Re-Claiming Place: The Millennium Forest, Borgie, North Sutherland, Scotland

Abstract

In this paper I explore the metaphorical and material significance of the Millennium Forest at Borgie in the context of an emerging movement for the collective purchase of private estates in the crofting areas of Scotland. My argument focuses, first, on the means whereby the Forest, as visual art, is constituted as a site through which what Edward Said calls a ‘culture of resistance’ is mobilised and through which an inclusive sense of belonging to place is imagined. Second, I connect the poetics of resistance of the Forest with the politics of territorial land claims of the North Sutherland Community Forestry Trust, whose objective is to reverse ongoing processes of dispossession through the collective ownership and management of the 3000–hectare Borgie Forest which the one-hectare Millennium Forest borders.