(Photo courtesy of Sean Martindale)

Whenever we are writing, hearing, or speaking – whenever we communicate with another human – we need to remain mindful of the way that we are using language and of the meanings of words that we choose that may not be immediately visible or apparent. The language of the environmental movement is no exception to this problem, and it is important to reflect on the words that we choose as we try to work towards positive social and ecological change.

One of the major difficulties of discussing ecological issues in a manner that is explicitly inclusive of human action and influence lies within the notion of an external domain of ‘nature’. Early environmentalists concern with protecting and conserving ‘nature’ was, and in many ways still is, complicit in dominant but highly problematic western view of separate domains of culture and nature. For example, conservation efforts that led to the formation of national parks in both the United States and Canada in the late 19th and early 20th century sought to protect nature by completely excluding human influence. Indigenous communities, whose traditional livelihoods were inextricably linked to the land in a respectful and cooperative relationship, were displaced from the lands on which they had lived for centuries. In this instance, employing a discourse of protecting ‘nature’ from human influence overlooks the glaring fact that it was, in fact, human influence and action itself that deemed certain ‘natures’ more worthy of protection than others, cultivated the theoretical and social infrastructure for implementing the conservation program, and made decisions based on one particular worldview at how best to protect and ‘improve’ the natures in question. Further, even the enclosure of the land and its enforcement was highly selective, as national parks, far from remaining free of humans, became luxury getaways for affluent white settlers. Here, the discourse of nature was used as a tool of colonisation, and selectively enforced to convert land from use for traditional, sustenance-based lifestyles to instead further the goals of the colonial state.

Discourses of nature have also been deployed to perpetuate a patriarchal, white-supremacist, heteronormative cultural myth. The fundamentalist religious right has often attempted to posit heterosexual relationships as ‘natural’ as a method of depoliticising institutional homophobia. A gendered division of labour that places women in a subservient role has similarly been defended as a natural occurrence. Phrenology, a pseudo-science popular in the 19th century, studied skulls of different ethnic groups and used this information to hypothesize about their respective evolutionary stages and mental faculties. This practice was used, in part, to depoliticise and naturalise inequality and white supremacist views, and by extension is implicated in the justification of slavery. Ironically, far right groups who use discourses of the ‘natural’ to justify massive inequality are often the same groups who balk at climate science and dismiss the idea of any human role in degradation of purportedly separate ‘natures’ via climate change.

Far from simply complicating environmental discourse by consistently placing humans and our activities outside of the realm of ‘nature’, ideas of nature clearly have a dangerous element that has enabled depoliticisation of massive inequality. It is with this in mind that I think it is necessary to avoid the use of the term altogether, and instead of attempt to cultivate ways of using language that avoid the pitfalls of depoliticising ecological concerns, and attempt to break down the nature/culture dichotomy in favour of an ecological discourse that remains inextricably linked with a critical social analysis. As a movement, if environmentalism is to be serious about imagining a truly sustainable future, we must make a concerted effort to throw out language that hurts, and cultivate new discourses that respect the interconnectivity of all forms of life and matter on this planet.

Toronto artist Sean Martindale’s recent project NATURE (lead photo above) has given form to these ideas by creating a large sculpture of the word using recycled cardboard. The sculpture was placed at the curb on a residential street in the early hours before waste collection. A video of the installation shows several neighbourhood residents expressing surprise at the mysterious piece, stopping and sometimes making multiple passes to pause and view the work. Eventually, the garbage truck comes by and disposes of the piece, throwing out the harmful word once and for all. Martindale’s gesture recognises how certain language in environmental discourse has ceased to be useful, and symbolically creates space for us to collectively create new language towards a sustainable future.