The contested scales of indigenous and settler jurisdiction: Unist’ot’en struggles with Canadian pipeline governance

McCreary, Tyler; Turner, J. Rick

doi:10.1080/07078552.2018.1536367

Cited by 38 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…(Article 25). The notion of territorial sovereignty, however, remains poorly recognized and unevenly applied, as do notions of indigenous sovereignty over governance-usually not valorized by courts and political elites if they clash with existing capitalist extractive interests [24,25]. Linked to these concerns, visual sovereignty looms importantly as representing indigenous land, life, and culture by outsiders often risks (subtly or overtly) reifying neo-colonial practices of socio-ecological knowledge production [26].…”

Section: Background-colonialism's Afterlife Indigenous Rights and Oimentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual Storytelling, Intergenerational Environmental Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty: Exploring Images and Stories amid a Contested Oil Pipeline Project

Spiegel

Thomas

O'neill³

et al. 2020

IJERPH

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Visual practices of representing fossil fuel projects are entangled in diverse values and relations that often go underexplored. In Canada, visual media campaigns to aggressively push forward the fossil fuel industry not only relegate to obscurity indigenous values but mask evidence on health impacts as well as the aspirations of those most affected, including indigenous communities whose food sovereignty and stewardship relationship to the land continues to be affronted by oil pipeline expansion. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation, based at the terminal of the Trans Mountain Pipeline in Canada, has been at the forefront of struggles against the pipeline expansion. Contributing to geographical, environmental studies, and public health research grappling with the performativity of images, this article explores stories conveying health, environmental, and intergenerational justice concerns on indigenous territory. Adapting photovoice techniques, elders and youth illustrated how the environment has changed over time; impacts on sovereignty—both food sovereignty and more broadly; concepts of health, well-being and deep cultural connection with water; and visions for future relationships. We explore the importance of an intergenerational lens of connectedness to nature and sustainability, discussing visual storytelling not just as visual counter-narrative (to neocolonial extractivism) but also as an invitation into fundamentally different ways of seeing and interacting.

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Section: Background-colonialism's Afterlife Indigenous Rights and Oimentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual Storytelling, Intergenerational Environmental Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty: Exploring Images and Stories amid a Contested Oil Pipeline Project

Spiegel

Thomas

O'neill³

et al. 2020

IJERPH

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“…At the centre was the ethical problem of a judge's injunction enabling a company to clear Indigenous people and others from roads on land never ceded by Indigenous people in the first place. Amid deceptive news media reportage that helped to distort public debate on harm, political geographies of care in the courtroom have thus become about reclaiming, pointing to more than inconsistencies and omissions under settler-colonial law itself, but more importantly, taking seriously the foundational point that theorizing pipeline governance ultimately necessities engaging with Indigenous modes of care and jurisdiction over development ( McCreary & Turner, 2018 ; see also Asch, 2019 ). Being an ethnographer in the court gallery inexorably leads to reflecting on what jurisdiction a settler-colonial court actually has on land that was stolen from Indigenous people, and that remains stolen.…”

Section: Articulating Irreparable Harm and Remakinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate injustice, criminalisation of land protection and anti-colonial solidarity: Courtroom ethnography in an age of fossil fuel violence

Spiegel

2021

Political Geography

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As plans for expanding fossil fuel infrastructure continue to ramp up despite threats to the planet, how are geographers to address the criminalisation and prosecution of peaceful acts of defending earth, water and land? Reflecting on a courtroom ethnography and debates spanning legal geography, political ecology and social movements studies, this article explores embodied struggles around oil, ‘justice’ and geographies of caring – discussing how Indigenous youth, grandmothers in their eighties and others were convicted of ‘criminal contempt’ for being on a road near an oil pipeline expansion project. The project (“Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion”) was created to transport unprecedented levels of heavy oil (bitumen) across hundreds of kilometres of Indigenous peoples' territory that was never ceded to settler-colonial authorities in Canada. Focusing on a controversial injunction designed to protect oil industry expansion, the discussion explores the performativity of a judge's exercise of power, including in denying the necessity to act defence, side-lining Indigenous jurisdiction, and escalating prison sentences. Courtroom ethnography offers a unique vantage point for witnessing power at work and vast resources used by state actors to suppress issues fundamental to the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Paris Climate Accord. It also provides a lens into the intersectional solidarity and ethics of care among those who dare to challenge colonialism and hyper-extractivism, inviting engagement with multiple meanings of ‘ irreparable harm ’ at various scales. The article calls for more attention to power relations, values and affects shaping courtroom dynamics in an age in which fossil fuel interests, climate crisis and settler-colonial control over courts are entwined in evermore-complex violent entanglements.

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“…To briefly provide context, in 2019, CGL won an injunction from the Supreme Court of British Columbia, ordering the Unist'ot'en Camp -established by members of the Unist'ot'en clan of the Wet'suwet'en First Nations to block the pipelineto dismantle their blockade (CGL v. Huson, 2019). The Unist'ot'en Camp's goals include protecting community health, land, water, and sovereignty from the impacts of the 670-kilometer-long CGL pipeline (owned by TC Energy), carrying liquefied natural gas or "LNG" from Dawson Creek, BC, to an export terminal in Kitimat, BC (McCreary & Turner, 2019Unist'ot'en Camp, 2017). Another key actor is the RCMP, the core policing agency responsible for enforcing the injunction, which raided Unist'ot'en Camp for failing to comply with the injunction (Brown & Bracken, 2020).…”

Section: Findings: Rationales Of Securitizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraction, Indigenous Dispossession and State Power: Lessons from Standing Rock and Wet’suwet’en Resistance

Mittal

2021

TAR

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When Indigenous-led resistance to land- and water-killing projects threatens extraction, settler-colonial state and corporate institutions use security mechanisms to eliminate such “threats.” Using as case studies the pipeline conflicts of the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s (especially Unist’ot’en Camp’s) resistance to Coastal GasLink (CGL) in British Columbia (BC), Canada, and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota, United States (US), this paper explores how fossil-fuel extraction interacts with critical infrastructure (CI) securitization to further Indigenous land dispossession. I argue that although the Wet’suwet’en and Standing Rock cases both involved the state and corporations criminalizing Indigenous resistance to extraction—to uphold fossil-fuel capital interests—the Wet’suwet’en case is unique because Canadian actors attempted to pacify resistance through symbolic appeals to Indigenous rights. Indigenous communities across the world are violently oppressed for peacefully defending their water, land, and communities. However, the motives and strategies of violence are unique for every colonial jurisdiction exercising violence, and for every Indigenous community impacted. I compare and contrast the rationales and strategiesof both cases through an in-depth content analysis of passages from TigerSwan surveillance and BC Supreme Court injunction documents. I discuss my findings within theoretical debates on dispossession and securitization.

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The contested scales of indigenous and settler jurisdiction: Unist’ot’en struggles with Canadian pipeline governance

Cited by 38 publications

References 48 publications

Visual Storytelling, Intergenerational Environmental Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty: Exploring Images and Stories amid a Contested Oil Pipeline Project

Visual Storytelling, Intergenerational Environmental Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty: Exploring Images and Stories amid a Contested Oil Pipeline Project

Climate injustice, criminalisation of land protection and anti-colonial solidarity: Courtroom ethnography in an age of fossil fuel violence

Extraction, Indigenous Dispossession and State Power: Lessons from Standing Rock and Wet’suwet’en Resistance

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