2001. Peake, L. and Ray, B. "Racializing the Canadian Landscape: Whiteness, Uneven Geographies and Social Justice". The Canadian Geographer.

2011

1993

Cultural Geographies, 2015

This paper reviews and rethinks the study of cultural landscapes in the context of western Canadian settlement history. The historiography of scholarship on the colonial period, across a broad array of disciplines, follows themes central to the study of continuity and change in settler societies, including assimilation, cultural revivalism and transnationalism. Influenced by historical conditions particular to the region, namely the creation of migrant block settlements and a legacy of multiculturalism, research has had a longstanding commitment to an ethnic history paradigm, which tends to orient our understanding of the cultural landscape in terms of what Brubaker and Cooper have called ‘identity history’. We argue that by focusing on relationships rather than boundaries, future research on the cultural dimension of settlement might move beyond ethnic history through investigating the possibilities of shared landscapes and communities of practice, built on the back of finding common material solutions to the problems of agrarian life.

Numerous research studies have explored how institutions such as schools are produced as white spaces. Whiteness is a socio-spatial process that constitutes particular bodies as possessing the normative, ordinary power to enjoy social privilege. Within the Canadian colonial context, whiteness has been produced historically through the violent confiscation of land and resources from Indigenous Peoples. This violence has been silenced through grand narratives of Canadian " tolerance, " and white-settler fantasies of the Canadian landscape as empty and wild. Many environmental education programs continue to rely upon and reproduce these colonial ideas of race and space. Escaping the classroom, Canadian environmental education programs propose to advance personal and educational decolonization through experiential land-based learning. Integrating the discussions in anti-racist, anti-colonial education with the literature on race and nature, this qualitative article draws from student interviews and artefacts to interrogate how whiteness continues to be normalized within environmental education through various dominant narratives of Canadian nation building, such as: the disaffiliation of whiteness from the violence of colonialism, reifying Canadianness as goodness and innocence; the ongoing erasure of Indigenous Peoples and histories from the land; and the reification of wilderness as an essentialized, empty space. These narratives continue to entitle white people to occupy and claim originary status in Canada, signifying wilderness and the environment as a white space. La blancheur du vert : La racialisation de l'´ education relativè a l'environnement Un bon nombre de recherches se sont intéresséesà lamanì ere dont les institutions telles que lesécoles se conçoivent comme des espaces blancs. La notion de blancheur peutêtre envisagée en tant que processus socio-spatial qui dispose certains corpsà détenir le pouvoir normatif et ordinaire et ainsi bénéficier depriviì eges sociaux. Dans le contexte colonial canadien, la blancheur est le résultat historique de l'appropriation brutale des terres et des ressources des peuples autochtones. C'està partir des grands récits sur la « tolérance » canadienne et du fantasme d'un paysage canadien vide et sauvage créé par les colons blancs qu'on a réussì a faire taire ces actes de violence. ` A ce jour, les programmes d'´ education relativè a l'environnement puisent et reproduisent ces types d'idées coloniales sur l'identité raciale et l'espace. Hors des murs de l'´ ecole, des programmes d'´ education relativè a l'environnement conçus au Canada visentà contribuerà l'avancement de la décolonisation personnelle etéducative par une méthode d'enseignement fondée sur l'expérience du terrain. Se situant au croisement des discours sur l'enseignement antiraciste et anticolonial et de la littérature sur l'identité raciale et la nature, cetté etude qualitative cherchè a comprendre, ` a partir d'entretiens menés auprès d'´ etudiants et par l'analyse d'artefacts, dans quelle mesure la blancheur demeure toujours un des principesà l'origine de l'´ education relativè a l'environnement, principes qui repose sur les points forts des plus grands récits de l'´ edification de la nation canadienne: la dissociation entre la blancheur et la violence du colonialisme; la réification de la canadienneté en termes de «bonté et innocence»; la suppression continue des histoires et des peuples autochtones du territoire; et la réification de la «nature sauvage» en tant qu'espace essentialiste et vide.

The Goose, 2021

Canadian Journal of Sociology