Anti-Colonial Science: A Course Journal. Vol. 3, 2025. https://ojs.library.dal.ca/acs/

The White Trillium: Naturalizing the Unnatural in Ontario

Anna Carsley-Jones

What does it mean for a native plant to be rendered representative of a settler colonial territory?

White Trillium, known botanically as trillium grandiflorum and known in anishinaabemowin (ojibwemowin) as ininiiwindibiigegan or baashknjibgwaan¹, is a flowering plant native to Algonquin Anishnaabe territory, and beyond this, native to much of Turtle Island (North America). As a settler born and raised within Alqonquin Anishnaabe territory - in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada – the white trillium has been both a frequent sight and symbol of political importance for me. White trilliums covered the edge of my childhood backyard, grew in the wooded pathway beyond the yard’s fence, and have been visually replicated on ID cards, provincial tax forms and letter heads. The three latter examples address the flower’s political symbolism: the white trillium is the official floral emblem of Ontario. Declared the province’s official flower by the 1937 Floral Emblem Act², the white trillium has become integral to the Ontarian image and has influenced beliefs about human behaviour in relation to the land. ³

The white trillium is of interest to me because of its status as both a botanical element of the land and a visual representative of the settler colonial province. I find the trillium's botanical status useful to consider, connecting it to a larger story about the politics of plants in colonial contexts, as Londa Schiebinger discusses in “Exotic Abortifacients: The Global Politics of Plants in the 18^th Century”⁴. In emphasizing the particular context of the settler colonial province, I benefit from Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” which emphasizes the necessity of total appropriation of Indigenous land by the settler colonial society⁵. I argue that the political meaning attributed to the white trillium is representative of this appropriation, enacting a claim to the land’s attribute (plant) and fabricating a natural connection to the land. Ontarian settlers naturalize (make natural) their presence within the colonial province by embracing a native local plant as representative of this presence.

Tuck and Yang assert that settler colonialism, as a particular type of colonial practice, necessarily involves the complete appropriation of Indigenous life and land by the settler society. Settlers attempt moves to innocence⁶, which aim to legitimize their presence on Indigenous land and hence alleviate their responsibility to regard the colonial harm their presence perpetuates; these moves to innocence are merely self-soothing settler practices and do nothing to tangibly engage with decolonial practice. In centering Ontario as the location of my geographic inquiry, and particularly as a settler resident of Ontario, upon land of Anishinaabe peoples, Cree peoples, and Haudenosaunee peoples⁷, I see the province as an unmistakable example of white European settler colonialism. Particularly as Ontario holds the capital of Canada, it is an important centre for colonial decision making and power exertion upon/within⁸ Indigenous land.

The particular move to innocence named by Tuck & Yang which I highlight is that of settler adoption fantasies: defined as the desire of settlers to become without becoming [Indian]⁹. Referring to the character of Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye) in James F. Cooper’s 1826 The Last of the Mohicans, Tuck and Yang write “[s]ettler fantasies of adoption alleviate the anxiety of settler un-belonging [... h]e adopts the love of land and therefore thinks he belongs to the land”¹⁰. Settler adoption fantasies allow settlers to naturalize their existence within Indigenous land, believing that their love of the land and eagerness to be recognized as rightful inhabitants can save them from their own illegitimacy. I believe that the formal recognition of the white trillium in Ontario aligns with settler adoption fantasies – asserting settler relationship to the land and fabricating inextricability between the land and the colonial entity.

Regarding the white trillium’s status as a botanical being, I find it useful to draw upon Schiebinger and assert the importance of plants in colonial political contexts. Schiebinger writes about scientific work in the 18^th century, focusing on Maria Sibylla Merian, a German naturalist who recorded the abortifacient quality, used by Indigenous people and enslaved Africans, of flos pavinos (peacock flower) in Surinam, a Dutch colony¹¹. Schienbinger states that the cultivation and use of certain plants as abortifacients was (is) regarded as political, as it opposed the expectations of creating a larger enslaved population and showed an Indigenous person’s and enslaved person’s exertion of personal autonomy, which is antithetical to the subjugative practice of colonialism and enslavement¹². In the Ontarian context, the use of the white trillium as a floral emblem is also political though its politicization exists in the affirmation of colonial practice on the land, rather than in opposing colonial practice. While flos pavinos in Schiebinger’s text serves a different purpose in relation to the colonial entity than the white trillium does, each example demonstrates the absorption (physical or metaphorical) of a local plant as an assertion of control — control over one's body (via abortion) or control over land (via naturalizing colonial presence). The white trillium, as a plant native to the land, has been made a visual political symbol for the province and is thereby used to legitimize Ontarian presence on the land.

This demonstrates the appropriation of land discussed by Tuck and Yang, and, as mentioned above, suggests a connection between the natural land and the settler entity, fulfilling settler adoption fantasies¹³. In declaring that the white trillium is the flower of Ontario, the settler province fabricates a relationship to the land (even if just to a specific plant) and renders the flower inextricable from the province. I see this as blurring the line between the natural land and the unnatural settler society; if a native plant is the flower of Ontario, doesn’t this indicate that Ontario, too, is native (natural) to the land? I conclude that the politicization of the white trillium and the reverence afforded to it by Ontarians asserts the settler society as connected to, represented by, and thereby rightfully within, the land.

Bibliography

---

1. Translations by “FREELANG Ojibwe-English-Ojibwe online dictionary”(Freelang.net, 2024, accessed February 3, 2025. https://www.freelang.net/online/ojibwe.php?lg=gb) and “Nishnaabemwin: Odawa & Eastern Ojibwe online dictionary” (Algonquin Dictionaries Project, 2020, accessed February 3, 2025. https://dictionary.nishnaabemwin.atlas-ling.ca/#/results)↩︎

2. Ontario (1937) "c 92 Floral Emblem Act," (Ontario: Revised Statutes: Vol. 1937: Iss. 1, Article 96. Accessed February 3, 2025. http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/rso/vol1937/iss1/96)↩︎

3. It is a popular myth that picking a white trillium is illegal in Ontario and there was in fact an amendment proposed in 2009 to the Floral Emblem Act, Bill 184, which would render the picking of a white trillium illegal and punishable with a minimum $500 fine. This bill has not been passed by the Ontario Legislature, but nevertheless demonstrates the symbolic value placed upon the white trillium in the Ontarian context.

   Leal, Jeff. “Bill 184, Ontario Trillium Protection Act, 2009.” (Legislative Assembly of Ontario, 2009, accessed January 31, 2025. https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-39/session-1/bill-184.)↩︎

4. Schiebinger, L. “Exotic Abortifacients: The Global Politics of Plants in the 18^th Century,” Endeavour 24, no. 3 (September 2000): 117-121. Available on HSTC3403 Brightspace.↩︎

5. E. Tuck and K.W. Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2012): p.5. Available on HSTC3403 Brightspace.↩︎

6. E. Tuck and K.W. Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor” p. 9.↩︎

7. Information from “Native Land” Native Land Digital, 2024. Accessed February 4, 2025. https://native-land.ca/. Note that Anishinaabe, Cree and Haudenosaunee are broad cultural-linguistic groups, within which many specific nations and communities belong.↩︎

8. I write upon/within to signify that these decisions are imposed upon (towards) Indigenous land and that these decisions are made within the land, by the occupying settler entity.

   ↩︎

9. E. Tuck and K.W. Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor” p. 13-17.↩︎

10. E. Tuck and K.W. Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor” p.15.↩︎

11. Schiebinger, L. “Exotic Abortifacients: The Global Politics of Plants in the 18th Century,” p.117.↩︎

12. Schiebinger, L. “Exotic Abortifacients: The Global Politics of Plants in the 18th Century,” p.119-121.↩︎

13. E. Tuck and K.W. Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor” p.16-17.↩︎

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Carsley-Jones

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Works in Anti-Colonial Science: A course Journal are governed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International(CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Copyrights are held by the authors.