Post-wildfire morel mushroom harvesting and the production of post-disaster opportunity in settler-colonial Canada

This thesis explores processes of opportunism and socio-political change following so-called “natural” disasters through a multi-sited case study of the post-wildfire morel mushroom (Morchella sp.) harvest in Western Canada. Morels are edible fungi which fruit en masse the first spring season following large wildfires in western North America. This work follows harvesters who picked morels after the 2016 Horse River wildfire on Treaty 8 territory (near Fort McMurray, Alberta), and the 2018 Shovel Lake wildfire on Nadleh Whut’en, Stellat’en, and Nak’azdli Whut’en Territories (British Columbia). Thinking with and beyond the concepts of disaster capitalism and disaster colonialism, this thesis extends analyses of post-disaster change from considerations of states and large corporations to smaller-scale actors. As such, I consider the roles of hobbyist local harvesters, precarious pieceworkers in the wild mushroom industry, Indigenous Guardians of the Land, and forest ecologies more broadly. I demonstrate that while disaster capitalism and disaster colonialism are pervasive in the post-disaster landscape, they are not inevitable. Instead, I argue that post-disaster opportunity is emergent, contingent, and includes possibilities for reworking, resistance, and resurgence. In this work, I argue that settler-colonial aims to subsume nature produce the ecological conditions which make the commercial mushroom harvest possible. This industry, in turn, disproportionately benefits settler harvesters over Indigenous Nations and forest ecologies. I also demonstrate that the materiality of wildfire memories affects different groups’ capacities to harvest mushrooms, influence others, and define the ethical standards of the harvest. Finally, I examine how settler claims to post-disaster opportunity on Indigenous lands¬ are connected to broader affective “settler common sense” and “white possessive” claims to adventure, freedom and commerce. Together, these findings demonstrate how the concurrent and often contradicting post-disaster opportunism demonstrated by small-scale actors relate to broader politics about natural disasters, environmental politics, resource extraction, and Indigenous governance within Canada and in other settler-colonial contexts.

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