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Paper short abstract

Building from Tilly’s (1989) framing of protection and eight months of ethnographic research at a Ugandan National Park, I ask how does the state redefine its role, relationships, and logics of rule via conservation? How can we reconceptualize the notion of the state as it functions in these spaces?

Paper long abstract

Drawing from eight months of ethnographic research, this paper argues that in seeking a monopoly on protection over Mount Elgon National Park, the Ugandan state has also sought to legitimize their control and authority over populations. However, departing from Tilly (1985), what is being controlled, protected, and claimed are not citizens, but environmental resources. Using Tilly’s framing that protection is a factor in state-making I ask—In prioritizing the environment over citizens in spaces of environmental protection, how is the state redefining its role, relationships, and logics of rule? Furthermore, how can we reconceptualize the notion of ‘the state’ as it functions in these spaces? How does it look and act? What does the state protect and what threatens claims to control and authority? How is protection imposed in the course of claiming, policing, and governing these spaces? And, if environmental protection is rationalized by the state as being in the best interests of the people, what is the justification for violence against people neighboring parks? Findings reveal that state logics operate differently in spaces of environmental protection. Instead of seeking to protect citizens, resources are prioritized in protective efforts and citizens are often perceived as threats to authority and control. Through the lens of environmental governance, I argue that we can reassess pre-defined rationales and logics assigned to the state and interrogate their validity. If spaces of environmental protection truly operate outside normal state logics—how can we more accurately define and conceptualize the state in these spaces?

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Paper short abstract

Since 2008, the Wendat Nation has been working on a conservation area project that holds a strong cultural importance to them. It has become a political stance in which the Wendat value the protection and transmission of their culture while asserting their governance on their ancestral land.

Paper long abstract

Since 2008, the Wendat Nation has been working on a conservation area project, called Ya'nienhonhndeh (literally meaning "where medicinal plants are gathered"). This territory is located north of Québec City, in the heart of the Nation's ancestral and customary land, called Onyionhwentsïio' (literally meaning "our magnificent territory"). In addition to being composed of the last remaining intact forest in southern Québec, the territory covered by the conservation area project holds a very strong cultural importance for the Wendat, as it is littered with many traces of the past and present occupation by Wendat people.

The story of this "project that won't die", as nicknamed by the Wendat, is fascinating. Without funding and in the face of Québec's institutional inertia, the Ya'nienhonhndeh conservation area project stalled until 2018. A media release has since prompted Québec institutions and the local community to take an interest in the project. By promoting an inclusive approach and intercultural dialogue, the Wendat Nation succeeded, in early 2021, to make the Ya’nienhonhndeh conservation area project a pilot project to help Québec implement a new kind of conservation area, the “protected area with sustainable use.

Through this long and winding political process involving many layers of power relations, the Wendat Nation constituted itself by transforming the modes of subjugation to which it was submitted into modes of political subjectivation. More importantly, the Ya’nienhnonhndeh conservation project has become a political stance in which the Wendat Nation values the protection and transmission of its culture and heritage to future generations.