Toxic Encounters, Settler Logics of Elimination, and the Future of a Continent

Abstract

This paper engages the relationship between toxic geographies and settler colonialism. By bringing to light larger structures and histories that underpin the settler colonial project, I examine a series of toxic encounters and consider the racialised hegemonic narratives that enable the production toxicity. Among these is a methylmercury contamination in Northern Ontario, just upstream from Grassy Narrows First Nation, and a cluster of toxic conversations that bled through social media in the wake of the murder of Colten Boushie, a 22‐year‐old Cree man in Saskatchewan, Canada. I argue that examining the normative ideologies, settler narratives, and socio‐political structures that are involved in the production of toxicity provides valuable insight into the diffuse and relational colonial logics that define the lives that are privileged as the standard, and those that fall outside the regulatory category of the Human, and as a result, are subject to elimination.

A State‐of‐the‐Art Review of Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Pollution

“…The arts (e.g., music, storytelling, photography) have been particularly effective at relaying IPs' fights against pollution to global audiences and inspiring social and policy action towards pollution issues affecting IP (Branagan 2005; Gillespie 2013; Horton 2017). Increasing presence of IPs on social media (Carlson et al 2017; Nunn 2018) is also contributing to give visibility to conflicts around pollution (Örestig and Lindgren 2017). For example, contestation of resource extraction can be traced through digital media in Inuit communities (Scobie and Rodgers 2013).…”

“…Part of the literature on IPs and pollution has framed pollution as a field of technical intervention, where impacts can often be curtailed or compensated, thereby relegating IPs to the status of helpless victims whose vulnerabilities should be remediated (Bagelman and Wiebe 2017; Nunn 2018). The depoliticization of pollution through the deployment of technical narratives (e.g., offering only technical solutions to problems that are fundamentally political) has rendered IPs' interests, agencies, and claims largely invisible (Cameron 2012; Liboiron et al 2018), often overlooking the proactive role of IPs in fighting against environmental injustices.…”

“…Furthermore, the important environmental justice issues surrounding IPs, in that they did not create much of the pollution they are exposed to, remain neglected by both national and international laws. Furthermore, the contributions of IPs to prevent, limit, and control pollution have seldom been recognized (Bagelman and Wiebe 2017; Nunn 2018). Greater engagement of IPs on environmental governance can help to incorporate IPs' social, spiritual, and customary values in environmental quality and ecosystem health (Finn and Jackson 2011; Escott et al 2015).…”

The Impossibility of a Future in the Absence of a Past: Drifting in the In-Between

“…Drift on this road is the tumbling of leaves, weeds, dust, and wind; further, it is debris-plastic bags, beer cans, chip packages, diapers, spare tires, washing machines-all gathered together in heaps, assemblages of both waste and opportunity. In this way, we can imagine drift also as an assemblage, an accumulation of garbage dumps, clear cuts, and reserves and, further, of abandoned plantations, wastelands designed to contain the detritus of colonial administrations (see, for example, Davies 2018, Hoover 2017, Keeling & Sandlos, 2015, Murphy 2017, Nunn 2018, Simmons 2017).…”

Toxic sights: The spectacle of hazardous waste removal

“…The stockpile at Vikuge farm is one of countless others located in Tanzania and across the continent. The circumstances of emergence differ from one stockpile to the next, but like all hazardous waste, their effects are raced, classed, gendered, and situated in colonial histories (Nunn, 2018). This was an exploitation of loose regulatory structures (see Elibariki & Maguta, 2017) underpinned by 'racialised disregard' for lives (Williams, 2018); a form of toxic waste colonialism (Pratt, 2011).…”