Neoliberal settler colonialism, Canada and the tar sands
Abstract
The Canadian government commenced the treaty-making process with the Indigenous peoples of the Athabasca region in 1870, motivated by the Geological Survey of Canada’s reports that petroleum existed in the area. This, in addition to the discovery of gold in the Klondike region, spurred an influx of unregulated settlement and resource extraction in the north. The trajectory of this history has continued to bring the Canadian settler state – and its oil industry stakeholders – into negotiation with indigenous Nations over the Athabasca tar sands. Currently contested is Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway project, which aims to move oil from the Edmonton, Alberta area by way of two massive pipelines covering 1,170km to Kitimat, British Columbia, where it would then be transported to Asia-Pacific markets by super-tankers. This paper examines the widespread criticism of the project from Indigenous and environmental groups, as well as responses to these objections by public/private partnerships between Enbridge, federal and provincial governments and their national security and counter-terrorism forces. It argues that recognising and naming contemporary forms of white settler colonialism, including these types of neoliberal partnerships, is required for new relations to become possible.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
References
1. I have chosen to use the term ‘tar sands’ to describe the bitumen rich and heavily exploited Athabasca region of Alberta, as well as other deposits of bitumen in Alberta and Saskatchewan. These territories are traditional lands of dozens of Indigenous nations, including the twenty-four First Nations named in Treaty 8 alone. While the term ‘oil sands’ is preferred by the oil and gas industry, and by the Canadian government, bitumen is a ‘tar-like’ substance in consistency, colour and odour that must be chemically processed to become ‘oil-like’.
2. Enbridge Inc., ‘Project at a Glance’, Northern Gateway Project (2012). Available at: http://www.northerngateway.ca/project-details/project-at-a-glance/; and Keller J., ‘Ottawa maintains support for Enbridge and Northern Gateway’, The Globe and Mail (19 July 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ottawa-maintains-support-for-enbridge-and-northern-gateway/article4426926/
3. American Petroleum Institute, ‘Fact sheet: oil from Canada’ (9 December 2011), available at: http://www.api.org/policy-and-issues/policy-items/oil%20sands/fact-sheet.aspx
4. The Yinka Dene Alliance are also the first signatories to the Save the Fraser Declaration, a declaration based on ancestral laws, which protects the Fraser River watershed regions (and the ocean migration routes of the salmon) from oil and gas exploration, extraction and pipelines. The Declaration has been signed by over 160 nations. For more information, or to read the Declaration see: http://yinkadene.ca/index.php/about
5. Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), ‘Creation of an RCMP-led INSET in Alberta’, Press Release (6 June 2012), available at: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/news-nouvelles/2012/06-06-inset-eisn-eng.htm
6. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), ‘Counter-terrorism unit to protect Alberta energy industry’ (6 June 2012), available at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/06/06/rcmp-counter-terrorism-oil.html
7. Tait C., ‘Ottawa launches counterterrorism unit’, The Globe and Mail (6 June 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/ottawa-launches-alberta-counterterrorism-unit/article4236422/
8. Ibid.
9. RCMP, ‘Creation’, op. cit.
10. Ibid.
11. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), ‘Canada: Indigenous leaders reject pipeline equity offer’, Press Release (16 February 2011), available at: http://www.iwgia.org/news/search-news?news_id=100
12. Marchel in Huseman J., Short D., ‘“A slow industrial genocide”: oil sands and the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Alberta’, International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 16, no.1, 2012), pp. 216–37, p. 221.
13. Such as: Greenpeace; Environmental Defense; the Climate Action Network; Forest Ethics; Dogwood Initiative; the ‘No Tankers’ campaign; The Pembina Institute, etc.
14. Wolfe P., ‘Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native’, Journal of Genocide Research (Vol. 8, no. 4, 2006), pp. 387–409, p. 390.
15. Ibid., p. 393.
16. Ibid.
17. Smith A., ‘Indigeneity, settler colonialism, white supremacy’, Global Dialogue (Vol. 12, no. 2, 2010), paras 1–31, para. 2.
18. Ibid., para. 8.
19. Ibid., para. 2.
20. Enbridge Inc., ‘Oil sands fact sheet’, Northern Gateway Project (2011), available at: http://www.northerngateway.ca/assets/pdf/General%20Project%20-%20Regulatory/NGP-FS-01-003_Oil%20Sands.pdf
21. Enbridge Inc., ‘Project’, 2012, op. cit.
22. Huseman J., Short D., ‘A slow industrial genocide’, op. cit., p. 220.
23. Ibid., p. 221.
24. Enbridge Inc., ‘Project’ (2012), op. cit.
25. Keller, op. cit.; Simpson J., ‘You heard it here: Northern Gateway’s dead’, The Globe and Mail (5 October 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/you-heard-it-here-northern-gateways-dead/article4589760/
26. Gardner T., ‘U.S. agency launches probe after Enbridge oil spill’, The Globe and Mail (28 July 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/us-agency-launches-probe-after-enbridge-oil-spill/article4446882/
27. Keller, op. cit.
28. Gardner, op. cit.
29. Ibid.
30. Wingrove J., ‘Small oil leak discovered in Alberta’, The Globe and Mail (26 July 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/small-oil-leak-discovered-in-alberta/article4442357/
31. See for example: Greenpeace, ‘Deep Trouble: the reality of in situ tar sands operations’ (2011), available at: http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/Energy/tarsands/Resources/Reports/DEEP-TROUBLE-THE-REALITY-OF-IN-SITU-TAR-SANDS-OPERATIONS/; and Anthony Swift and Nathan Lemphers; Susan Casey-Lefkowitz; Katie Terhune; Danielle Droitsch, ‘Pipeline and tanker trouble: the impact to British Columbia’s communities, rivers and Pacific Coastline from tar sands oil transport’; Report from the National Resource Defense Council (November 2011), available at: http://www.nrdc.org/international/pipelinetrouble.asp
32. Keller, op. cit.
33. Tait, op. cit.
34. Library and Archives Canada (LAC), ‘Treaty 8’ (2008), available at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/treaty8/index-e.html
35. Huseman, Short, op. cit., pp. 217–18; LAC, op. cit.
36. Huseman, Short, op. cit., p. 217.
37. Ibid., p. 218.
38. Ibid., p. 218; and LAC, op. cit.
39. The Métis are a nation or people whose traditional homelands include Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, extending to parts of Ontario, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and parts of the northern United States. They emerged as a distinct nation over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the intermarriage of white settler populations and Indigenous nations, developing a distinct culture and tradition and land title. The Métis are recognised as one of the Indigenous groups represented by the term ‘Aboriginal’, whose rights are protected by the Constitution. The Métis National Council uses the following definition: ‘“Métis” means a person who self-identifies as Métis, is distinct from other Aboriginal peoples, is of historic Métis Nation Ancestry and who is accepted by the Métis Nation’ (Métis National Council, http://www.metisnation.ca/index.php/who-are-the-metis/citizenship). See also Flanagan T., ‘Resource industries and security issues in Northern Alberta’, report prepared for the Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute (2009), available at: http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/Resource%20Industries%20and%20Security%20Issues%20in%20Northern%20Alberta.pdf
40. Flanagan, ibid.
41. Thomas in IWGIA, op. cit.
42. Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), ‘HBC heritage – our history: timelines’, Hudson’s Bay Company website (2012), available at: http://www2.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history/timeline/hbc/
43. Enbridge Inc., ‘Aboriginal and Native American policy’, Enbridge (2009), available at: http://www.enbridge.com/InYourCommunity/AboriginalCommunities/~/media/www/Site%20Documents/In%20Your%20Community/aboriginal-native-american-policy.ashx
44. Ibid.
45. Taylor and Friedel look at the effects of private-public partnerships on Indigenous nations in the context of the tar sands industry and identify three broad forms of historic relation between the federal government and Indigenous nations: fur trade colonialism; welfare colonialism; and neoliberal partnerships. Again, as the ‘logic of elimination’ continues to structure all three of these forms, and as settler colonialism is a unique structure distinct from ‘traditional’ colonialism – whereby colonisers ultimately aim to return to the metropole – these particularities are lost in Taylor and Friedel’s analysis. Nonetheless, Taylor and Friedel utilise this framework of three forms of relation in order to better understand the contemporary focus on private-public partnership approaches to education and training of First Nation and Métis people in the community of Wood Buffalo, Alberta, near Fort McMurray.
46. Altamirano-Jiménez in Taylor and Friedel, op. cit., p. 821.
47. Wingrove J., ‘Ottawa’s plan to allow private property on reserves re-ignites debate’, The Globe and Mail (6 August 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawas-plan-to-allow-private- property-on-reserves-reignites-debate/article4466019/
48. AFN in Wingrove, op. cit.
49. Ibid.
50. Taylor, Friedel, op. cit., pp. 831–2.
51. Ibid., p. 832.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. As Smith warns, ‘the consequence of not developing a critical apparatus for intersecting all the logics of white supremacy, including settler colonialism, is that it prevents us from imagining an alternative to the racial state’. Smith, op. cit., para. 20.
55. Ibid., para. 12.
56. Ibid., para. 29.
57. Smith notes, ‘we need to look at how “settlers” are differentiated through white supremacy’, thus complicating the settler/indigenous binary, which has been critiqued by many scholars. Ibid., para. 29.
58. Flanagan, op. cit.
59. Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI), ‘Board of Directors’ (2012), available at: http://www.cdfai.org/boardofdirectors.htm
60. Lorenzo Veracini in Settler Colonialism: a theoretical overview (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) discusses the notion of the ‘Indian problem’ as a key part of the transferist rationale of settler colonialism and of the ‘Indigenous incarceration/criminalization/institutionalization’ transfer strategy in particular (pp. 45–6). Veracini has argued that settler colonial formations can be summarised ‘as domination for the purpose of transfer’ (p. 34), as ‘all settler projects are foundationally premised on fantasies of ultimately “cleansing” the settler body politic of its (indigenous and exogenous) alterities’ (p. 33). Linking this fantasy back to anxieties over sovereignty, Veracini writes, ‘treating the indigenous “problem” as a welfare matter … [or with] calls to “close the (socioeconomic) gap” between indigenous and non-indigenous constituencies are premised on indigenous dysfunction, not sovereign entitlement’ (p. 46).
61. Flanagan, op. cit., p. 8. Caledonia is a municipality in southwestern Ontario, which lies on Six Nations of the Grand River (Haudenosaunee, Six Nations) territories. Conflict between the majority of the settler community and Indigenous peoples and their allies erupted between 2005–2007 over ongoing development projects on settler-unrecognised Indigenous lands. Indigenous activists and their allies occupied the Douglas Creek Estates development site, and created a blockade halting development by Henco Industries. In response, thousands of Caledonia’s settler residents held rallies and on several occasions confronted the Indigenous activists, resulting in racist and physical violence and increased police and government involvement in addressing the land dispute. See: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, available at: http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016337/1100100016338
62. Flanagan, ibid., p. 9.
63. Ibid., p. 12.
64. The term ‘band council’ refers to the legal system of Indigenous governance imposed by the Canadian state through the Indian Act. Band councils do not necessarily recognise hereditary chiefs or elders, and are thus controversial governing bodies in many Indigenous communities. Chiefs or chief councillors of the band councils are thus not necessarily hereditary leaders.
65. Lukacs M., Groves K., ‘RCMP spied on B.C. natives protesting pipeline plan, documents show’, The Toronto Star (9 May 2012), available at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1175824--rcmp-spied-on-b-c-natives-protesting-pipeline-plan-documents-show
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Smith’s notion of multiple logics of white supremacy, the intersection of the genocidal logic – which anchors colonialism – and the orientalist logic, which anchors war, is particularly prevalent in the recent messaging of ‘ethical’ Canadian oil. In the Canadian context, the orientalist logic combines with the genocidal logic in the tar sands, and justifies the use of these counter-terrorism/national security measures targeting Indigenous leaders working with environmental groups. Smith, op. cit.
70. Ethical Oil, ‘About EthicalOil.org’, available at: http://www.ethicaloil.org/about/
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. It is important to note that while Smith’s first logic of white supremacy (slaveability/anti-black racism) has not been a part of my analysis because it is not as evident in the context of the Canadian tar sands industry and opposition to it, it too is present. This white supremacist logic works as ‘the anchor of capitalism’ because it ultimately ‘commodifies all workers’ and uses racial hierarchy to value these ‘commodities’.
74. Foote J., ‘Jobs and Growth Act, 2012’, Canada, House of Commons, Edited Hansard, 191. 41st Parliament, 1st session (4 December 2012), available at: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=1&DocId=5916282
75. Minh-Thu Quach A., ‘Jobs and Growth Act, 2012’, ibid.
76. Vasey D., Saunders S., Grant S., ‘Ethical Enbridge? The real story of Line 9 and the tar sands giga-project’, Rabble.ca (23 January 2013), available at: http://rabble.ca/news/2013/01/mcethicaltm-enbridge-line-9-and-tar-sands-gigaproject#.UP_nFYxqBoI.twitter
77. Austen I., ‘Oil sand industry in Canada tied to higher carcinogen level’, New York Times (7 January 2013), available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/world/americas/oil-sand-industry-in-canada-tied-to-higher-carcinogen-level.html?_r=2&
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid.
80. Charleyboy L., ‘Idle No More: Canada’s indigenous people are demanding a better deal’, Guardian (11 January 2013), available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/11/canada-indigenous-people-demand-better-deal
81. Smith J., ‘Chief Theresa Spence set to end liquid-only diet Thursday’, The Toronto Star (23 January 2013), available at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1318822--delegation-working-on-end-to-theresa-spence-s-hunger-strike
Biographies
Jen Preston is a PhD Candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University, Canada. Her current research focuses on Canadian white settler colonialism, its historical roots and contemporary processes.
