Exercise #4: Documentary Reflection
Instructions
For your fourth Exercise assignment, you will make connections between the environmental movement in the recent past and today by considering what you are challenged to learn from documentarians of that movement.
- Find a current or recent report in the mainstream or alternative media of an environmental topic or issue in your local or wider region. As you read/ hear about the issue, consider where you stand on it. Identify your position and your thoughts.
- Use the documentaries in this course unit to reflect on the role that civil disobedience has played in the history of environmentalism, researching one other recent example to defend your answer to the question of whether it works to bring positive change.
Use your research in the mainstream and alternative media from Activity 1 of this unit for this exercise Post the media links and your analysis. Aim for a minimum of 300 words.
Please note, you should write and edit your submission in a separate file then copy and paste it into the submission box. Once submitted to the HIST 3991 trubox site, you will not be able to edit your post.
Are you a student of HIST 3991? Click here to add a submission to this assignment.
Submissions
Okinawa’s Environmental Struggle: Civil Disobedience as a Tool for Justice?
August 2, 2025 By: Kai Maekawa
In recent reports, PFAS contamination near U.S. military bases in Okinawa has become a critical environmental issue. According to Stars and Stripes, PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” have contaminated water sources around bases such as Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. For example, water samples taken downstream showed contamination levels reaching 1,600 parts per trillion, significantly exceeding Japan’s acceptable safety standard. This contamination is linked directly to firefighting foam historically used by the U.S. military. Consequently, the Okinawan government is now forced to invest heavily in water treatment infrastructure while attempting to hold the U.S. accountable for remediation efforts. My…
Exercise #4
July 29, 2025 By: Amir Meshgini
For the first part of this exercise, I’d like to go back to the article I used in Exercise 3. In 2024, Ottawa removed the “provincially significant” designation from wetlands in Goulbourn Township, opening the door to suburban housing development on previously protected land. While Canada is clearly in a housing crisis, this decision raised serious questions for me. We know that ecologists had already confirmed the importance of these wetlands, yet the City of Ottawa decided to remove them from protected areas—and people only started to take notice after a year. As for my position on this, I’m strongly…
Documentary Reflection
July 15, 2025 By: LK
Anna Mehler Paperny, “Canada Approves Law to Fast-Track Resource Projects, Faces Indigenous Opposition,” Reuters, June 27, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/canadian-senate-approves-law-fast-track-major-resource-projects-2025-06-26/?utm. Canada’s Senate approved a Bill on June 26, 2025, fast‑tracking “national interest” resource and infrastructure projects, like mines and pipelines, by granting the Cabinet “Henry VIII” powers to override existing environmental laws and limit Indigenous consultation. The move prompted immediate backlash from Indigenous leaders and environmental organizations. I, too, strongly oppose this Bill. The rush to expedite projects undermines Canada’s constitutional duty towards meaningful free, prior and informed consent practices, as well as core conservation principles. Sacrificing environmental assessments and community input for capitalist gain…
Direct Civil Resistance in BC
July 14, 2025 By: Robert Pritchard
Unit 4’s “How to Change the World: The Revolution will not be Organized” sent my mind down memory lane to my experiences in Fairy Creek. The Fairy Creek (Ada’itsx) old growth protests on Vancouver Island began in 2019, with the height of protestor/police clashes in 2020 and simmered out in 2021. There has since been a full-length independent documentary film created and at least a dozen mini-films and news specials. I was there on the front lines of this clash for most of the summer 2020, so my opinion of the movement is in heavy support. It was an astounding…
Documentary Reflection
June 22, 2025 By: Sunia Khan
A recent Reuters report describes the repeated A12 highway blockades in The Hague, where Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters halt traffic to demand an end to the Netherlands’ multi-billion-euro fossil-fuel subsidies (Boztas, 2023). Seeing thousands of people voluntarily risk arrest made me think of the documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (Curry & Cullman, 2011), which we watched in Unit 4. That film traces how a small group of U.S. activists escalated from peaceful forest‐defence rallies to nighttime arson against lumber companies, and how the resulting “eco-terrorism” label ultimately eclipsed their message. XR’s Dutch activists…