Borderlands Environments and Environmentalisms

• In Event: Extractivism, Environments, and Encounters: Legacies of interaction and relationship

Abstract

Ramya Swayamprakash, Grand Valley State University
In the summer of 1895, a gun-shot flew across the Detroit River, from the Canadian shore to an American garbage carrier. The resultant lawsuit created reverberations in Ottawa, London, and Washington D.C., although eventually relegated to being a local issue. A decade later, blasts from the construction of the Livingstone Channel damaged buildings and sensibilities on the Canadian shore, leading to another set of complaints, this time, under the aegis of the then newly formed International Joint Commission and a growing environmental consciousness. In the 1960s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sought to utilize an island as a dumping site, locals in Amherstburg were galvanized into action again, eventually thwarting the Corps. Drawing upon a longer history of local activities that sought to cross borders and build community around environmental issues, the events of the 1960s were yet another instance of local activism, challenging both national and urban hegemonies about the palace of nature and environments. Comparing these three moments, this paper seeks to trace the nuances and their impacts, to offer a more holistic view of what nature and encounters came to mean in the Michigan-Ontario borderlands.

Author

• Ramya Swayamprakash, Grand Valley State University