Settler Colonial Listening and the Silence of Wilderness in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area
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Date
2021-11-23
Authors
Hilgren, Bailey
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area soundscape in northern Minnesota has a long and contested history but is most often characterized today as a pristine and distinctly silent wilderness. This thesis traces the construction and perpetuation of the Boundary Waters as a silent space by government agencies and conservationists, as well as the ways the notion of silence has and continues to limit Ojibwe sovereignty and, in related but distinct ways, undermine non-human animal agency. As extractive industries increasingly threaten the Boundary Waters, advocacy groups continue to appeal to the idea of the place as silent despite the similarity in logics underlying both extractivism and the myth of pristine wilderness. The project also considers broader historiographical and activist consequences associated with the idea of a silent Boundary Waters and utilizes public-facing writing formats to challenge iterative processes perpetuating settler colonial soundscape control.
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Keywords
Boundary Waters, public scholarship, settler colonialism, Sigurd Olson, silence, sound studies