Environmental Activism on the Ground draws upon a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship to examine small scale, local environmental activism, paying particular attention to Indigenous experiences. It illuminates the questions that are central to the ongoing evolution of the environmental movement while reappraising the history and character of late twentieth and early twenty–first environmentalism in Canada, the United States, and beyond.

This collection considers the different ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists have worked to achieve significant change. It examines attempts to resist exploitative and damaging resource developments, and the establishment of parks, heritage sites, and protected areas that recognize the indivisibility of cultural and natural resources. It pays special attention to the thriving environmentalism of the 1960s through the 1980s, an era which saw the rise of major organizations such as Greenpeace along with the flourishing of local and community–based environmental activism.

Environmental Activism on the Ground emphasizes the effects of local and Indigenous activism, offering lessons and directions from the ground up. It demonstrates that the modern environmental movement has been as much a small–scale, ordinary activity as a large-scale, elite one.

Jonathan Clapperton is an adjunct professor in the Department of History at the University of Victoria. He specializes in Indigenous history and culture in the North American West, and works as an expert witness and historical consultant for numerous Indigenous communities.

Jonathan Clapperton's profile page

Liza Piper is an associate professor at the University of Alberta, where she teaches environmental and Canadian history. She researches and writes about the relations between people and the rest of nature in the past, primarily in northern environments and with a particular focus on the roles of science and industry and the consequences for diet and health. She is the author of The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada (2009).

Lisa Szabo-Jones is a Ph.D. candidate in English and film studies at the University of Alberta and a 2009 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar. She is a founding and current editor of the online journal The Goose, a biannual publication of the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada, established in 2005.

Liza Piper's profile page

• Commended, Alanna Bondar Memorial Book Prize

Historians of the environmental movement have been working to incorporate more stories “from the ground up” and this volume is a wonderful addition to that growing body of research.

—Darren Speece, Environment and History

Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper’s essay collection Environmental Activism on the Ground makes an important contribution to scholarly understandings of social movements, environmentalism, and Indigenous/settler relations in Canada and beyond . . . [it] clearly demonstrates that there is much important work to be done by historians in unpacking the significance and impact of small, grassroots environmental groups and Indigenous activists.

—Henry John, British Journal of Canadian Studies

Environmental Activism on the Ground . . . we can all learn something from these compelling examples.

—Sarah Marie Wiebe, Canadian Journal of Native Studies

An excellent contribution to environmental history . . . the versatility of the text is a testament to both the editors’ choices and the strength of the chapters. The histories Clapperton and Piper have collected are a valuable contribution to furthering our understanding of environmentalism in a Canadian context and beyond

—John-Henry Harter, Historie Social / Social History

Environmental Activism on the Ground successfully foregrounds small-scale, local, and Indigenous organizing in the history of the environmental movement. Not only does this recalibrate our understanding of how the movement has been constituted and has changed over time, but as the editors suggest, it obliges us to reconsider what the impacts of the movement have been. The collection presents an alternative to declensionist narratives and helps to explain one reason why grassroots organizing continues unabated: because it has proven capable of winning and fostering lasting connections.

—Justin Fisher, NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment

An excellent book on grassroots Indigenous activism.

—James C. Saku, American Review of Canadian Studies