Nature - autonomous learning

142 de-naturalisationClayoquot Sound is an ocean inlet containing increasingly rare standsof ‘old-growth’ temperate rainforest (see Map 3.2). The area came tointernational attention in the early 1990s when environmentalists inBritish Columbia strongly opposed the granting of a logging licence tothe forest-products multinational Macmillan Bloedel.Though the BritishColumbian economy depends upon timber exports to a considerable extent,it is also the place where Greenpeace came into existence (in 1971), whileVancouver – the province’s largest, most cosmopolitan city – is home tomany people with strong environmental sensibilities. In his essay ‘Buriedepistemologies: the politics of nature in (post-)colonial British Columbia’,Braun (Willems-Braun 1997) de-constructs the discourses used by environmentalistsand the pro-logging lobby respectively in their depictionsof Clayoquot during the early 1990s. Specifically, he focuses on keypublications produced by both sides of the dispute in their attempt towin over the government and public of British Columbia. At first sight,these publications depict the same forest (Clayoquot’s old-growth trees)in very different ways.The Macmillan Bloedel document, entitled Beyondthe Cut, mixed glossy photographs, text and graphics in an easy-to-readformat. Braun shows that the company depicted Clayoquot’s trees asa valuable resource that belongs to the Canadian nation. Having chosenthis dispassionate language, Macmillan Bloedel constantly emphasisedits credentials as a responsible resource-manager – a custodian of the foreston behalf the Canadian people. Overall, Braun shows, Beyond the Cutpositioned Macmillan Bloedel as an experienced and ethical company keento create jobs for people in the forest industry while being careful to cutdown trees in an environmentally responsible way (see Plate 2).Not surprisingly, environmentalists’ depictions of Clayoquot departedsomewhat from the Macmillan Bloedel view. Drawing upon the wildernessidea that Cronon dissects, these environmentalists representedClayoquot in altogether more emotive and ecocentric terms. Braun focuseson Clayoquot: On the Wild Side, a very popular coffee-table book published bythe Western Canada Wilderness Committee (which was actively involvedin opposing Macmillan Bloedel’s logging practices in the early 1990s).Unlike Beyond the Cut, the book’s story is told much more in visual terms(160-plus images by nature photographer Adrian Dorst).The photographsdepict Clayoquot as ‘a sublime, complex, enchanting landscape filledwith powerful forces and intricate, even delicate, relations’ (Willems-Braun 1997: 19). Most of them focus on the natural world (particularly