My main objective is to reveal and illustrate the patterns and processes underlying the practice of ecological restoration in post-colonial landscapes. To focus my analysis, I asked what these patterns are, and how they inhibit or enable the Iwor (Ainu Traditional Living Space) Restoration Project (IRP). The IRP is a state-funded project aimed at improving the well-being of Ainu in Hokkaido, Japan. I used interviews, participant observation and text analyses to elucidate the dynamics at work in and around the project. My findings suggest that colonial and technological practices inhibit good ecological restoration practices in IRP by disengaging people, or more subtly preventing them from engaging with it. Colonially, structural and discursive marginalization maintains economic deprivation through denying progressive conversations about community empowerment. This process also reinforces subjective power relationships of Wajin, the ethnic majority, dominance. Technologically, I observed signs of Borgmann’s (1984) “device paradigm” that are both institutionally (e.g. government agencies) and materially (e.g. infrastructure and tools) driving the IRP toward technological restoration and away from focal restoration. This was particularly apparent in such instances where means and ends were inverted, or the government agencies were inaccessible to the Ainu participants. These patterns in turn make IRP less appealing for Ainu and other local peoples. However, I also found that the room for creativity and attention to human-nature relationships in ecological restoration allow creation of the new space where Ainu can assert their values more strongly. This is the Kotan Iwor where the space embodies both Iwor and iwor, two representations of Wajin and Ainu views of the “Traditional Living Space” respectively. My findings on Kotan Iwor (the traditional settlement restoration site) suggest that there is a significant potential in the ecological restoration practices because of the practice’s inherent capacity to bring people and the landscape together in a creative context. With careful attention to colonial, technological, and other dynamics, good ecological restoration practices have the potential to restore and improve the well-being of indigenous and non-indigenous community members alike. / Graduate

As ecological restoration expands as a practice, so does the complexity, cost, and scale of many projects. Higgs (2003) terms these projects technological and argues they limit meaningful community focal restoration practices, one component of good ecological restoration. The planned removals of two large dams on the Elwha River in Washington State provide a case study to investigate this theory. I conducted 18 in-depth interviews with community leaders and restoration practitioners in order to explore the question, “How do technological restoration projects enable or constrain community engagement, and in the case of the Elwha River, how might such engagement be enlarged?” This interpretive study suggests that technological restoration projects, particularly when managed by federal agencies, expand engagement through a broadened 1) public audience and 2) suite of engagement activities. I argue for a “focusing” of engagement activities, and propose a matrix for assessing opportunities for local community engagement.