Embedded Bordering

Abstract

Borders and bordering practices can be understood as both an act of sovereign authority and establishing the contemporary international system. The drawing of borders also simultaneously legitimizes the state's sovereign authority, creating a political community 'inside' borders through which modern politics takes place. These processes are especially pertinent for settler states such as Canada, whose sovereign authority over its recognized territory is contingent on the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty.However, Indigenous nations reject Canadian claims of settler authority and legitimacy, instead continuing to uphold their own modes of governance and relationships to territory. This contestation of settler territoriality is practiced in various ways, with this article exploring how energy utility governance and infrastructure act as bordering practices-that is, as a productive means of manifesting and demonstrating territorial authority. Through the British Columbia Utilities Commission's IndigenousUtilities Regulation Inquiry, we explore the contestation of territory through what we refer to as 'embedded bordering'. In doing so, we identify a tension between ongoing settler moves to dispossession alongside decolonial potential in the bordermaking practices of energy governance and infrastructure.

Contesting colonial beachheads: Settler colonial (in)security professionals and Indigenous peoples’ energy infrastructure

“…7. For a further discussion of this in the case of the BCUC, see McEvoy and Midzain-Gobin (2021). 8.…”

“…2. For a more fulsome discussion of the Inquiry and the BCUC, see McEvoy and Midzain-Gobin (2021) and Hira et al (2020). 3.…”