{"id":42220,"date":"2022-06-23T14:37:59","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T14:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=42220"},"modified":"2025-02-03T11:30:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T16:30:16","slug":"sharing-complex-histories-of-conservation","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/sharing-complex-histories-of-conservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing Complex Histories of Conservation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Sharing Complex Histories of Conservation\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The 2022 Shannon Lecture Series’ theme “The Management of Natural Resources and the Environment in Canada: Historical and Transnational Perspectives” intersects with the research of its convenor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Nick Ward<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running from May through July, the Shannon Lecture Series for Spring 2022 explores the many ways in which natural resources and the environment in Canada have been managed throughout history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Shannon Series convenor and History Ph.D. candidate Stephen Osei-Owusu, there\u2019s no time like the present to discuss the connections between Earth\u2019s human and non-human inhabitants, and how these relationships have historically been governed, conserved and contested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stephen Osei-Owusu<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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“I am excited about this year’s Shannons because, as a keen enthusiast of researching the environment and learning how it has been central to humankind’s relations with each other since antiquity, I believe audiences will leave with a better understanding that our historical experiences in the use and management of the environment are steeped in pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial socio-political relic,\u201d Osei-Owusu says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

According to Osei-Owusu, this has in turn \u201cshaped present local and globalized frameworks in managing environments.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2022 edition of the Shannon Series, titled \u201cThe Management of Natural Resources and the Environment in Canada: Historical and Transnational Perspectives\u201d, brings together three seasoned historians and an expert in fishery conservation to unpack the transnational nature of global historical experiences relative to people’s use \u2013 and misuse \u2013 of the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shannons are a series of thematically linked public lectures held annually since 2010 by the Department of History and made possible through the Shannon Donation, a major gift from a long-time friend of the Department of History at Carleton. Previous topics include Human Rights in the History of Canada<\/em> (2020), Rebooting Biography<\/em> (2019), and Bad Archaeology<\/em> (2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme of this year’s Series relates to Osei-Owusu’s own research on the history of environmental protection regulations in Ghana’s gold mining industry (formerly called the Gold Coast) between 1874 and 1957.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The consequences of gold mining clearly visible on this riverbank<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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“I study the period in which Ghana was a colony of the British and how the question of Indigenous societies and their pre-colonial ecological perspectives fared in such an entrusted political arrangement,” explains Osei-Owusu.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“With Canada being a former colony of the British, with significant Indigenous population presence, I believe that there are a lot of historical context-based takeaways \u2013 both in similarities and disjunctions \u2013 that can partly inform the general thrust of my research.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through his research, Osei-Owusu is already discovering meaningful and representative lessons that illuminate the consequences of Britain’s past involvement in Ghana’s mining industry on today’s postcolonial protection efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has found \u2013 as corroborated by Ghana’s Environmental Protection Authority \u2013 that prior political administrations, including colonial ones, did not take the issue of environmental protection and management seriously enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Osei-Owusu says that this is particularly evident when looking at the country’s current regulatory frameworks, which largely focus on voluntary initiatives in environmental protection efforts (with preference for initiatives fueled by neo-liberal private capital) and pay little attention to the interests of resource-rich indigenous and local communities themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“In the absence of global frameworks on environmental protection regulation \u2013 which is a recent phenomenon, as of only the late 1960s and early 1970s, just around the period of decolonization for many of the former African colonies \u2013 to engage the environment, the concept of environmental protection in many colonies was reduced to the discretionary powers and actions of former colonial powers,\u201d he explains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cIn the end, the clash of perspectives often were conducive pretexts for European land-grabbing practices in Indigenous communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Osei-Owusu argues that local and Indigenous ways of governing and regulating \u2013 which emphasize religious and cultural attachment to nature, as well as communal ownership and protection of the environment \u2013must be brought back into the conversation after having long been considered ‘taboo’ by colonial powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gold mining<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

He gives the example of how \u201cenvironmental regulations and practices in gold mining once reflected the spiritual-eco-centric dimensions of Indigenous knowledge production, where they evolved through the historical interaction of communities and their environment, thereby giving rise to practices and cultural landscapes such as sacred forests and groves, sacred corridors and a variety of ethno-forestry practices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, Osei-Owusu explains, \u201camong the Adanse (the ethnic group in the principal gold-producing area of Obuasi), and many other Akan gold-producing areas, gold was regarded as a spirit, which could be offended by human actions, inclusive of which was environmental destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDue to this, it is believed gold, as a spirit, could travel from place to place, especially when certain customs or rituals regarding respect and veneration of the land had been flouted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we find ourselves trying to build a sustainable future in the midst of a climate crisis, the 2022 Shannon Lecture Series on The Management of Natural Resources and the Environment in Canada: Historical and Transnational Perspectives<\/em> serves as a reminder to heed those spirits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch the 2022 Shannon Lecture Series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2022 Shannon Lecture Series’ theme “The Management of Natural Resources and the Environment in Canada: Historical and Transnational Perspectives” intersects with the research of its convenor By Nick Ward Running from May through July, the Shannon Lecture Series for Spring 2022 explores the many ways in which natural resources and the environment in Canada […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[816],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-42220","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-general"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/42220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/42220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44864,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/42220\/revisions\/44864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=42220"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=42220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}