The Word for World is Forest (1972)

An Earth logging colony treats Athshe’s forest and inhabitants as resources, while Selver’s resistance changes the society he is trying to protect. Le Guin shifts among the coloniser, the observer and the colonised to expose the consequences of that arrangement. This compact book, first published as a novella during the Vietnam War, is a deliberately forceful intervention rather than a neutral debate. Read for the damage that continues after the invaders’ immediate aims have been challenged.