Indigenous rights in the context of oil and gas pipelines in Canada: exposing naturalised power structures through a lens of intersectionality

Abstract

Situated within the larger context of Canadian pipeline decisions, it is argued that pipeline proposals in a geography without pre-existing pipelines are unsuccessful in contrast to proposals repurposing and expanding existing pipelines. The Chippewas of the Thames (the ‘Chippewas’) unsuccessfully opposed Enbridge's expansion, reversal and repurposing to crude oil of the Line 9 pipeline in Ontario, Canada. Analysing the Chippewas’ case within the context of recent oil- and gas-pipeline developments, using a lens of intersectionality focused on identity markers of indigeneity, socio-economic status and geographical location, exposes the naturalised power structures of Canadian law. These structures include the legal institutions of real-property law, Crown ownership of wildlife and fish, implicit ‘standing’ of the economy and assimilation of indigenous rights. Exposing this dichotomy of indigenous rights on paper vs. in practice deepens the consideration of indigenous rights, potentially allowing intersecting oppressions to be addressed.

Indigenous climate change adaptation: New directions for emerging scholarship

“…As Collins (2015: 1) observes, ‘intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities.’ Intersectionality has roots in Black, Chicana, Indigenous and Asian American feminism and emerged as a critique of the normalisation of white women’s experiences within feminist thought (Carby, 1982; Hooks, 1984, 1990) and the insight that race, gender and other axes of oppression ‘interlock’ to create situated and diverse experiences of womanhood for non-white women (Crenshaw, 1991; McClintock, 1995; Spelman, 1988). Intersectionality is an ‘analytical strategy’ (Collins, 2015: 11) applied across an array of fields to examine how multiple and interacting forms of identity situate people within power relations and produce unequal material and social conditions (Cho et al., 2013; Hurlbert and Fletcher, 2020), but also present unique opportunities or forms of agency (Maina-Okori et al., 2018).…”

Indigenous Environmental Justice within Marine Ecosystems: A Systematic Review of the Literature on Indigenous Peoples’ Involvement in Marine Governance and Management

“…Accordingly, in some instances, Indigenous women-only climate change adaptation, land and water management committees and practitioner teams are in operation (such as Indigenous women rangers in Australia as part of the Caring for Country programme) [241][242][243][244]. At present, there is a lack of research that adopts an intersectionality approach to questions pertaining to Indigenous marine governance and management as well as fisheries, and this is an area where future research is needed; this is especially critical in the context of gender equity, where a wealth of broad scholarship has demonstrated that gender justice and environmental justice are interwoven together, but we do not know what this means in the context of Indigenous societies, Indigenous ways of knowing, and Indigenous ways of living [245][246][247][248][249][250][251][252][253].…”