This special issue grew out of a specific moment in time. It was conceived at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in 2010, at a moment in which geographers, including cultural geographers, were growing increasingly interested in 'ontology.' 1 That year, Sarah de Leeuw, Emilie Cameron, and Jessica Place had organized a series of sessions entitled 'Geographies of Response' that aimed to bring together scholars interested in rethinking conventional understandings of power and resistance in colonial contexts. The various papers that formed that session (including one by Caroline Desbiens, co-editor of this special issue) aimed to explore the ways in which the responses of Indigenous peoples to historical and ongoing colonization might be thought of outside of the binaries inherited from European philosophy, in which Indigenous peoples appear as either victims of colonization or heroically resistant.The papers and discussions were interesting and lively, but what struck us, as the conference unfolded, was the stark contrast between the ways in which ontology was being discussed in sessions aiming to unpack the intellectual and political merits of an 'ontological turn' in the discipline, and the ways in which the ontological was being mobilized by scholars primarily grounded in colonial and decolonizing studies. For the latter group of scholars, concepts like 'being,' connection to land, culture, and tradition, have long been eyed with suspicion. Building on decades of activism and critical scholarship, the affiliation between race, nature, humanism, and empire has made critical scholars wary of mobilizing any kind of 'essential' Indigenous nature or experience in their work. 2 To invoke Indigenous ontologies, for these scholars, is to tread on intellectual terrain that is heavily shaped by colonial inheritances and interests. It is not so much that critical colonial scholars do not acknowledge that Indigenous ontologies are distinct; rather, they are wary of how Indigenous knowledges, beliefs, and practices are represented and mobilized within colonial structures of knowledge production, and have thus tended to shy away from directly engaging Indigenous ontologies as subjects of research.While some scholars have approached the notion of Indigenous ontologies with caution, others have found themselves turning to accounts of Indigenous knowledges and practices as evidence of ontological pluralism and as sources of new modes of thought. Indeed, whereas in previous years the sessions sponsored by the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the AAG
Since the 1970s, the tapping of James Bay's hydroelectric potential has been synonymous with the tapping of divergent national imaginaries for native and non‐native people in Québec. Exploitation of natural resources in the region has activated different narratives of political identity for each community. I explore this evolving political context by examining how, for each group, water has emerged simultaneously as a physical entity possessing economic value and a social artefact supporting the consolidation of national boundaries. I do so by analysing three phases of changing relationships around resource management, namely: hydroelectric development on the La Grande river in the 1970s; the Cree opposition to Great Whale in the 1990s; and the recent agreement concerning a new relationship between the two parties. In each of these phases, nature has been both the symbolic and material tie that binds different national identities and materialises their boundaries. While these are not boundaries in the traditional geopolitical understanding of the term, the forging of an equitable framework of development in the region depends on the recognition of nature as a historical and political formation that answers to different sets of national preoccupations.
Adjustment to the Editorial Board First, I would like to thank Roger Keil for his service to the Society and Space Editorial Board. Roger has asked to step down from the board, given his new responsibilities as Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. I would like to thank Roger for his service to the journal over many years, and especially for his efforts to bring German-language urban studies to an English-speaking audience. Carolyn Cartier has taken over from Bruce Braun and Donald Moore as Book Reviews Editor. I would like to thank Bruce and Donald for their service to the journal, and welcome Carolyn as the new Book Reviews Editor. Finally, I am pleased to welcome Wing-Shing Tang to the Editorial Board. Dr Tang studies governmentality and rights to the city in the context of urban (re)development and planning in China and East Asia.
Ce texte cherche à dépeindre la duplicité du « Plan Nord » en matière de développement. Le Plan Nord présente en effet deux visages : si l’un d’eux affiche une image du développement axée sur les dimensions culturelle et sociale et permet d’envisager le Nord comme un chantier interculturel, l’autre visage, en contrepartie, accuse un regard essentiellement économiste et capitaliste du développement et prône l’exploitation rentable des ressources premières. Dans notre perspective, principalement géographique, les promoteurs et les acteurs du Plan Nord sont en voie d’imposer les vues « sudistes » sur le Nord et restent avant tout aveugles aux pistes de dialogue culturel qui se présentent à eux. Il s’agit là surtout d’un vieux scénario à la veille de se répéter.
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