treaty negotiations (Johnson, 2021, p.138). First Nations groups used these talks to bring the ‘Great Mother’s’ attention to their unfair treatment. According to oral history, Chief Pasqua drew a pictograph depicting the degraded status of the treaty and entrusted it to a British tourist to deliver it to Queen Victoria (Figure 5). The pictograph was later discovered in

Figure 4 “The Old Generation” of File Hills Reserve Agency in the Qu’Appelle Valley of Southeastern Saskatchewan. Some were the children of those who signed Treaty 4 in 1874. From left to right in the back row: Mrs. North Wind; Mrs. Squaretoes; Mrs. Sitting before the Fire; Mrs. Buffalo Bow; Mrs. Yellow Belly; Mrs. Buffalo Blanket; Mrs. Playful Child. Pictured in centre, standing: Day Walker. Left to right in the front row: Chief Hawke; Crooked Nose; Chief Star Blanket; Pointed Cap; Buffalo Bow; Sitting before the Fire; Feather. (Source: Photographer unknown, 1914).

the tourist’s personal collection, where it had been reduced to an personal ‘oddity’ rather than a vital assertion of nation-to-nation renegotiations (Johnson, 2021, p. 139). Subsequently, the creation of reserves after the 1880s shifted the relationship between Indigenous bands of Qu’Appelle region and the Canadian government. The focus of the government turned to the control, immobilisation, and assimilation of First Nations. The formation of reserves interfered with many of the key land-based practices of plains Indigenous people, including seasonal mobility, traditional forms of hunting and fishing, kinship bonds, and language use. Alongside reserves, the Canadian nation also opened several Qu’Appelle Valley residential schools and the Qu’Appelle’s File Hills Colony, a eugenicist assimilatory project which I explore next.

Figure 3 Numbered Treaties (1871-1921) signed between the British Crown and Indigenous Nations. (Source: CTV News Winnepeg, 2021)

Part III: Reserves The File Hills Colony (FHC) was an invasive ‘betterment’ project established in 1901 by the Indian Agent William Morris Graham on the Peepeekisis reserve, located less than an hour drive away from where my ancestors would shortly settle (Bednasek, 2009, p. 1). Inspired by a social Darwinist model of civilizational degeneration, Graham created the Indigenous colony as an attempt to ensure residential school students remained assimilated after graduation (Bednasek, 2009, p. 1). Accordingly, Graham styled the colony with ‘civilised’ values and spatialities, including Euro-American-style houses, domestic work, agriculture, and religion (Bednasek, 2009, p. 1). The FHC archives show countless assimilatory and eugenicist violences, including dislocations of original Peepeekisis band members, relocations and selections of students based on academic performance and skin colour (preferably lighter), a system of passes and permits to control the mobility and finances

of colonists, and marriages arranged between colonists based on skin colour and without consent (Bednasek, 2009). Additionally, oral testimonies with former FHC colonists offer important insights into the lived experiences of former FHC colonists. Campbell Swanson describes the FHC’s enforced immobilisation, recounting an instance where he was jailed for trying to leave the colony to find other work (Bednasek, 2009, p. 143). Participants also speak of acts of resilience, such as Treaty Day interband events where community and culture were affirmed (Bednasek, 2009, p. 148). Ultimately, the history of the FHC reveals what Goeman (2017, p. 107) refers to as the multiple geographic scales of colonial violence (p. 107) which were applied to materially transform Cree ways of life and worldviews at every level in service of the colonialscape. At the national scale, for instance, the FHC was a response to the perceived threat of the File Hills bands in the wake of the North-West Rebellion. At the regional scale, it artificially moved certain individuals while immobilising others. At the community scale, the FHC imposed cultural practices in Western-styled spaces in order to exterminate Indigenous ones, and at the intimate scale of the body, it surveilled everyday actions and controlled colonists’ sexuality through forced marriage (Bednasek, 2010). Conclusions This historical work has taken McLeod’s (2007) challenge to understand Cree history through Cree worldviews as its methodological backbone. With a focus on the relational and land-based experiences of the Treaty Four signatories, the efforts of this text represent a “contrapuntal cartography” (Hunt, 2014) to immigrant narratives that reinforce dominant colonialscape visions of Turtle Island. In his book, Cree Narrative Memory, McLeod (2007) establishes mamâhtâwisiwin, or Cree narrative imagination, as Indigenous theory for imagining future decolonial possibilities (p. 99). Having now introduced the history of First Nations in Treaty 4 to the history of Ukrainian immigrants on Treaty 4 lands, what possibilities does a theory of mamâhtâwisiwin move us towards? In the early 20th century, there were areas of potential convergence between the Eastern European

Figure 5 Pictograph directed at the British Crown to convey the failure of the Canadian government to uphold Treaty 4 obligations. (Source: Chief Pasqua, 1883).

arrivals and Treaty Four First Nations. The Cowessess First Nation, for example, shared a Catholic church with its non-Indigenous neighbours (Innes, 2010, p. 36). Simultaneously, both groups were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan for their failure to live up to Anglo-Saxon Protestant Canadian whiteness (Innes, 2010, p. 36). If not for white supremacist colonial divisions, what coalitions and solidarity could have formed between these groups? Extractive agriculture and land theft were not conducive to the arrival of a new people on the plains, but as we have seen in this history, the Cree were once new peoples themselves. Through a process of kinship building and adaptation, they integrated with previous occupants of the land (Logan, 2021, p. 21). If the reciprocal relationship outlined by Treaty Four had been honoured, how could this history have been different? This question, however, cannot be answered. The intent to build a white nation guided the Canadian state and shaped the actions of immigrant-pioneer newcomers. Instead of solidarity, my ancestors were part of the colonial violence perpetrated on Indigenous peoples and their land. My ancestors arrived here with the privilege of ignorance; they ‘purchased’ land that was intended to be shared and broke it with intensive farming because it was what they had been raised to do. Yet their participation in a violent, genocidal system was not unwitting; they worked in residential schools and continue to tell colonial histories of the past to this day, failing to turn a critical eye to the colonialscape around them that they breathed in like a thick smoke. My Gido has mentioned to me that he believes only one story of the past is being told today – the story of Indigenous peoples. It is rather the opposite; we are only now coming into the history of this nation’s atrocities and the histories of Indigenous resilience and resurgence. It is time to apply mamâhtâwisiwin to imagine what our treaty relationships can look like today. Part of this process is engaging with the ugly truth of our own family histories. My family has told the immigrant story amongst ourselves for generations; it is time we are the ones who listen.

Bibliography Bednasek, C. D. (2009). Aboriginal and colonial geographies of the File Hills farm colony (Doctoral dissertation, Queen’s University). Carter, S. (2004). “ Your great mother across the salt sea”: Prairie First Nations, the British Monarchy and the Vice Regal Connection to 1900. Manitoba History, 48, 34-48. File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved December 10, 2021, from https:// fhqtc.com/about/ Hunt, S. E. (2014). Witnessing the colonialscape: Lighting the intimate fires of Indigenous legal pluralism (Doctoral dissertation, Environment: Department of Geography), 58-80. Innes, R. (2010). Elder Brother, the Law of the People, and Contemporary Kinship Practices of Cowessess First Nation Members: Reconceptualizing Kinship in American Indian Studies Research. American Indian culture and research journal, 34(2), 27-46.

Johnson, A. D. (2021). “The Darkest Tapestry”: Indian Residential School Memorialization at the Keeping Place at Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan (Doctoral dissertation, Trent University). Logan, H. J. (2021). Laughing and Leading Together: The Effective Use of Affiliative Humor by Indigenous Leaders in Southern Saskatchewan (Doctoral dissertation, Eastern University). McLeod, N. (2007). Cree narrative memory: from treaties to contemporary times. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Publishing Limited. Stark, H. K. 2016. Criminal Empire: The Making of the Savage in a Lawless Land. Theory & Event, 19 (4), 1-14. Photographs and Maps: Biodivcanada (2010). Historic loss of grasslands [Map]. In Biodivcanada. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://biodivcanada.chm-cbd.net/ecosystem-status-trends-2010/grasslands Brackley, C. (2013). Current beaver range and historical commercial trapping areas [Map]. Canadian Geographic. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/ rethinking-beaver Brackerly, C. (2017). Where Indigenous languages are being spoken now in Canada [Map]. In Canadian Geographic. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/mappingindigenous-languages-canada Chief Pasqua. (1883). North American Indian Pictographic Treaty Record. [Pictograph]. Public Domain. Retrieved May 15, 2023 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Treaty_4_pictograph_by_ Chief_Paskwa.jpg and in Johnson, A. D. (2021). “The Darkest Tapestry”: Indian Residential School Memorialization at the Keeping Place at Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan (Doctoral dissertation, Trent University). Finkelstein, M. (2005). Mixed grass prairies [Photograph]. Grasslands, Biodivcanada, Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan. Retrieved from https://biodivcanada.chm -cbd.net/ecosystem statustrends-2010/grasslands. Government of Canada. (n.d.). First Nation Profiles Interactive Map [Map]. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://geo.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/cippn-fnpim/index-eng.html Lestock Reid, J. (Surveyor). 1903. Plan showing the sub-division of portion of Indian reserve No 81 [Map]. Public Domain. In Bednasek, C. D. (2009). Aboriginal and colonial geographies of the File Hills farm colony (Doctoral dissertation, Queen’s University). N.A. (1995). Ecoregions of the Prairies Ecozone [Map]. In Ecological Stratification Working Group (Vol. VVI). Ottawa, ON.

Numbered Treaties in Canada.[Map] (2021). CTV News Winnepeg. https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/thenumbered-treaties-in-canada-and-where-they-are-located-1.5606007 Pawliw-Fry, A. G. 2021a. Ecological Map of the Qu’Appelle Valley. [Map]. University of Toronto. Pawliw-Fry, A. G. 2021b. Historical Map of Indigenous Peoples in the Qu’Appelle Valley. [Map]. University of Toronto. Photographer unknown. (1914). “The Old Generation” Cree at the File Hills Indian Agency, Saskatchewan. [Photograph]. Public Domain. Glenbow Museum, Calgary. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from http://ww2.glenbow.org/search/archivesPhotosResults.aspx?XC=/search/archivesPhotosResults.a spx&TN=IMAGEBAN&AC=QBE_QUERY&RF=WebResults&DL=0&RL=0&NP=255&MF= WPEngMsg.ini&MR=10&QB0=AND&QF0=File number&QI0=NA-546219&DF=WebResultsDetails Shorthouse, J.D. (2010). Ecoregions of Canada’s prairie grasslands [Map]. In Shorthouse, J.D. & Floate, K.D. (Eds.). (2010). Arthropods of Canadian Grasslands Vol 1: Ecology and Interactions in Grassland Habitats. Biological Survey of Canada . Signs on treaty 4 and 6 territory [Map] (n.d) In Treaty Land Sharing Network. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://treatylandsharingnetwork.ca/access-land/ Stonechild, B. (n.d.). Plains Indian Tribal Boundaries, ca. 1850 [Map]. In Indigenous Saskatchewan Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://teaching.usask.ca/indigenoussk/import/indigenous_peoplesof_saskatchewan.php Tanka Fund. (n.d.). Historic Habitat of the Bison [Map]. In Tanka Fund. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://tankafund.org/the-return/

MILKWEED MORE THAN JUST A PLANT

Ava Taborda

This paper explores the connection between diminishing monarch butterfly populations and the uptake of planting milkweed to sustain the population. Through exploring the monarch butterfly and milkweed cultivation through a socionatures lens, I argue that the diminishing population of the monarch butterfly changes Ontarians perspectives on the milkweed plant, from a noxious weed to a butterfly food source, and that the aesthetic appeal of the monarch butterfly sparks human action in the face of milkweed plant cultivation. The political economic perspective is also considered in examining how the use of herbicides is deemed necessary to meet global demands for crops such as corn, yet are toxic to milkweed and therefore harmful to the monarch butterfly populations.

Introduction Ontarians may be wondering about the sudden spike in pink blossoming milkweed plants, with seeds resembling silken parachutes scattered around the province. Before 2014, the milkweed plant was listed as one of Ontario’s “Noxious Weeds”. However, due to a decline in the monarch butterfly population in the preceding 20 years, environmentalists proposed milkweed cultivation as a possible solution (White, 2014). The monarch butterfly is a specialist species, meaning it will only feed on the milkweed plant to sustain its offspring. People aware of the specialist species classification of the monarch associate the preservation of the butterfly with the adoption of milkweed cultivation (Not so Hollow Farm, n.d.). If “affective materiality” describes how material qualities of the natural world inspire human action (Boland, 2022), then the monarch butterfly may be seen as a site of affective materiality, as it has inspired a changed perspective of the milkweed plant within Ontario. Public perception changed so much that the city of Toronto signed the Tri-National Mayors’ Monarch Pledge created by the National Wildlife Foundation, a tri-national initiative between the United States, Canada and Mexico to restore the monarch population through creating habitats for the butterfly and educating citizens on the monarch butterfly population (National Wildlife Federation, n.d.). The City of Toronto declared May 27th to be “Milkweed Day” in Toronto, in response to their participation in the pledge (City of Toronto, 2018). Considering this, the socionatures analytical structure asserts that nature and humanity are interconnected with one another. I argue that the cultivation of milkweed within one’s lawn is not just an aesthetic touch, but an attempt to stabilize a diminishing population of the monarch. In addition to its social-environmental impact, discussing milkweed from a political economic lens offers to answer questions around the decline in milkweed itself.

Photo by Mrinmayee Sengupta

From Pesky Weed to Saving Grace: Milkweed through a Socionatures Lens The narrative of the monarch butterfly symbolizes strength, elegance, courage, and a beautiful depiction of natural processes and migration over time. The species must travel across the continent on its twomonth-long migratory journey where the milkweed plant is its only source of food and the sole plant in which it will lay its eggs (Agrawal & Roach, 2017). The monarch has been considered by many as,“the ideal ambassador” (Holder, 2019, para. 4) for environmental protection, mobilising both scientists and citizens through the beauty of its bright orange and dark black contrasting colours and minimal size; the journey of the monarch only emphasises its power (Bream, 2021). In the early 2000’s when headlines announced the disappearance of the monarch population in North America, panic erupted and the urgency to protect this species began (Popkin, 2020). The thought of losing this species was a catastrophic image for monarch enthusiasts and environmentalists alike and motivated Ontarians to cultivate milkweed in an attempt to protect and rehabilitate the species. Gonzalez Duarte claims that patterns of monarch decline can be traced back to colonial roots, causing land displacement and confusion in the migratory path of the butterfly (Zdaniuk, 2021). The impact that the species prevails in the midst of colonial forces led it to become a symbol of strength for immigrant rights activists; it is an emblem of civil action in cities around the world. The cultural impact of the monarch on Torontonians has led to a societal uptake in the cultivation of milkweed within the city. Dempsey (2019) defines affective materiality as, “the intensity of the relations in and through which it consists, relations that are always more than personal and are always playing out before the reflective event of thought kicks in” (p. 1142). In the case of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, the affective materiality surrounding the charisma and charm of the Grizzley, although it could quite literally destroy a human being, is enough to support endeavours to protect the species. Concerning the case of the monarch and milkweed cultivation, the thought of monarch extinction was enough for the milkweed plant, the sole home and food source for monarchs, to be removed from the noxious weed list in Ontario, further establishing hundreds of citizen science efforts within the province (Pitman et al., 2017; Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, 2019).

As many associate the decline in monarch population with a decline in milkweed plant existence, there have been multiple efforts within Ontario to establish nesting and feeding areas for the monarch on their migratory path. Pollinator Partnership Canada is a registered charity with the Federal Government of Canada whose efforts are dedicated to prioritising the protection of pollinators through education, conservation, and research (Pollinator Partnership Canada, n.d.). The organisation focuses on the monarch butterfly as an important pollinator in areas within Ontario in Lake Erie Lowlands, Manitoulin Lake Simcoe, and Algonquin Lake Nipissing. Farmers are encouraged to plant Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed), to invite pollinators like the monarch butterfly on their leaves. Although milkweed cultivation is initiated amongst many Ontarians, some still view the plant as a weed and believe that it does in fact belong on the province's Noxious Weed list. A specific case in Burlington, Ontario highlights this: a local science teacher planting milkweed on her lawn to facilitate monarch nesting received complaints that her lawn was not kept clean and tidy due to the presence of milkweeds (Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, 2019). The pest-like attributes of the milkweed are despised by many, regardless of their connection to monarch population restoration. Many have written on ways to control the rapid spreading weed by hand pulling the roots, using glyphosate before the flower of the milkweed has bloomed, and other eradication methods (Hillsing, 2020; Doonan, 2018). While some oppose milkweed cultivation efforts, others insist on the symbolic power and ecological importance of the monarch. Explanations behind the decline in Milkweed Populations While there has been a clear response to the diminishing monarch population through milkweed cultivation and citizen science, the decline of milkweed in the first place can be understood through a political economic analysis. The production of herbicides and genetically modified (GM) plants are believed by scientists to be the main contributor to the decline of monarchs within the past 20 years (Gonzalez- Duarte, 2017; Boyle et al., 2019). The decrease in both milkweed and monarch populations can be traced back to decades before the establishment of GM crops and the adopted agricultural use of herbicides containing glyphosate (Boyle et al., 2019). This study attributes milkweed limitation to extreme weather resulting from climate change, but the general consensus is that the decline of both monarch and milkweed are linked to the use of herbicides and GM crops, and their impact on the migratory path of the monarch butterfly. Since the increased use of herbicides and GM crops are needed to meet the increased demand by the global capitalist market, the monarch and milkweed problem must be viewed through a political economic lens. Gonzalez-Duarte (2017) writes that the milkweed problem is attributed to the increased use of glyphosate, found in Monsanto’s widely used herbicide “Roundup”. Milkweed has growth patterns within agricultural fields and the corn belt that align with the migratory path of the monarch butterfly (Pitman et al., 2017), and because herbicides with glyphosate sustain GM crops, milkweed has declined while corn crops were preserved. Many farmers now enjoy the yields provided by GM seeds and the elimination of weeds with the help of herbicides like glyphosate (Rodríguez et al., 2022; GonzalezDuarte, 2017). In a choice between market demand and preservation of the rambunctious milkweed plant, farmers opt for the use of GM plants and herbicides in their lawns, regardless of the damage this has on the milkweed population and by extension, the monarch butterfly (Pitman et al, 2017). Therefore, preserving the monarch butterfly is not just an ecological issue, but a political economic one

too. Farmers must choose between the market and ecology; in either scenario the population of the monarch, or the livelihoods of farmers will pay the consequences. Conclusion Viewing the monarch and milkweed problem through a political economy lens allows us to understand the deeper reasons for their decline, mainly attributed to the uptake of agrochemicals and the associated economic benefits. Authors such as Pitman et al. (2017) and Gonzalez- Duarte (2017) explain that milkweed can be attributed to the recent increased use of glyphosate in the Midwest and the Mexican Corn Belt. Corporations such as Monsanto supply GM crops and herbicides including glyphosate to farmers across the migratory path of the monarch appealing to the economic values of farmers. The political-economic considerations therefore highlight that milkweed protection is not upheld by the majority of farmers in comparison to the value of crops through GM and herbicide use. To complement the political-economic analysis, the socionatures framework shows the social response to this milkweed decline. The thought of monarch extinction alone was enough to spark mass movements in milkweed cultivation within Ontario. The socionatures framework indicates that human responses to milkweed decline may be fuelled by the possible extinction of the monarch species. The socionatures lens provides insight into the affective materiality of the monarch and how such a small creature can spark societal change through the cultivation of milkweed in local communities- such as the City of Toronto.

Bibliography Agrawal, A. (2018, August 29). The monarch-milkweed arms race, with Cornell’s Anurag Agrawal. A Way To Garden. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://awaytogarden.com/monarch-milkweed-arms-race-anurag-agrawal/ Rodríguez-Oramas, C., Boland, A. (2022, February 9). Case #1: The Lawn. GGR223: Environment, Society, and Resources. Boyle, J. H., Dalgleish, H. J., & Puzey, J. R. (2019). Monarch butterfly and milkweed declines substantially predate the use of genetically modified crops. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(8), 3006–3011. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811437116 Bream, M. L. (2021, October 12). The humble common milkweed has inspired both fear and fancy. Toronto Star. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www.thestar.com/life/2021/10/12/the-humblecommon-milkweed-has-inspired-both -fear-and-fancy.html City of Toronto becomes a monarch-friendly city and declares Milkweed Day. City of Toronto. (2018, May 25). Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www.toronto.ca/news/city-of-toronto-becomes-amonarch-friendly-city-and-declare s-milkweed-day/ Dempsey, J. (2010). Tracking grizzly bears in British Columbia’s environmental politics. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 42(5), 1138–1156. https://doi.org/10.1068/a42214

Doonan, N. (2018). Spreading the word and sharing the seed: Collaborating with Milkweed. Public Art Dialogue, 8(1), 5–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/21502552.2018.1430287 Ecoregional Planting Guides. Pollinator Partnership Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://pollinatorpartnership.ca/ en/ecoregional-planting-guides Fallon, S. (2019, October 31). Report: Monarchs, other species endangered by pesticides. NRDC. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www.nrdc.org/experts/sylvia-fallon/report-monarchs-otherspecies-endangered-pesti cides#:~:text=Glyphosate%20use%20skyrocketed%2C%20virtually%20 eliminating,in%20 the%20last%2020%20years. Garden Regulations: Rethinking Milkweed. Ontario Association of Landscape Architects . (2019, May 27). Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www.oala.ca/ground_articles/garden-regulations/ Gonzalez- Duarte, C. (2017). Resisting Monsanto: Monarch butterflies and cyber- actors . Resistance to the Neoliberal Agri-Food Regime: A Critical Analysis, 165–180. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315192437 Hillsing, K. (2020, November 17). Milkweed control. Home Guides | SF Gate. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://homeguides.sfgate.com/milkweed-control-76834.html Holder, S. (2019, June 26). Pollinator Cities Really Could Save the Monarchs. Bloomberg CityLab. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-26/urban-green-space-is-pollinator-hab itat-inwaiting Monarchs Need Milkweed. Not So Hollow Farm. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https:// notsohollowfarm.ca/got-milkweed/ Pitman, G. M., Flockhart, D. T. T., & Norris, D. R. (2018). Patterns and causes of oviposition in monarch butterflies: Implications for milkweed restoration. Biological Conservation, 217, 54–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.10.019 Popkin, G. (2020, September 10). What all the affection for monarch butterflies misses. The Atlantic. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/06/monarch-butterflies/590908/ Roach, M., & Sanjuán Velázquez, E., Hardisson de la Torre, A., Rubio Armendáriz, C., & Carrascosa Iruzubieta, C. (2022). Myths and realities about genetically modified food: A risk-benefit analysis. Applied Sciences, 12(6), 2861–2885. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12062861 White, N. J. (2014, April 4). Plant milkweed and save the monarch butterflies. thestar.com. https://www. thestar.com/life/2014/04/04/plant_milkweed_and_save_the_monarch_butterf lies.html Zdaniuk, N. (2021, June 30). Following the monarch: Columba Gonzalez-Duarte on Butterfly and human migrations. Department of Geography & Planning. Retrieved April 11, 2022, https://www.geography. utoronto.ca/news/following-monarch-columba-gonzalez-duarte-butterfly-and-human-migrations

COMPARING FOREST CARBON STOCKS AT T H E K O F F L E R S C I E N T I F I C R E S E R V E

Mrinmayee Sengupta with Clayton Chan, Lucas Kammer, and Sabrina Wong

As anthropogenic carbon (C) emissions continue to change the global climate, reforestation is increasingly being called upon as a relatively simple, cost-effective way of capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Growing forests capture carbon via biosequestration; however, multiple factors such as stand species composition, stand age, tree size, climatic variability, and land cover type can affect the rates and amounts of C sequestered. This study examined tree and soil C stocks in a mixed deciduous forest in the Koffler Scientific Reserve, Ontario, Canada. Two adjacent sites with differing species compositions, ground covers, and elevation were chosen. Biomass was estimated through a combination of allometric measurements and remote sensing methods; soil carbon (used to describe soil organic matter) was calculated using loss-on-ignition of organic carbon and bulk density. A statistically significant difference between the biomass carbon stocks of the Upper and Lower sites was found, which was attributed to the difference in species composition. Negative logarithmic correlations were found between soil organic carbon (SOC) concentration and depth, and a positive linear correlation was found between soil water content and organic carbon concentration. Our findings support that forests capture significant amounts of carbon and serve as important carbon pools even with variable soil and vegetation types. The collection of more samples will be beneficial in finding more statistically significant relationships.

Introduction The carbon cycle is one of the most important biogeochemical cycles on Earth, and forests are an important sink due to their biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (Curtis et al., 2002). In past decades, increased removal of forests by humans has led to global climate change, with higher temperatures and more frequent wildfires. These, in turn, have resulted in some forests becoming carbon sources rather than sinks, since the amount of C they emit while burning is far greater than what they can sequester (Carvalho-Resende et al., 2021). Annually, deforestation contributes between 1–2 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) to the atmosphere, a substantial number compared to the 6.5 Gt C emitted by burning of fossil fuels (Grace, 2004). Healthy forests, however, contribute massively to the storage of carbon; around 861 Gt C are stored in forests, a number greater than the 750 Gt C found in total extractable fossil fuel deposits globally (Carvalho-Resende et al., 2021). In temperate forests alone, 59 Gt C is stored in vegetation and 100 Gt C is stored in soils (Lal, 2005). In recent years, research in carbon stock assessment has increasingly utilized remote sensing technology to take above-ground biomass measurements as availability and quality of satellite remote sensing 63

Figure 1 Map of study area (study site located at 44° 02’10” N, 79° 31’54” W; 304m above sea level, indicated by green star) at the Koffler Scientific Reserve, Ontario. Map produced by Don Boyes, edited by Mrinmayee Sengupta

technologies such as Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and high-resolution optical imagery improves (Goetz and Dubayah, 2011). Additionally, in-situ canopy analyzers such as the LAI-2000 Plant Canopy Analyzer and Tracing Radiation and Architecture of Canopies instrument (TRAC) have enabled field researchers to quickly estimate the above-ground biomass of the photosynthetically active forest cover without the need for collecting tree measurements or samples (Leblanc et al., 2005). The widespread applications of remote sensing have encouraged researchers to attempt to establish an empirical link between remotely-sensed leaf-area index (LAI: the ratio of one side of green leaf area per unit ground area) and a measure of forest biomass (e.g. Gent et al., 2021; LeBlanc et al., 2005). Doing so requires estimating both the ratio between leaf area index and tree biomass as well as finding a ratio between above-ground and belowground carbon content for a given forest type. Pursuing solely a remote sensing approach in estimating total forest carbon is not without its difficulties, however. Remote sensing methods measure the canopy portion of a forest, which only constitutes a fraction of the total carbon stored in a forested region, much of which is in woody tissue. They typically do not account for the entire physiology of trees, such as trunks, roots, and branches without relying on empirically-derived ratios with LAI; they also do not account for soil carbon (used to represent soil organic matter throughout this report ) and other above-ground non-canopy sources such as ground cover (White, 2002).This issue becomes increasingly complex when additional variables are considered, such as irregularity in topography and species diversity within a forested region. At different positions along a hillslope, for example, soils and vegetation are expected to be different, resulting in significant variation in forest carbon concentration within the same forest stand (Webster et al., 2011). In contrast, more direct allometric methods for measuring tree biomass are derived from equations relating simple measurements such as diameter at 1.37 meter height (diameter at breast height, DBH)

to tree biomass, a measure often verified by destructive yet comprehensive methods including felling trees and manually measuring mass of each component (Fatemi et al., 2011). This makes allometry a fairly accurate method, as trees can be measured individually and can be linked to particular species. The downside, however, is that this method lacks the spatial range that remote sensing techniques can provide, unless it is done in combination with such a method (Goetz and Dubayah, 2011). There continues to be ongoing uncertainty about the extent to which forests can absorb anthropogenically released carbon dioxide to mitigate the effects of climate change. In 2007, the Government of Ontario proposed to plant 50 million trees in Southern Ontario by 2020, with a vision of reducing future carbon emissions into 2050 (Parker et al., 2009). However, some studies have cast doubts on how effective forests may be in sequestering carbon as growth rates and species ranges change along with changing climates (Falkowski et al., 2000; Parker et al., 2009). This study aims to add to the understanding of how much carbon is sequestered in forested lands, and how the amount of carbon stored can vary by land cover and forest type. Being located in the Koffler Scientific Reserve (KSR) (Fig. 1) presents an opportunity to examine how past land use changes starting from the period of European settlement (mid 1700s) in Southern Ontario may influence forests and carbon sequestration rates today. This region also lacks much research on carbon stocks in soils and above-ground biomass. Therefore, this study will also consider how other variables may affect carbon sequestration rates, and contribute to the growing body of knowledge about carbon sequestration in southern Ontario’s mixed deciduous forests. This research project attempts not only to demonstrate the effectiveness of different measurement techniques in estimating forest carbon but also to model the distribution of carbon within a study area. To accomplish this, a primary focus was made to answer three key research objectives: (1) to compare the carbon stocks stored as biomass within trees and in soil, (2) to determine how total organic carbon differs between two study sites with different tree covers within the same forest, and (3) to measure soil carbon variation with soil depth. The study sites (Fig. 2) were located in the KSR near Newmarket, Ontario (44° 02’10” N, 79° 31’54” W; 304m above sea level) (Fig. 1). KSR sits atop the Oak Ridges Moraine, an interlobate moraine – a raised deposit of glacial till left behind as two lobes of the Laurentide Ice Sheet receded at the end of the last glacial period, 13,000 years ago (Barnett et al., 1998). The soils therefore mainly consist of glacial till, with various proportions of silt, sand, loam, and some clay (Barnett et al., 1998). The area has a continental climate, with four seasons: rainy and warm summers, mild autumns, snowfall and cold temperatures in winter, and mild springs with snow melt (Biswas et al., 2014). The mixed deciduous forest covering this area consists of softwood tree species including balsam fir (Abies balsamea) and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), as well as hardwoods such as sugar maple (Acer saccharum). A fewer number of other hardwood species are present at the site, including American beech (Fagus grandifolia), black cherry (Prunus serotina), largetooth aspen (Populus grandidentata), red maple (Acer rubrum), red oak (Quercus rubra), and white birch (Betula papyrifera). The range of ages and sizes of trees within the study area varies from small saplings to trees older than 200 years (estimated based on species-specific allometric equations relating DBH and tree height to tree age). In order to compare forest carbon stored in topographically different portions of the same forest, two study sites located on different positions along the same hillslope were selected. Each site consisted of a 20 m by 20 m square demarcated by flags and string.

Figure 2 (Left) Study sites - 2A: Lower Site (LS) and 2B: Upper Site (US)

The Lower Site (LS) was located at a higher slope angle at 16.9° and a lower elevation (Fig. 2A). The site was a few meters away from a small stream at the bottom of the hillslope. 37 of 53 total trees (70%) were T. canadensis. A. saccharum was the next most common (17%), with nine trees; the rest consisted of one P. grandidentata, one P. serotina, two F. grandifolia and three A. balsamea. In contrast to US, LS had minimal ground cover vegetation that consisted of grasses and some herbaceous plants, and the soils were mainly silt-loam-clay. The Upper Site (US) was located at a slightly higher elevation and had a mean slope of 14.9° (Fig. 2B ). The stand was dominated by A. saccharum, which accounted for 16 out of 27 (57%) of total trees counted in the site. Seven (25%) were T. canadensis, and the rest consisted of hardwood species including one Q. rubra, one B. papyrifera, and two A. rubrum. This site had considerable ground cover vegetation, consisting mainly of grasses, rushes, ferns, and other herbaceous plants. The soils in this site were mainly silt-sand-loam with little clay. Methods Above-ground Measurement Procedure Using allometric equations, diameter at breast height (DBH) was measured for all trees with diameter greater than 5cm for both US and LS (Fig. 9). Tree species were also identified. Tree height measurements were taken for six and eight randomly sampled individual trees from US and LS respectively, using an Abney level to measure angles from the horizontal to the top and bottom of the tree, and measuring the distance from the tree to the Abney level. Allometric equations from Lambert et. al (2005) were used to calculate biomass for foliage, branches, and trunks. Consequently, proportions from White et al. (2005) were used to calculate fine and coarse root biomass from foliage and stem biomass values respectively. A factor of 0.5 was then applied to biomass (kg) values to convert them to C (kg) (Peterson et al., 2022). Using LAI-2000: The LAI-2000 Plant Canopy Analyzer (LI-COR Biosciences, Lincoln, NE, USA) was used to take LAI measurements at five locations at each site once the sun was at 15° above the ground surface Figure 3 US Pit 3, showing (to block any direct sunlight falling onto the LAI-2000 sensor). Reference LH, A, B and C horizons measurements were taken in an open field to measure the amount of incoming radiation; this was assumed to be the incoming radiation at

the top of the forest canopy. Equations from Miller (1967) were used to calculate LAI from the radiation data collected. Using fisheye photographs: Five hemispherical images were taken for each site using a digital camera with a fisheye lens mounted on a tripod. Images were taken at aperture of F5.3, and shutter speed of 1/60 in order to prevent over-exposure, which would lead to under-estimation of canopy cover and LAI. The Digital Hemispherical Photography (DHP.exe) program was then used to analyze the images and calculate LAI based on the gap fraction (of sky visible through the forest canopy).

Figure 4 Soil samples from US before combustion (top) and after combustion (bottom) in furnace

Using TRAC: The Tracing Radiation and Architecture of Canopies instrument (TRAC) was used to measure LAI and clumping index for each of the two sites, which were obtained by processing the data using TRACWin. The TRAC measurements were taken along transects across the sides and center of each of the two sites while the sky was clear and the sun was at roughly 90° to the horizon. This allowed gaps in the canopy to be seen clearly from the ground, so that gap fractions and gap sizes could be accurately measured by the TRAC instrument.

Conversion of LAI to plant biomass carbon: Plant biomass can be divided into four subparts: leaf biomass, stem-wood biomass, fine root biomass (diameter < 2mm), and coarse root biomass (diameter > 2mm). To calculate total carbon stocks from plant biomass, carbon content was calculated in each subpart and then summed. Leaf biomass was determined using LAI values. With five measurements obtained per site, the mean and standard deviation values were calculated for LAI by site. Leaf carbon for a single leaf was then determined using the following equation (White et al., 2000):

where LAI denotes leaf area index, SLA denotes specific leaf area (m2/kg C ), and leaf carbon refers to allocation of carbon per unit surface area (kg C/m2). From White et al. (2000), specific leaf area was set to SLA = 32 m2/kg C, the mean SLA value for deciduous broadleaf forests. Total leaf area (m2) was calculated using the following equation:

and total leaf carbon (kg C) was calculated as the product of leaf carbon (kg C/m2) and total leaf area (m2). Stem-wood biomass was calculated using DBH measurements. Using ratios provided by White et al. (2000), fine root biomass was determined from leaf biomass, and coarse root biomass was determined from stem-wood biomass. In deciduous broadleaf forests, the mean ratio of fine root biomass to leaf biomass was 1.2, and the mean ratio of coarse root biomass to stem-wood biomass was 0.22. Finally, total carbon from plant biomass was calculated as the sum of carbon stocks from leaf, stem-

wood, fine root, and coarse root constituents. Error in total carbon was calculated as the sum of the errors in each of the four subparts of biomass. Leaf carbon error was determined by mathematically transforming the error in LAI measurement over the three measurement methods as per the conversion equation between LAI and total leaf carbon (kg C). Stem-wood carbon error was determined from error assessments corresponding to the allometric equations used (Lambert et al., 2005). As fine root and coarse root carbon were calculated using ratios with leaf and stem-wood carbon respectively, fine root and coarse root carbon error were inferred from leaf and stem-wood carbon error. Below-ground Measurement Procedure Soil sampling pits layout: For below-ground carbon estimation, three soil pits per site (US and LS) were dug: one at the top, middle, and bottom of the slope of each site. One sample per soil horizon was collected, and horizon thicknesses and depths were recorded (Fig. 6). Subsequently, augers were used at 10 locations along the top, middle, and bottom of each slope perpendicular to the slope. Augering was performed to ensure that the soil profiles of each pit were representative of soil profiles along the same elevation and to obtain measurements for error assessment. Loss-on-Ignition (LOI): Samples were taken to the lab to determine standard soil characteristics including bulk density and loss-on-ignition (LOI) of organic matter. Samples were placed in a drying oven at 105˚C to remove water content and weighed to calculate bulk density. Samples were then ground up manually using a mortar and pestle to obtain a homogeneous distribution of organic matter and burned at 550˚C to remove organic carbon. Samples were subsequently reweighed to measure organic carbon content by comparing sample masses before and after burning (see Fig. 7). Organic carbon concentration was determined by taking the ratio of the difference in mass before and after burning to the mass after burning (Fig. 7). By taking the product of organic carbon concentration (%), bulk density (g/cm3), and horizon thickness (cm), organic carbon per unit surface area (g/cm2) was obtained for each sample. For each site, total organic carbon was calculated by taking the average organic carbon per unit surface area for each pit, summing the averages, and multiplying this sum by the surface area of the study site. Error calculation: For each site, error was assessed per pit. Soil organic carbon (SOC) was assumed to be proportional to the A horizon depth, and error was determined by assessing the variability in SOC (g/ cm2) over the 10 augers obtained for each pit (which yielded varying A horizon depth measurements). Error in organic carbon content in the entire soil profile was then assumed to be proportional to error in organic carbon content in the A horizon . For each site, the three error values corresponding to each pit were then averaged and multiplied by the site area to obtain an error value for total organic carbon content (kg). Statistical analysis: A difference of means test was done between upper site and lower site using a t-distribution in Microsoft Excel. The t-test was used to check for statistically significant differences in aboveground carbon (biomass), soil organic matter (below ground carbon), ratio of biomass to SOM, and total carbon between the two sites.

Results and Discussion Upper Site had a plant biomass : soil carbon ratio of 0.90 (± 0.14) while LS had a ratio of 1.16 (± 0.25) (Table 1). The difference between them was not statistically significant (using t-distribution, p> 0.05). Globally, it is estimated that over 62% of the carbon stored in temperate forests is located in the soil (Dixon et al., 1994). In Canadian forests alone, the ratio of soil carbon to vegetation carbon is 17.29 : 1, but this value is skewed heavily in favor of the high soil carbon percentage found in boreal forests (Lal, 2005; Dixon et al., 1994). A similar study done by Fotis et al. (2017) in temperate deciduous forests in Pennsylvania, USA found that species composition, stand age structure (how many trees are within specific age classes within a stand), topography, and environmental factors can all affect above-ground biomass . They also found that above ground carbon is positively correlated to tree species richness. The present study could be modified to study the influence of tree and ground cover species richness on above ground carbon stocks within larger study sites with more tree samples. Consequently, Mazzilli et al. (2020) studied how plants add organic matter to soil through humification, the process through which organic matter decomposes to form humus. They found that for annual crop plants above ground biomass (foliage, stems) had much lower humification rates (between 0.5 – 1%) compared to below ground biomass (roots) which were far higher (10 – 24%) (Mazzilli et al., 2020). This supports results from Bradshaw et al. (2015) that if roots add more organic matter to soil than leaf litter and stems, over time, the plant biomass : soil carbon ratio would decrease. A similar study by Kumar & Kumar (2020) in a mixed deciduous forest in the Himalayan region of Uttarakhand used DBH to estimate above ground biomass and LOI to calculate SOC. Their plant biomass:soil carbon ratio was 0.69; the lower ratio could be due to differences in elevation, species composition and climate, as well as soil age (Fotis et al., 2017; Kumar & Kumar, 2020). They also determined that stand age affects carbon sequestration rates; some old growth stands are net-neutral with respect to carbon since the carbon they capture through photosynthesis is balanced by what is released during respiration (Kumar & Kumar, 2017). The disparity between results of this study with previous studies may be due to a number of reasons. Firstly, Smith et al. (2017) found that above-ground biomass can vary according to tree species and size at very local scales within a study plot, and that changes in topography can affect the accumulation of organic matter and SOC content throughout a landscape. This can introduce errors when scaling from individual sample points (like the three soil pits per site in this study) to a study area/ landscape (Smith et al., 2017). Secondly, since augers were taken after soil pits were dug, it is difficult to ascertain whether the soil pits were truly representative for each study plot. This could mean that the soil carbon at the study sites was in fact higher than the LOI measurements indicated. Difference in carbon stocks between Upper and Lower site After performing a difference of means test using the t-distribution, the difference in plant biomass carbon between LS (10,578 ± 1,235kg) and US (7,168 ± 912kg) was found to be statistically significant at the 5% level with a p-value of 0.0106. However, the difference in soil carbon between LS (9,097 69

± 4,040kg) and US (7,971 ± 2,968kg) was found to be statistically insignificant with a p-value of 0.3674. Lower Site had larger terrestrial carbon stock (higher total carbon content) (19,674 ± 4,225kg ) compared to US (15,138 ± 3,105kg) (Table 1), although the difference between them was not statistically significant (p>0.05). The same pattern was observed for both soil carbon and plant biomass carbon, which were combined to determine total carbon. The lack of difference in total soil carbon between the two sites can be interpreted in two ways. Webster et al.’s (2011) study of soil carbon along a hillslope in the Turkey Lakes watershed of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region found that for FH + A horizons (surface horizons), soils at the toeslope and wetland sections of the hillslope had higher carbon content (2980 g m-2) than those upland (1260 – 1360 g m-2), due to higher accumulation rates. They also found that soil carbon for lower horizons did not vary significantly along the slope. Since LS was located in an intermediate point of the study area hillslope – slightly above the toe slope and wetland sections – the soil carbon content would be higher than US, but not significantly higher. This study also combined the soil carbon measurements for all horizons when comparing carbon stocks between the two sites. In the future it would be worthwhile to compare specific horizons, since there is variability amongst them (Fig. 8). Another interpretation of the result is that for these particular sites, the sites’ topography was similar enough that it did not cause a significant difference in carbon sequestration rates in soil, contrary to Fotis et al.’s (2017) findings. Lastly, this study did not include ground cover plants or bryophytes in the total carbon stock calculations. A recent study by Lukina et al. (2020) found that ground cover vegetation can indeed influence soil carbon stock especially in the FH and A horizons. Since US had a lot more ground cover than LS, this vegetation should be considered in future studies in the area. Since the difference in carbon content in plant biomass was the only one that was statistically significant, it is likely that the species composition, stand structure (DBH in this study, shown in Fig. 6), and tree size are affecting the above ground carbon pool. Due to time constraints in the field, tree height measurements were only taken for six individuals in US and eight individuals in LS and then interpolated. In the future, height measurements should be taken for each tree in a plot to give a clearer understanding of the variation in tree height in the study sites. While the mean DBH was higher for US (22.5 +- X cm) than LS (14.7 +- Y cm), the number of trees in US (27) was much lower than in LS (54) (Fig. 9). The species composition of the two stands were very different; US was dominated by A. saccharum while LS was dominated by T. canadensis. Correspondingly, since LS had a much higher Upper Site (US)

Lower Site (LS)

Total Soil Carbon (kg)

7,971 ± 2,968

9,097 ± 4,040

Total Plant Biomass Carbon (kg)

7,168 ± 912

10,578 ± 1,235

Total Carbon (kg)

15,138 ± 3,105

19,674 ± 4,225

0.90 ± 0.14

1.16 ± 0.25

Plant Biomass Carbon: Soil Carbon

Table 1 Total measured organic carbon in soil, plant matter, and combined for each of the two study sites.

number and proportion of conifers (including T. canadensis and A. balsamea), it had a higher above ground carbon stock. Thom and Keeton (2019) found that diameter variation and large live trees both have a positive correlation with carbon storage, both of which are true for LS which had more outliers in DBH and more large trees in LS than in US. They attribute these correlations to niche complementarity, suggesting that a greater diversity of tree sizes allows incoming radiation to be used more efficiently and thus increases overall canopy photosynthesis rates . Interestingly, although their study found a negative correlation between live tree density and carbon storage, LS in this study had significantly higher carbon storage levels, despite having a tree density of 0.135 trees m-2 compared to 0.0675 trees m-2 for US. However, this may be due to T. canadensis having the highest shade tolerance of any species in Northeast America , which would explain why LS had higher carbon stocks despite having T. canadensis trees packed tightly together (Fig. 3A) (Niinements and Valladares, 2006; Thom and Keeton, 2019).

Figure 6 DBH values for Upper Site (n = 27, x = 22.5cm, min = 5.11cm, max = 73.79cm, st. dev. = 15.06cm) and Lower Site (n = 54, x = 14.7cm, min = 5.15cm, max = 70.5cm, st. dev. = 13.23cm )

Soil Carbon Variation with Depth In all six pits, soil organic carbon (SOC) concentration decreases with depth below ground (Fig. 7). This is true both when considering depth as a distance below the surface and when distinguished by horizon. Data collected from each soil horizon was used to model the carbon concentrations by depth for each pit (Fig. 8). R2 values for each logarithmic equation is shown in Table A1, Appendix (higher R2 values show better fit for the model equation and the data points). The pit that displayed the greatest range of carbon concentration values was UP3, which had an A horizon carbon concentration of 23.6%, a value twice that of the next-highest A horizon concentration, while also having a below-average concentration of carbon in the B and C horizons. This pit was identified during data collection as possessing a particularly dark, organic A horizon, which indicates high amounts of humus and degraded organic matter (Appendix Table A2), and a distinct transition into a much lighter B horizon (Figure 3). However, UP3 was located behind a large dead tree log that was humifying and adding organic matter to the soil, as well as acting as a ‘dam’ around which extra leaf litter and organic debris was being collected compared to other areas of the study site. Another possible reason for the high carbon content may be due to the clay-rich soils that lay underneath horizon A.

Don et al. (2007) found that clay-rich soils allowed less carbon to seep through compared to silty soils; having a layer of clay-rich soil under the FH and A horizons would therefore act as a barrier, preventing carbon in the upper layers to permeate into the lower layers easily. UP3 horizons FH and A were also the two wettest soil horizons, with 45% and 46% water content respectively. Davis et al. (2004) found that wetter soils held more carbon than drier soils; poorly drained soils had between 45 – 75% SOC, compared to only 30% in well drained soils. This may also explain UP3 horizon FH and A’s high carbon content. However, these horizons’ carbon content is still lower than those found by Davis et al. (2004), which may be due to rates of decomposition being much lower in temperate climates. This trend is well supported across all soil pits, with an R2 value of 0.89 for the correlation between soil carbon concentration and water content (Fig. 9). However, Davis et al. (2004) also found that SOC was higher in soils with higher clay content, which was not supported by the data from this study, since the FH and A horizons had the highest SOC and low clay content (Fig. 8, Table A2). This discrepancy is likely due to the difference in study site characteristics, since their study was located in pasture lands in Thuringia, Germany, which has different climatic and soil characteristics. Conclusions This study aimed to address the following three questions: (1) How much carbon is stored as biomass within trees and in soil? (2) How does total organic carbon differ between the two study sites? (3) How does soil carbon vary with soil depth? The plant biomass carbon : soil carbon ratios were found to be 0.90 ± 0.14 for US and 1.16 ± 0.25 for LS, which was not statistically significant due to a small sample size. While ground cover vegetation was not included in the estimates of above ground carbon, recent studies have shown that they can influence carbon stocks and should be included (Lukina et al., 2020).

Figure 7 Distribution of Soil Organic Carbon Concentration by Horizon Depth

Figure 8 Soil Organic Carbon Concentrations by Horizon in Upper (left) and Lower (right) Site Pits

Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) distribution and species composition was different between the two sites; a statistically significant difference between the biomass carbon stocks of the Upper (7,168 ± 912 kg C) and Lower (10,578 ± 1,235 kg C) sites was found, which was attributed to the difference in species composition (Acer saccharum dominance in US and Tsuga canadensis in LS). Although topography has been shown to play an important role in the distribution of carbon in forested areas in other studies, this trend was not observed in this study. However, more soil samples need to be taken in order to get statistically significant results (Smith et al., 2017). The three remote sensing methods of measuring LAI, the DBH allometric method, and the soil carbon measurements all agreed that LS contained more carbon overall. Yet, the differences between the total carbon and SOC were not statistically significant, owing to the sample size being too small. Negative logarithmic relationships were found between SOC concentration and depth. On the other hand, a positive linear relationship was found between soil water content and organic carbon concentration. Soil horizons with a clay layer under them had more carbon content than those without, but more research is needed to establish a robust relationship. The main limitation of this study was

Figure 9 Linear correlation between soil carbon concentration and water content for soil samples from all three pits in both study sites

the lack of sufficient data to establish significant trends. With only three pits per study site, it was difficult to extract meaningful differences between the two sites, especially considering the proximity of the sites and the similarities in their soil makeup. The study would also benefit from taking more LAI measurements using all three methods, so that the errors stemming from variation between trials could be minimized. The importance of the carbon cycle, and of forests within it, cannot be overstated in today’s changing climates and ever increasing human anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Forests can be carbon sinks through biosequestration, although the extent to which they are sinks (or even sources) varies by many factors, including climate, stand species composition, tree age, tree size, forest structure, and soil characteristics (Carvalho-Resende et al., 2021, Lal, 2005). In the past, direct methods of measuring forest biomass have been used, although these have also often been destructive, requiring the biomass to be calculated through LOI (Fatemi et al., 2011). In more recent years, optical remote sensing has become a viable method of measuring biomass through LAI measurements (Basuki, 2015; Erthal et al., 2022; White et al., 2002). This study, while having been performed at a small scale, demonstrates the potential of measuring carbon stocks both above ground and below ground with a number of methods, including soil LOI, allometry using DBH, and optical remote sensing. As cities and communities around the world continue to face the challenges of climate change, and reforestation is presented as a simple, cheap way to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, more studies like this one are needed to see how measurement methods differ, and how mixed deciduous forests near urban areas can act as longterm storage pools for carbon dioxide.

Appendix Table A1: Equations for logarithmic regressions and their R2 for curves shown in Fig. 7 for soil organic carbon concentration and horizon depth by soil pit. Pits in Upper Site are given the designation Upper Pit (UP), while those in Lower Site are Lower Pit (LP). Soil Pit Number

Log. Equation

UP1

-15ln(x) + 43.284

0.994

UP2

-28.94ln(x) + 66.568

0.8105

UP3

-12.05ln(x) + 46.337

0.9829

LP1

-13.51ln(x) + 38.744

0.9906

LP2

-36.22ln(x) + 93.072

0.985

LP3

-40.72ln(x) + 102.47

0.9078

Table A2: Descriptions of soil horizons , and horizon thickness for each horizon for the 3 pits in each of the study sites. Pits in Upper Site are given the designation Upper Pit (UP), while those in Lower Site are Lower Pit (LP). Pit

Horizon

Horizon ending (cm)

Horizon thickness (cm)

Description

Soil Classification

UP1

FH + A

high OM, silt, some fine sand, failed ribbon test

silt loam

high OM, silt, some fine sand, failed ribbon test

silt loam

medium to fine sand, silt, thick ribbon with cracks

sandy clay loam

finer sand, poor ribbon

sandy loam

FH + A

higher OM, no ribbon, sand

sand

higher OM, no ribbon, sand

sand

medium to fine sand, coarse silt, no ribbon

loamy sand

lighter, finer sand

silty sand

very compacted, darker than B2, siltier

silt loam

107

fine sand, no ribbon, crumbly

loamy sand

FH + A

high OM, dark, leaf litter

11.5

6.5

high OM, dark, good ribbon, some clay, fine silt

22.5

silt, sand, OK ribbon

clay loam

fine sand, some clay, good ribbon but cracks

sandy loam

FH + A

high OM, dark brown, sand (grainy), very thin ribbon

sandy clay

high OM, dark brown, sand (grainy), very thin ribbon

sandy clay

mostly silt (floury), very thin ribbon

silty clay loam

sand, thick ribbon breaks easily

sandy clay loam

FH + A

grainy, a bit floury, short thick crumbly ribbon, dark brown-black

loam

grainy, a bit floury, short thick crumbly ribbon, dark brown-black

loam

grainy, smooth, floury, short thick crumbly ribbon, mustard brown

silty sand

grainy, smooth, floury, short thick crumbly ribbon, mustard brown

silty sand

a bit grainy, floury, not smooth, clumpy, short thin crumbly ribbon, greyish

sandy loam

FH + A

grainy, not floury, thin ribbon with cracks

clay loam

17.71

12.71

grainy, not floury, thin ribbon with cracks

clay loam

32.88

15.17

no grains, floury, thin ribbon with cracks

silty clay loam

73.1

40.22

78.1

grainy, somewhat floury, short thick ribbon

sandy loam

UP2

UP3

LP1

LP2

LP3

silty clay

Table A3: Tree Data for Upper Site (US) including species and DBH for each individual sampled. Trees with DBH <5cm were excluded. The first of each unique species is highlighted in a different colour.

Common name

Scientific name

DBH (cm)

White birch

Betula papyrifera

38.59

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

32.29

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

29.32

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

17.87

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.11

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

33.38

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.21

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

18.13

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

23.22

Red maple

Acer rubrum

20.81

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

23.72

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

28.76

Red maple

Acer rubrum

17.91

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

19.14

Red oak

Quercus rubra

73.79

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.36

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

13.84

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

45.41

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

13.04

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

23.46

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

16.51

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

9.23

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

23.79

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

39.92

Hemlock (S)

Tsuga canadensis

8.21

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.94

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

15.59

Dead

Table A4: Tree Data for Lower Site (LS) including species and DBH for each individual sampled. Trees with DBH <5cm were excluded. The first of each unique species is highlighted in a different colour.

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

24.1

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

10.8

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

9.3

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

12.15

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

9.5

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

6.8

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

20.1

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

8.3

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

7.9

American beech

Fagus grandifolia

8.1

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.4

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.9

American beech

Fagus grandifolia

7.36

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.6

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

17.3

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.15

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

14.7

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

12.9

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

6.05

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

7.6

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

10.05

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

10.15

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

6.8

Black cherry

Prunus serotina

18.7

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

6.1

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

7.1

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

8.4

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

32.5

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

6.2

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.2

Largetooth aspen

Populus grandidentata

46.7

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

10.7

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

5.8

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

43.1

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

8.5

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

33.5

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

9.8

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

24.9

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

6.7

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

37.1

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

8.5

Balsam fir

Abies balsamea

13.2

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

13.4

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

10.6

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

34.3

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

8.8

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

8.05

Balsam fir

Abies balsamea

101

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

9.5

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

0.5

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

70.5

Sugar maple

Acer saccharum

41.65

Hemlock

Tsuga canadensis

6.7

Balsam fir

Abies balsamea

10.4

Table A5: LAI Estimates by Measurement Method.

Measurement Method

LAI value Upper Site

Table A6: Soil pits at Upper and Lower sites, and their respective soil organic carbon content (g/cm2).

LAI value Lower Site

Fisheye photographs processed with DHP software

3.01

4.73

TRAC

3.99

5.25

LAI-2000

5.01

6.92

Soil Pit Number

Soil Organic Carbon (g/cm2)

UP1

1.71

UP2

1.94

UP3

2.33

LO1

1.28

LO2

3.08

LO3

2.47

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NO ONE IS ILLEGAL A ‘POLITICS OF LISTENING’ WITHIN MIGRANT ACTIVIST SLOGANS

Taylor Simsovic-Peters

Migrant justice activist groups, such as ‘No One Is Illegal’ (NOII), advocate for a politics of decolonisation in the shift from nationalism to post-nationalism. The NOII movement, based in Canada, promotes the use of various slogans to reflect the solidarity between Indigenous peoples and migrant justice activists in the current context of settler colonialism and border imperialism. However, social hierarchies can inadvertently form within sociopolitical movements, creating disparities between ideology and practice. To address this issue, a “politics of listening” has been proposed by Leah Bassel (2017). The politics of listening involves recognising and addressing the hierarchies that exist within social movements to create a more equitable and just society. This essay argues that slogans used by migrant activist groups, such as NOII, reflect the growing relationships between Indigenous peoples and migrant justice activists, and a politics of listening is essential to ensure solidarity between these groups. Through this approach, the movement can work towards the decolonisation of social movements necessary for building a post-nationalist society.

Introduction Migrant justice activist groups such as the Canadian-based grassroots movement ‘No One Is Illegal’ (NOII) have organised to promote a politics of decolonisation and anti-racism in the movement from nationalism to post-nationalism (Abji, 2013, p. 322; Fortier, 2013, p. 275). I argue that different slogans taken up and used by migrant activist groups such as NOII are reflective of the relationships of solidarity between Indigenous peoples and migrant justice activists within the current-day context of settler colonialism and border imperialism. Social hierarchies can inadvertently manifest within the ideologies and practices of sociopolitical movements, and a “politics of listening” such as that proposed by Leah Bassel (2017) is integral for addressing this potential pitfall. NOII Slogans Craig Fortier (2015) discusses how slogans such as, “No one is illegal, Canada is illegal”, “No borders, no nations, stop the deportations”, and “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us” exist within the broad lexicon of migrant justice movements and are used by NOII. Fortier (2015) highlights how these rallying chants are understood to play an important role in sustaining the energy and enthusiasm within protest movements and on-the-ground political demonstrations. He also underscores how the changing use of different chants by activists throughout the years reveals to the public the ongoing political debates which happen within the movements themselves. 81

Fortier (2015) highlights how relationships of solidarity are negotiated through the different slogans which are used by activists. The debates and discussions over which slogans are taken up by migrant activist groups are informed by the “relationship between settler colonialism and border imperialism” as well as “the differential impact of borders on the lives of migrants, settlers, and Indigenous peoples” (Fortier, 2015, para. 2). Migrant justice organisations such as NOII recognise the deep-seated relationship between Indigenous sovereignty and their own work to end the construction of certain peoples as being ‘illegal’. Social Hierarchies, Ideology, and Place-making in NOII Slogans Abji (2013) discusses the founding of NOII in 2002 in Montreal, Quebec, and their organisation under the principles of post-nationalism, arguing that the universal rights of all people mean that no person should be made ‘illegal’ by the state (p. 323). While the group was founded in Canada, their work has become transnational with chapters opening up around the world. NOII advocates that whether or not one is ‘documented’, they should have the right to access the essential services which are provided by the state, such as education, a living wage, basic health care, and the right to shelter or sanctuary (p. 322). Through the frameworks of critical race theory and precarious immigration status, NOII contends that exclusionary practices of citizenship employed by the Canadian government produce a two-tiered system, between those with status and those without (Abji, 2013, p. 322). Within this hierarchical arrangement, migrants and refugees lacking proper legal migration authorisations are positioned outside the scope of legitimate national belonging, resulting in their deprivation of fundamental rights afforded to those who are considered ‘legitimate’ members. Individuals without proper documentation live under the constant threat of deportation, leading to significant material disparities in the lives of those with and without legally recognised status in Canada. Unlike many other migrant justice organisations, NOII recognises the interrelated struggles between migrants and Indigenous people in the Canadian settler colonial context. Therefore, they seek to build relationships of solidarity between Indigenous activists and migrant justice activists, as both groups seek to challenge settler colonialism and discriminatory bordering practices in North America (Bassel, 2017, p. 71; Fortier, 2013, p. 274). NOII’s mandates are translated into “culturally resonant, mobilising campaigns” through political demonstrations and the use of various slogans (Abji, 2013, p. 323). The use of these slogans is one way that NOII problematises the claims of multiculturalism in Canada and the traditional discourses which surround citizenship rights and the ‘benevolence’ of the state (Bassel, 2017, p. 79; Fortier, 2013, p. 276). However, the particular slogans which are used by NOII are not stagnant and are subject to scrutiny from within and outside of the organisation (Bassel, 2017, p. 71). An early chant used by NOII, “no borders, no nations, stop the deportations” was criticised by Indigenous activists who argued that this slogan was at odds with the group’s advocacy for decolonial politics (Fortier, 2015). They made the argument that such a chant went against the self-determination of Indigenous peoples who have the right to determine who enters their lands and territories. Therefore, the use of this slogan had the potential to re-inscribe the social hierarchies of the settler-state and settler-society. This resulted in the group looking to different slogans which provide more inclusive language. Through the everyday mobilisations of migrant justice organisations, activists may inadvertently perpetuate the very same ideologies of the social hierarchies which they are attempting to dismantle. It is

clear that even anti-racist politics such as that promoted by NOII must be critically decolonised in order to truly be in solidarity with Indigenous communities (Bassel, 2017, p. 76; Fortier, 2015). The language that is used in slogans comes with ideological connotations that may unwittingly sustain the construction of some people as truly belonging and others as not (Bassel, 2017, p. 71). NOII activists have worked to understand how their use of slogans which call for ‘open borders’ in some ways may delegitimise or undermine Indigenous peoples’ “struggles for title and against land loss, struggles to reclaim land and nation, and create divisions between communities already marginalized” (p. 77). Debates and discussions within the movement led to the usage of more inclusive slogans which pay attention to the interconnected relationships between migrant justice and Indigenous self-determination. The present use of the slogans “no one is illegal, Canada is illegal,” and “land, justice, self-determination, Canada is an illegal nation” highlight this interconnected relationship (Bassel, 2017, p. 77; Fortier, 2015). The use of different political slogans within activist organisations poses a compelling point by which to understand how politics of anti-racism, decolonisation, and post-nationalism are enacted within everyday life for activists. To be in solidarity with Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, NOII “recast[s] their actions and ideology” by changing the slogans they use (Bassel, 2017, pp. 71-72). In listening to Indigenous communities and informing their migrant justice politics based on this relationship, “meaning is recast through reciprocal, interdependent” exchanges which create a passageway to connect the experiences of two groups of “people otherwise divided by ongoing colonization” (p. 71). Practices of solidarity between migrant justice activist groups who seek to question the logic of the settler colonial state and Indigenous activist communities are strengthened through a “horizontal politics of listening” (pp. 71-76). This form of political action creates a separate space of ‘radical political equality’ wherein two relatively powerless communities come together to rely on each other for approval and legitimacy, rather than the present settler colonial state and broader society (p. 72). Conclusion Fortier (2015) highlights the contestations that exist within migrant justice movements such as NOII in the use of particular slogans. By acknowledging the organisation’s own unintentionally colonial practices, NOII has embraced a politics of decolonisation, manifested through their critical reevaluation and alteration of slogans that inadvertently perpetuated the very social hierarchies they aim to dismantle. A “politics of listening” proposed by Bassel (2017) has informed NOII’s decisions surrounding the usage of certain phrases in order to be in solidarity with Indigenous communities. Fortier (2015) highlights that while the use of various slogans is certainly an important practice in terms of mobilising decolonisation efforts, turning chants into “tangible material, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual acts of decolonisation” often requires more of a practice of listening than it does actually chanting.

Bibliography Abji, S. (2013). Post-Nationalism Re-Considered: A Case Study of the “No One Is Illegal” Movement in Canada. Citizenship Studies, 17(3-4), 322–338. Bassel, L. (2017). Listening as Solidarity. In The Politics of Listening (pp. 71–87). Palgrave Macmillan UK. Fortier, C. (2013). No One Is Illegal Movements and Anticolonial Struggles from Within the NationState. In Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizenship (p. 274–290). University of Toronto Press. Fortier, C. (2015, September 22). No One is Illegal, Canada is Illegal! Negotiating the Relationships Between Settler Colonialism and Border Imperialism Through Political Slogans. Decolonization. Retrieved December 11, 2022, from https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/no-oneis-illegal-canada-is-illegal-negotiating-the-relationships-between-settler-colonialism-and-borderimperialism-through-political-slogans/

HOMBRES Y TIERRA DE MAÍZ M A Y A H E R I TA G E , CO R N , A N D A G R I B U S I N E S S I N G U AT E M A L A

Sofia Villafuerte

In his book “Memories of Fire”, Eduarado Galeano’s (2014) vignette on corn links the iconographies of cosmovisions to the disproportionate targeting of Indigeneity through war tactics and development programs in Guatemala. Extending Galeano’s (2014) observation, I will show how the targeting of Indigenous understandings of the spiritual world, or “cosmovisions”, serves as the primary step in the process of necropolitics to oppress the Maya peoples. Through a case study of Guatemela, I focus on the history of the Guatemalan civil war and the nation’s simultaneous programs of “developing” the land as an attempt to erase Indigeneity from Guatemala to conform to projects of “blanqueamiento” (the social practice and ideology of whitening) through the implementation of market-based ideologies. Drawing from Galeano’s (2014) vignette and significant cultural works from the Maya, I will illustrate the importance of corn within Maya cosmovisions as both a symbol of resilience and a source of livelihood in Guatemala. I argue that this nexus of the spiritual and physical targeting of Maya peoples is a necropolitical project with purposes of erasing Indigenous heritage in favour of “modernity”, as guided by ideas of the “blanqueamiento”, or whitening of Guatemalan identity. First, this paper connects to the significance of Maya cosmovisions of corn for cultural health. Second, I analyse the significance of corn within the context of the civil war as a resource through which powers enacted physical and spiritual necropolitics. Finally, I demonstrate the scope of colonialism’s impact in Guatemala as enacted by the state through the targeting of Indigenous peoples physical health and culture, effectively erasing their identity through internalised narratives of colonialism and the associated assumptions of economic progress based on the infantilisation of Indigeneity.

Part 1: Maya Cosmovisions on Corn–Iconography of Indigenous Heritage The oppressive history of the Maya people can be traced through their relationship with corn, a staple in Guatemalan Maya diet and culture. I will analyse three key cultural works to situate the historical and contemporary importance of corn for the Maya: the Popol Vuh, the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, and myths of the maize god "Hun Hunahpu", in which the cosmovisions of corn are a subject of spiritual homage to be revered. Through an understanding of Maya cosmovisions, I show how maize is representative of Indigenous heritage and resilience which is threatened by processes of erasure upon Indigenous bodies.

Popol Vuh: The Health of Habitat & Inhabitat “Corn: The gods made the first Maya-Quichés out of clay. Few survived. They were soft, lacking strength; they fell apart before they could walk. Then the gods tried wood. The wooden dolls talked and walked but were dry; they had no blood nor substance, no memory and no purpose. They didn’t know how to talk to the gods, or couldn’t think of anything to say to them. Then the gods made mothers and fathers out of corn. They molded their flesh with yellow corn and white corn. The women and men of corn saw as much as the gods. Their glance ranged over the whole world. The gods breathed on them and left their eyes forever clouded, because they didn’t want people to see over the horizon” (Galeano, 2014, p. 28). Galeano’s vignette of corn references a portion of the Popol Vuh, a text recounting the mythology and history of the Quiché people of Guatemala, which describes the creation of Maya-Quiché men (and later women) from yellow and white corn (Goetz et al., 1950). This sacred text demonstrates that maize is a culturally essential part of Maya tradition as a co-constitutive element of humanity. As the formation continues, Tepeu and Gucumatz, the Maya Creators, make the “third version” of men from corn following failed attempts of clay and wood (Goetz et al., 1950). In this story, Xmucané - one of the two oldest Maya gods - grinds corn, and from this dough forms the first four men (Taube, 2003), showing that it is from the very flesh of corn that the first men from whom the Maya descended were made (Bazzett, 2018). Through the spiritual linkage of corn as an essence of humanity, Maya traditions place reverence on the agricultural cultivation of corn which creates cultural geographic conditions in which the health of the corn, and the health of the people are mutually constitutive and reinforces the importance of the wellbeing of both the habitat and inhabitant (Pigott, 2019). With equal consideration to economic constraints which limit possibilities, “making milpa: the agricultural intercropping of maize with legumes, squash, herbs, and other plants” (Isakson, 2009, p. 726), can be interpreted as a symbol of Maya resilience amidst projects of erasure, both as a means of subsistence, and as a larger symbol of Indigenous heritage. The traditional emphasis on preserving the biodiversity of maize allows Maya communities to prepare for, and resist against volatile environmental conditions by reinforcing agricultural food security (Isakson, 2014). These methods have been intergenerationally passed on through traditional ecological knowledge demonstrating that the health of maize and the Maya are intertwined. Chilam Balam of Chumayel: Maya Calendar, Ceremonies & Corn The Chilam Balam are the sacred books of the Maya of Yucatan written in the 17th and 18th centuries; they are named after the Prophet Balam (Roys, 1933). While there are several known Books of Chilam Balam (Tizimin, Kaua, Ixil, Nah...), Chumayel is among the most valued for study, containing valuable insights into the role of corn in shaping Maya conceptualizations of the world and time based on calendars and ceremonies. The text begins by discussing the ritual of the “four world-quarters”, which attributes the biodiversity of corn to different Mucencab (Maya bee gods) and also discusses the role of the corn growth cycle as shaping epistemologies (Roys, 1933). Portions of the Maya calendar are outlined within the Chilam Balam wherein significant ecological harvesting events of corn are included in understandings of time (Figure 1).

¢eyaxkin 2

Yaax

Figure 1 Chilam Balam in the Maya calendar showing important stages in the corn growth cycle as markers of time. ¢yaxkin 2 (November 13th): The corn-stalks are bent double (Left) and Yaax (January 12th): The time is good for gathering the ears of corn (Right) (Source: Roys, 1933)

These references point to the importance of the corn growth cycle as an indicator of time, and its foundational role in Maya society and daily life. The growth of corn is congruent with the timing of contemporary traditional Maya ceremonies and offerings following this calendar, such as the Wajxaqib’ B’atz’ Ceremony of the Guatemalan Highlands K’iche’ peoples. The Chilam Balam of Chumayel thus demonstrates that Maya tradition utilises corn as a resource to help Maya keep pace with their communities and with their environment–it is the basis of community and the centre of ritual. Considering Maya ancestral ecology as agrarian societies, fertility was of particular importance, extending to the realm of religion: “it is from the gods that fertility is given” (Damían, 2015, p. 399). Maya tradition associates gods to aspects of nature including the revered maize god Hun Hunahpu. Statues found in Maya cities depict Hun Hunahpu as an ear of corn (Figure 2). Maya tradition links agricultural practice to spiritual stories: since the Hun Hunahpu is corn personified, the removal of an ear from the stalk signifies the simultaneous his decapitation and he is reborn during the following growing season (Taube, 2003). Thus, the cosmovisions of the maize god demonstrate the sanctity of the crop itself but also provide insight into Maya understandings of cycles of life and fertility: rebirth, seasons, and the growth of crops (British Museum, 2022). The role of maize in Maya tradition can be thus understood as a link to the gods through both agricultural (Figure 1) and sculptural practices (Figure 2). Part 2: Against Indigenous Heritages in Guatemala’s Past and Present Indigenous histories show how corn has been the central agricultural resource targeted within Guatemalan development programs, the purposes of these programs were to oppress Indigenous spirituality leading to their physical genocide during the civil war. I will argue that this is a project of Mbembe-ian (2003) “necropolitics’’ against Mayans and their heritages in favour of ideas of proximity to white Latinidad. Mbembe’s (2003) necropolitics will serve as the framework through which decisions of life and death are made based on ethnic hierarchies. Though the necropolitical project occurs through the Indigenous genocide of the civil war, where democracy, development and U.S. intervention served as the site 87

of genocide, necropolitical legacies also manifest through neoliberal agribusiness and development programs. These programs led to the internalisation of capitalist, and colonial ideas of improvement which place the onus on the individual to “modernise” through the discourses of infantilization and “backwardness” of Indigeneity (Copeland, 2015), while threatening traditional livelihoods and agricultural practices in favour of profit maximisation. Guatemalan Ethnic Context To fully understand Guatemala’s political ecology and the political and economic factors which shape resource management, it is helpful to turn to Guatemala’s historical (and present) racism to foreground the necropolitical project against Indigeneity. Following independence in 1821, the nation of Guatemala engaged with ideas of assimilation or “blanqueamiento” through segregation which institutionally subordinated Indigenous peoples through forms such as forced labour, and obligatory specialisation in food production (Taracena Arriola, 2011). Principles of exclusion and subordination were based on ideas of “civilizing the Indigenous race [and maintaining] order and progress”, enforcing the superiority of whiteness which also prevented Guatemalan Indigenous peoples from obtaining citizenship (Taracena Arriola, 2011). This persisted institutionally until the October revolution of 1944, although the legacies of racism are echoed to this day. Milpa continuted to serve as an agricultural response to Indigenous subjugation by maintaining the subsistence crops of maize, legumes, squash, herbs, and other plants for Indigenous diets. This practice did not generate an abundance of harvest but it remained an Indigenous asset of livelihood against elite appropriation (Isakson, 2009). Indigenous peoples experienced necropolitics through disproportionate systemic violence, and death. The UN Commission for Historical Clarification found that “the Guatemalan army and paramilitary were responsible for 93% of estimated total deaths during the conflict, of which 83% were Maya” (Copeland, 2019, p. 2). The Guatemalan Civil War (1960 - 1996) was rife with accusations of “ethnic inferiority” which fueled the Indigenous dispossession of land upon which the new agricultural export economy was built (Copeland, 2019). This was made possible by the end of the Guatemalan revolution (1944-1954) which was stopped by a U.S. sponsored coup against the democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz, who campaigned for land reform, and challenged racism and violence, raising U.S suspicions of communist leanings during the cold war (Handy, 1994). The revolutionary policies also negatively affected the United Fruit Company, the largest landholder in Guatemala, while the continous support for counterinsurgency has demonstrated that international and elite interests in agriculture have continually influenced Guatemala’s political ecology (Copeland, 2012). Such contexts serve to animate the usage of the term “Green Revolution” through the Rural Development Plan (RDP) of 1970. The RDP brought new technologies, access to credit and markets and was thus sold as an “apolitical solution” to the structural socioeconomic Indigenous inequities - a new way prevent radicalization by fitting the small farmer into larger power structures (Copeland, 2012, p.986). Development programs can thus be seen as a continuation of this necropolitical project which directly impacts Maya livelihoods through food security and sovereignty via biodiversity and cultural traditions through assimilative projects. Neoliberalism, Capacidad and Indigeneity During the civil war, the introduction of democracy and development within Guatemala followed the trajectory of neoliberalism. This ideology posits that the maximisation of individual economic growth and freedom within markets is the mechanism towards the “peace and freedom” of democracy. However, 88

this proposes a simplified worldview without political ecology in which capitalism and market rationality are the solutions for complex structural problems (Copeland, 2019). Though development programs such as DIGESA (Dirección General de Salud Ambiental del Ministerio de Salud) were able to introduce Indigenous communities to capitalist advancements and ways to contest inequality by integration into the green revolution/ agricultural market systems, this came at the price of harming Maya cultural geographies. The implementation of development programs occurred within a society that held an implicit ethnic bias towards whiteness. Thus, once the programs were implemented, they mirrored these ideologies and proposed that progressing in capitalist markets comes at the price of subverting Indigeneity, and its related negative characteristics (Copeland, 2015). For neoliberal development programs, to be Indigenous is to be Figure 2 Statue of maize god Hun Hunahpu backwards and infantile, generating a self-blame for lacking education and the willful ignorance against progression to (Source: The British Museum, 2022) explain poverty, rather than analysing underlying political ecologies which generate such situations (Copeland, 2015). Such circumstances echo earlier historical perspectives on Indigeneity presented by the Guatemalan state “civilizing the Indigenous race and maintaining order and progress” (Taracena Arriola, 2011, p. 98). The rationale underlying development programs thus assumes a simplified worldview wherein Indigenous communities are given ecological training and access to cash crops, fertilisers, and credits, after which they have all the tools to advance on their own. The people with capacidad or the willingness to shed these characteristics of Indigeneity are thus the ideal subjects of neoliberal democracy (Copeland, 2015). Such is the case with milpa agriculture as seen through the neoliberal perspective; neoliberalism advises in favour of cash-crops and against milpa production, as cash crops maximise labour towards economic benefit (Isakson, 2009). However, this ignores the cultural importance of milpa and corn as a source of livelihood subsistence and a symbol of Indigeneity; it overlooks the importance of milpa for the rural Guatemalan diet, negatively impacting agricultural biodiversity and traditional practices for food security and sovereignty. Neoliberalism thus encourages necropolitics by comprimising Indigenous peoples’ physical and cultural livelihoods in pursuit of the comparative advantage of exporting cash crops (Isakson, 2014). Considering the Guatemalan case, it can be seen that these export markets were thus purposefully created through foreign development agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Guatemalan elites who relied on ethnic hierarchies to derive inexpensive surplus labour from Indigenous peoples by enacting a push towards a loss of Indigeneity and from traditional to cash crops (Isakson, 2014). Modern Resistance Although the presence of development programs may have led to internalizations of anti-Indigeneity within Maya communities, there is also ample resistance and agency exercised by such communities as

they navigate post-neoliberal democracy. This can be seen through radical pessimism, and opposition to programs such as Moscamed (Programa de Erradicación de la MOSCA del MEDiterraneo), a regional program implemented in Guatemala in 1975 to prevent the spread of the invasive Medfly; the program was seen by opponents as a purposeful operation to enact contemporary agricultural and health misfortunes on Indigenous communities (Copeland, 2014). The usage of conspiracy is mobilised as a form of power through language, and the everyday forms in which people understand and engage with politics to contest active Indigenous oppression (Copeland, 2014). Additionally, many Maya communities in the Guatemalan highland villages of Namsac and Xeul, with high rates of participation in market economies simultaneously persist in the practice of milpa despite the lack of economic benefit, in favour of the pleasure of farming, a source of sustenance, cultural significance of reciprocity, relationality, and cultural differentiation (Isakson, 2009). In their own manner, Indigenous communities may engage with capitalist markets in a way that does not subsume their identity nor cultural practices, but rather as an in-tandem mechanism through which their own practices and customs may be enhanced. A review of the role of corn for Maya cultural tradition and physical subsistence demonstrates that these heritages have and continue to face projects of necropolitics against Indigeneity. A review of Maya cultural sources demonstrates the importance of religious reverence for corn as interlinked to agricultural realities. However, through historical and present circumstances such as the Guatemalan civil war and development programs, these traditions have been purposefully focused on international and elite benefits, a situation which Indigenous communities continually resist. This political ecologybased investigation demonstrates the connection between the singular object of corn and the much wider realities of culture, oppression, and resistance.

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