The Word for World is Forest (1972)

On a forest world, human colonisers impose forced labour and violence on the inhabitants. Le Guin asks what resistance costs a culture whose existing ways of living were organised differently. Dreams, language and the forest are part of that enquiry, rather than decorative scenery. The novella first appeared in 1972 and later became a separate book. It belongs to the Hainish setting but needs no preparation; expect colonial brutality rather than a gentle ecological fable.