The penetration of European colonial forces into unknown territories from the fifteenth century onwards resulted not only in genocide and widespread economic exploitation, but also as Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin argue,“ in radical changes, unparalleled in human history, to both tropical and temperate environments” (Reader: 491).

Alfred W. Crosby has described the environmentally destructive effects of colonial occupation as an on-going process of‘ecological imperialism.’ According to his thesis, colonized societies have not only been socially, politically and culturally altered by imperialism, they have also been physically transformed. No other regions of the world have been in receipt of such a profound ecological colonization as the settler colonies, or ‘Neo-Europes’ as Crosby terms them: territories occupying temperate zones roughly equivalent to those of Europe, which were rapidly established as the major exporters of European food crops. Excessive ecological degradation in the Neo-Europes has led to multifarious contemporary environmental problems, including for example, a significant lowering of the water table in Eastern Canada.Crosby makes a convincing case for the success of European imperialism as having “a biological, an ecological component”, arguing that ‘ecological imperialism’ was just as instrumental to the success of European colonization and hegemonic power over manifold regions of the globe as, “their superiority in arms, organization, and fanaticism” (Crosby: 7).

Thomas King demonstrates in Green Grass, Running Water however, that not all indigenous ontologies concerning the land have been extinguished by colonial hegemony. Whilst tactically avoiding romantic, essentializing stereotypes regarding indigenous peoples and their spiritual interconnectivity with landscapes and non-human species, King shows how a respectable ‘land ethic’ prevails from pre-colonial times for many (though certainly not all) Native Canadians today. Not surprisingly then, many environmental organisations are now turning for inspiration to the once detested or ignored indigenous ways of perceiving the land and human identity in place, in an attempt to undo some of the environmental destruction wreaked by centuries of aggressive ecological imperialism.

The Native land guarantees of the old treaties are drained of meaning and rendered cosmetic, outmoded and obsolete in the face of modernity, industrial progress and venture capitalism. After the fourth year of Eli’s injunction, Duplessis hire a slick, media savvy public relations firm, ‘Crosby Johns and Sons Inc.,’ to mount a high powered publicity campaign in an attempt to convince the Native people that the operation of the dam will serve to economically benefit the Native communities exponentially. In a story for the local newspaper, the company claims that the tribe would stand to make in excess of two million dollars after only one year of the dam’s full operation. At a council meeting to discuss the terms proposed in the article, Homer Little Bear’s attempt to read the piece aloud is hampered both by his own uncontrollable laughter and the scornful interjections by his sceptical audience:

“Someone suggested that they rename the dam the Grand Goose or the Golden Goose because of the promised fortune and because, as Sam Belly put it, that’s about all Indians ever got from the government, a goose” (King: 127).

Eli’s expressed anxieties regarding cracks in the basin of the dam and rumours of the earth slipping beneath its surface are cast aside, as are any questions “about possible fault lines” running underneath the construction site, concerns regarding the noticeable depletion of river fish, and any issues over the degradation of the environment (King: 128). Emmett, an anxious resident of the reserve, speaks out on the radio against the inevitable environmental destruction the dam will inflict on the natural cycles of the river and its surrounding landscapes. Put simply:“No flood. No nutrients. No cottonwoods” (King: 415).

While pre-colonial configurations of human-land relations might prevail for many indigenous inhabitants of the settler colonies today, such ways of apprehending human identity in place are generally in deep confliction with the predominating ideologies perpetrated by the settled populations. The position of groups such as the Maoris, Australian Aborigines and the various tribes of Native North Americans represent something of a special case for Post-colonial studies because, as Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin argue, they are “doubly marginalized” – pushed to the farthest political edge of societies which themselves have experienced, “the dilemma of colonial alienation” (The Empire Writes Back: 142). Consequentially then, indigenous ways of interconnecting with both the land and with non-human species are frequently immobilized by the prevailing hegemonic doctrines of the settler state. In consideration of this ideological divergence, Thomas King suggests that Native societies in general are endowed with a “land ethic” bequeathed to them by their ancestors, a deep sense of the world as “an organic flow”, where everything is inextricably entwined as part of a “living chain” (qtd. in Lutz: 116). By naming his anthology of contemporary Canadian Native fiction All My Relations, King evokes a familiar Native Canadian phrase which appeals for Native people to accept the responsibilities they have within the “universal family”, whose web of kinship and respect extends, “to the animals, to the birds, to the fish, to the plants, to all the animate and inanimate forms that can be seen or imagined ” (All My Relations: ix).

Eli’s obdurate resistance to the operation of the dam is also indelibly entwined with King’s conception of the Native ‘land ethic.’ While Eli puts up a gallant fight against the mighty corporation, he is nevertheless under no illusion that in accordance with the true spirit of capitalism, Duplesis would eventually find a way to “manoeuvre around him”, and that in the end, both he and his mother’s log cabin, “would be washed out onto the prairies” (King: 286-7). The four old trickster Indians, on a mission to “fix up” the world, also understand that the legal system has stacked the odds insurmountably against any permanent Native victory, and in order to resolutely ensure that the dam will never function, the four Indians recognize that it must be destroyed. Coyote dances, and the resultant earthquake slams three stolen cars into the Grand Baleen Dam, shattering its walls and securing victory for Eli’s cause:

“Beneath the power and the motion there was a more ominous sound of things giving way, of things falling apart. Sifton felt it first, a sudden shifting, a sideways turning, a flexing, the snapping crack of concrete and steel, and in that instant the water rose out of the lake like a mountain, sucking the cars under and pitching them high in the air, sending them at the dam in an awful rush. And the dam gave way, and the water and the cars tumbled over the edge of the world…” (King: 454).

As a celebrated patron of a programme organised by CPAWS (Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society) to protect the Boreal forest from further despoliation, Thomas King is an admirably active participant in the campaign to encourage a global reassessment of relationships between humans, animals and place. As Val Plumwood argues, in order to tackle the legacy of centuries of ecological imperialism (and of course, its neo-colonial successor), it is imperative that we “counter the widespread and very damaging illusion that modern urban life has ‘overcome’ the need for nature” (Reader: 506). Green Grass, Running Water stresses the universal need for this paradigm shift, as our survival, and that of other species on this planet, ultimately depends on it: