Environmental Activism as Anti-Conquest: The Nuu-chah-nulth and Environmentalists in the Contact Zone of Clayoquot Sound

Clayoquot Sound, on the western edge of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, is a renowned ecotourist paradise replete with temperate rainforests, sandy beaches, and, increasingly, luxury resorts. Additionally, for environmentalists, Clayoquot Sound stands out as one of the legendary sites of the Canadian environmental movement’s coming-of-age victories. Beginning in the summer of 1993, thousands of environmental activists, representing myriad local/small-scale and major international organizations, from the Friends of Clayoquot Sound to Greenpeace respectively, journeyed to a hastily constructed “Peace Camp” in opposition to the provincial government’s decision to permit the powerful forestry corporation MacMillan Bloedel (in which the province owned a