Shellfish harvesting in Boundary Bay - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 106

For the purpose of this chapter, I employ Watson's definition of ecocolonization:
“the process by which Indigenous people collaterally suffer the effects of the seizure
and destruction of their natural resources by an outside political force” (2009,
p. 4). This definition builds on earlier concepts of green imperialism, which link
imperial expansion to environmental degradation (Griffiths and Robbins, 1997;
Grove, 1997).
I suggest that ecocolonization occurs in three central ways in Boundary Bay:
first, through the bordering of space that ties Indigenous communities to small
parcels of land (reserves in Canada and reservations in the U.S.) under different
political regimes, and with limited access to marine resources; second, through
“extraterritorial” pollution inputs that compromise culturally significant marine
resources; and third, through the politics of calculation.
The first two points are relatively well examined in existing literature at
the intersection of political ecology, environmental justice, and political and
Figure 5.1 Waterways of Boundary Bay and traditional harvesting sites for Coast Salish
community members. The international border reflects divergent harvesting
policies . 1
Source : Original map. Cartographer: Eric Leinberger, University of British Columbia.