Ecological Colonialism and the Impact of the ‘Englishman’s Foot’: A Literary Ecology of an Invasive Species

Abstract

This thesis is a habitat study of plantago major or broad leaved plantain. Brought to North America sometime before the 1700’s, it was nicknamed Englishman’s Foot by the Indigenous peoples who watched it walk across their lands with the colonizers. Taking Laurie Ricou’s model of a habitat study to read the plant actively as text, I want to “enter into the process” of the language of the non-human world which will be a journey that moves from “image hunting and archiving” to “native plant as text” (Salal 12). Using a braided approach to this process, I have encountered plantain as text, but also as kin, and the personal experiences I have had with it have changed my perception not only of the plant itself but have grown my understanding of the ways in which nature(s) around me exist, thrive, circulate, and cycle. Understanding this invasive species as something more like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s name of “good neighbour”, this thesis explores how to live more fully on and within our more-than-human relatives and “to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it” (Braiding 215).