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This paper begins with two parallel, although not identical, images. The first is of Ota Benga, a Congolese "pygmy" brought to the St. Louis World Fair in 1904 and displayed in a cage for the entertainment of the visiting public. The second is of a Red Maple tree in a large concrete pot on the campus of Simon Fraser University on the unceded territories of the x?m??k??y??m (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and S?l?ílw?ta?/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. The remainder of the paper is an exploration of the varied responses these two images provoked for students, colleagues, and conference participants when confronted with the juxtaposition. In searching for an explanation, the paper deploys the work of Tunisian anti-colonial scholar Albert Memmi. Using Memmi's work as an anchor, we explore five of the most common responses in order to propose that "the natural world" and its myriad beings is/are colonized. This realization, we conclude, has dramatic implications for environmental education.

This article shares three vignettes, drawn from the life experience of its authors and five years of research at two schools, to illustrate the "choice" many males are forced to make between normalized "masculine" indifference and a stigmatized caring relationship with the natural world. We suggest this dissociation results, for some, in a kind of eco-double consciousness. The first vignette draws on memories from a male author encountering typical threats of violence for continuing to "proclaim" care for forested places. The second describes a cis male child who at the age of eight dubs himself "eco-boy," but by 10, is resigned to hiding his ethic of care in order to fit in with other boys. The last vignette examines an instance between two six-year-old cis boys, a female researcher, and several ants. We suggest shirking from the significance of these commonplace experiences with the adage "boys will be boys" is an excusatory move and that educators ought to be aware and address gendered expressions of power, violence, and care at a young age when the necessity for an eco-double consciousness first emerges. The conclusion emphasizes the need for educators to trouble masculine norms by finding ways to respond to the normalization of ecological violence, to keep open the possibility of developing eco-care in young males, and to trouble the notion of "boys being boys."