Toxic Talk

Power of Discourse Analysis for Understanding the Impacts of Environmental Crises on Native American Communities

Anatomy of an Environmental Crisis

Walpole Island First Nation or Bkejwanong, which means “where the waters divide” in the Ojibwe language, is located on the north shores of Lake St Clair. The community sits upon one of the largest freshwater deltas in the world and supports a rich mosaic of natural areas including some of the most biologically diverse areas in Canada. It is home to the Anishnaabe people (Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa tribes). Image courtesy Clint Jacobs, Nin Da Waab Jig Walpole Island Heritage Centre

On Thursday August 14, 2003 cessation of power to the cooling system of Royal Polymers Industries in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada led to the accidental discharge of 300 pounds of vinyl chloride—a highly toxic and carcinogenic industrial chemical—into the St Clair River. Public fear turned into outrage when it was discovered that neither the Canadian government nor the general public were informed until five days after the chemical spill had occurred. One locality directly affected by the spill was Walpole Island First Nation (WIFN), an ecologically diverse Native American reserve community downstream from Royal Polymers and the petrochemical and refining complex known as Chemical Valley. Walpole Island’s reliance on the St Clair River as its primary source of drinking water made it especially vulnerable to the threat of chemical exposure. My presence in the community at the time of the spill allowed me to witness first-hand the fear, stress and social upheaval that arose from this environmental crisis. The chief aired her frustrations over the lack of communication from the region’s environmental health officer; a new mother expressed her fear that the mysterious skin rash that had suddenly appeared on her infant daughter’s body was the result of exposure to contaminated water; and an elder spoke of cultural genocide: “I guess they couldn’t kill us off in the Indian residential schools and the reserves they made for us so they’re trying to get rid of us by polluting our water, fish and wildlife. In my mind, it’s all the same thing,” she explained to me matter-of-factly.

I also became aware of a series of discourses disseminated by the popular media and the scientific community. The fears vocalized by concerned citizens were being labeled as chemophobia—a term that refers to an “irrational fear of chemicals” and which experts used to dismiss anxieties as uncritical, emotional and subjective responses arising from a general lack of scientific knowledge. This rhetoric was a stark example of the processes by which homogenized and reductionist meta-narratives of risk are funneled through scientific and bureaucratic structures to ascribe their own politically-informed packages of meanings on the perceptions and experiences of those occupying the lower echelons in systems of power (Briggs 2007, 2008). I found the term’s indiscriminate use particularly disconcerting. This compelled me to engage in a critical analysis of the terminology and conceptual frameworks that are used to describe public responses to environmental threats. At issue was whether a term like chemophobia was an accurate cross-cultural descriptor of individual and collective responses to environmental risks and crises. Was there a better way of talking about peoples’ perceptions of risk, one that was more sensitive to the lived experiences of those directly affected by such threats? Was there an alternative way of knowing that fostered a more nuanced, historicized and humanized understanding of the diverse political, social and cultural contexts within which these events unfold?

The Royal Polymers spill was my entry into the study of risk communication and set the stage for close to a decade of intensive collaborative research on environmental health issues in the Walpole Island community. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my semiotic critique of chemophobia and cursory analysis of the risk narratives revolving around the water crisis of 2003 served as a useful discursive medium for exploring the striking differences between scientific and media contaminants discourses and the “little narratives” or local legitimacies (Lyotard 1979) that are generated within communities. It was becoming clear to me that those who wield the power to name also have the capacity to shape perceptions and by extension, influence human thoughts, behaviors and actions. However, this was more than a theoretical exercise for it allowed me to identify a unique genre of contaminants discourses specific to the Walpole Island community—a discourse that I’ve termed toxic talk (Stephens 2009). The narrative ethnography that eventually became my dissertation is a good example of the important role of discourse analysis as a methodological tool for critically examining the impacts of environmental crises on vulnerable, at-risk populations and its potential for refining the conventional interpretive frameworks and language(s) of risk employed by biomedicine, the social sciences, regulatory agencies and industries.

Deconstructing Chemophobia and Exploring Toxic Talk

Canada’s “Chemical Valley” is a large complex of refining and chemical companies located upstream from Walpole Island First Nation, just east of the St Clair River in southern Sarnia, Ontario. Photo courtesy P199 via Wikimedia

At its most basic level, the term chemophobia is narrow and exclusionary, and serves primarily to describe generic fears associated with human exposure to man-made chemicals. It offers a restrictive and limiting semiotic and interpretive framework for acknowledging and examining other equally destructive dangers to the environment. Walpole Island residents have observed and recorded significant changes to the health of their native plants and animals through several generations. Community members use specific criteria to gauge these changes, such as propagation rates, population numbers, physiological changes in plant and animal species, ecological biodiversity, and specific indicators such as the potency and effectiveness of medicinal plants. Water, air and sediment pollution are seen as contributing to environmental degradation and ecological change at Walpole Island.

However, residents also identify inappropriate land use practices, the erosion of cultural values and loss of traditional teachings that sustain and reinforce the physical and spiritual connection between human beings and the natural world as equally detrimental to the lands and waters of the Walpole Island traditional territory. Similarly, chemophobia permits a very limited range of substances (namely, industrial chemicals) that can be viewed or labelled as toxic or dangerous to one’s health and well-being. This contrasts directly with the views expressed by members of the community who classify alcohol and drugs as environmental toxins. Both industrial contaminants and recreational controlled substances are perceived as foreign intrusions into Native society that are part and parcel of the colonial process. Risk perception research is exclusively anthropocentric in nature. Chemophobia is applied to describing the perceptions, behaviors and experiences of human beings, to the exclusion of all other beings. As such, the term reflects the Western world’s Linnean propensity to pigeon-hole and treat as separate and unrelated human health and the health of other species. The anthropocentric, ethnocentric individualistic biases that are embedded in Western language and concepts are diametrically opposed to that of the Anishinaabeg who recognize the interconnectedness of all living things. This belief is eloquently expressed by the Ojibwe phrase kina enwemgig meaning “all my relations” which is commonly used by Anishinaabe when referring to their familial connection to both plant and animal life. One of the biggest problems with the term chemophobia is that it fails to situate environmental crises within their dynamic historical, political and biosocial contexts, which precludes the politicization and serious examination of important issues in the areas of environmental protection, the regulation of risk, sustainable development, and environmental justice.

In contrast to the thin description or superficial details of anthropogenic changes that are the focus of scientific inquiry, Walpole Island residents use “thick description” (Geertz 1973) to build “thick interpretations” of social and cultural phenomena, including those that affect the environment. Hence, environmental issues are not viewed as evolving within a vacuum or in isolation of wider historical and sociopolitical processes. On the contrary, these environmental threats and crisis events are framed and interpreted as concrete examples of structural violence. Like the reserve system, Indian Act legislation, land appropriation, Indian residential schooling and outlawing of Aboriginal languages, cultures and spiritual practices, the problem of pollution or “chemical genocide” (as it is referred to by one WIFN resident) is understood by residents as yet another manifestation of colonization and imperialism. The community toxic talk also revealed the presence of syndemic suffering (Mendenhall 2012) in the community (Stephens and Herring, forthcoming). Just like a death from a thousand cuts, the cumulative personal and collective traumas amassed from decades of abuse, marginalization, disenfranchisement, disempowerment and despair shape the ways that residents experience, embody and respond to environmental risks and crisis events. For Walpole Island elders, a chemical spill amplifies stress responses because the event acts as mnemonic triggers that resurrect painful recollections of past social injustices and historical abuses.

Benefit of Looking Upstream

Theorizing a crisis tends not to be at the top of one’s to-do list, especially if you are the hapless victim in peril and facing imminent danger. McKinlay (1979) and Goodman and Leatherman (1998) present a parable that powerfully illustrates the practical benefits that can be gained from engaging in this type of reflection. It’s the story of a physician who saves a series of drowning men, one after the other from a nearby river. Although his deeds are honorable, the physician slowly comes to the sad realization that his efforts are futile. He has been so busy rescuing victims that he’s had no time to look upstream to see what (or who) is causing the men to fall into the river in the first place. As a medical anthropologist, I appreciate the simple wisdom conveyed by this story—that is, the importance of “looking upstream” at the ultimate rather than the proximate causes of poor health and social suffering. Adopting a discourse-centred approach allowed me to look upstream in a very different way—one that does not focus exclusively on chemicals or pollution as the only sources of Walpole Island’s concerns, but which views environmental degradation as a symptom of a much larger problem; one that has evolved from long-term historical and political processes and social injustices. As such, looking upstream means engaging in a more thorough analysis of structural violence in all of its forms, and analyzing these phenomena and the clues that they hold to the ultimate causes that have both literally and figuratively become toxic to the lives of Walpole Island residents.

Christianne V Stephens

Christianne V Stephens is a sessional assistant professor in the department of anthropology at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her areas of expertise include: indigenous health, environmental health, risk perception and risk communication. She may be reached at stephecv@yorku.ca.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/06/11/toxic-talk/