Extraction and settlement: Clifford Gordon Atleo, Jonathan Martin Boron, ‘Extractive Settler Colonialism: Navigating Extractive Bargains on Indigenous Territories in Canada’, in Paul Bowles, Nathan Andrews (eds), Extractive Bargains, Springer, 2023, pp. 97-118 | settler colonial studies blog

Extraction and settlement: Clifford Gordon Atleo, Jonathan Martin Boron, ‘Extractive Settler Colonialism: Navigating Extractive Bargains on Indigenous Territories in Canada’, in Paul Bowles, Nathan Andrews (eds), Extractive Bargains, Springer, 2023, pp. 97-118

30Sep23

Abstract: Canada currently faces the challenge of implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, while also managing the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This shift will require massive new mineral extraction projects in ways that will continue to impact both the Global North and the South. The provincial government of British Columbia and the Canadian federal government have ostensibly committed to the current era of “reconciliation.” Despite this, conflicts over Indigenous jurisdiction and resource development persist in the fossil fuel (i.e. Trans Mountain, Coastal Gas Link) and renewable energy sectors (i.e. Site C dam). Extractive bargains occur at local, national, and global scales. With respect to ongoing fossil fuel extraction in Canada, Indigenous peoples and territories have often been sacrificed in favour of the “national interest.” Myriad factors—legal, political, economic—have led to greater Indigenous involvement in mainstream resource extraction projects via revenue-sharing and impact benefit agreements. We argue that these extractive bargains have been largely Faustian in nature. At the heart of the problem is an ongoing denial of self-determination and Indigenous nations’ (in)ability to exercise true free, prior, and informed consent with respect to development projects, fossil fuel or renewable.

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