Along a mining road in Nunavut, truckers move gold ore from its extraction point to a mill for pr... more Along a mining road in Nunavut, truckers move gold ore from its extraction point to a mill for processing.
Whale Tail, the site where the metal is pulled from the earth, is a satellite mine to the older Meadowbank project, which operated from 2010-2018. Workers haul ore from Whale Tail to the mill at the old Meadowbank mine site. The high traffic haul road is 50 km long and intersects with the migratory paths of several herds of barren ground caribou, an invaluable resource for the nearby Inuit community of Baker Lake.
When the Whale Tail mine was first approved in 2018, the proponent, Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. repeatedly committed to working with a stakeholder advisory group to ensure “zero harm” to caribou. Once the mine began production, the company switched its rhetoric about zero harm with arguments about the need to balance environmental protection with project economics.
Monitoring documents make clear that Agnico Eagle violated project terms and conditions by unilaterally relaxing caribou protection measures on several instances. In 2020 the company attempted to weaken requirements—which were outlined in its approved management plans—for closing the haul road during caribou migrations, without first consulting the advisory group as they were required to do. Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut pushed back and forced Agnico Eagle to withdraw these changes, but the company still failed to fully implement protection measures for over 22,000 caribou—almost 40 per cent of the caribou that migrated through the project area that year.
These actions sparked frustration and concern from Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut, most notably in written comments to the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB). Created by the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the NIRB is the co-management board responsible for the Environmental Impact Assessment of mining projects in Nunavut. NIRB screens and reviews proposals for mineral exploration and mining in Nunavut, and makes recommendations to the federal government regarding whether projects should be approved and, if so, under what conditions. It is the federal government that ultimately decides whether mining projects should be approved. Canada is also responsible for enforcing project terms and conditions, with NIRB playing an important role in oversight and monitoring.
The Government of Nunavut, Kivalliq Inuit Association, and Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization regularly identified and expressed deep concern in written submissions to NIRB around Agnico Eagle’s monitoring deficiencies and the company’s failures to properly implement management plans to protect caribou. The Government of Nunavut repeatedly urged NIRB to intervene and direct Agnico Eagle to adhere to the terms and conditions of its project certificate. The NIRB paid little attention to these submissions, which raises broader questions around the implementation and enforcement of terms and conditions for mining projects in Nunavut.
In October 2022, the Deputy Minister of Environment for the Government of Nunavut wrote to NIRB and Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), requesting that NIRB direct Agnico Eagle to implement the required mitigation measures pertaining to caribou. They also asked CIRNAC to fulfill their mandate under the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and ensure the mine’s compliance with its project terms and conditions.
CIRNAC subsequently conducted an investigation into non-compliance at the Whale Tail mine, which concluded in May 2023 that Agnico Eagle was not complying with project terms and conditions regarding caribou. The report included an order requiring the company to “implement diligently the Terrestrial Ecological Management Plan” for the Whale Tail project. It concluded that Agnico Eagle’s actions amounted to “non-compliance and willful disobedience” that had harmed caribou.
The federal investigation identified numerous instances of non-compliance. In 2019 the haul road was ‘closed’ for 92 days due to the presence of migrating caribou. However, on 82 of those days non-essential traffic—including convoys of haul trucks—continued to use the road. In both 2018 and 2019, Agnico Eagle did not carry out road surveys for caribou with the required frequency. One road received no surveys at all in summer 2018.
The investigation also identified serious deficiencies in the quality of monitoring and research conducted by Agnico Eagle to inform their environmental management and mitigate negative impacts. The company had chronic issues with data reporting, missing information, and misleading analyses—which also made it difficult to verify if the management plan was being followed, and to assess if mitigation measures were effective.
In 2018, the company used incorrect seasons and time frames for caribou road surveys, leading to “misleading statistical analysis.” Agnico Eagle reported that caribou numbers during the 2019 spring and fall migrations were “the highest since surveys began”, suggesting mitigations were successful; however, after reviewing the data the federal investigator found this to be “factually incorrect and misleading.” And in a written statement cited in the federal investigator’s report, the Government of Nunavut described important conclusions about caribou interactions with road infrastructure in the company’s 2019 report, conclusions made without any supporting data, as “a concerning trait that leads to unnecessary confusion and disinformation amongst reviewers, regulators and the public at large.”
The federal order affirms that the company must comply with all project terms and conditions, including implementing approved management plans, and may not unilaterally and arbitrarily weaken or remove protection measures. However, it does not include any penalty—which reflects the reality that companies often suffer little consequence for repeated non-compliance. It is unclear whether the federal order will result in mining companies like Agnico Eagle changing their approach to monitoring and mitigation at mining projects in Nunavut.
Part of the significance of the order lies in the fact that it is directed to Agnico Eagle. The company owns and operates two of the three operating mines in Nunavut, one mining project currently in care and maintenance, and numerous mineral exploration projects in the territory. Because of its substantial role in the territorial economy, Agnico Eagle holds a considerable amount of political and economic power over governance institutions in Nunavut.
The problem of non-compliance in Nunavut is also not limited to Agnico Eagle. In a recent book with Inuk Elder Joan Scottie and social scientist Jack Hicks, Bernauer documented several examples where mineral exploration companies—some operating in critical caribou habitat that the Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization is fighting to protect from the mining industry—repeatedly violated terms and conditions regarding project clean-up, fuel storage, and wildlife monitoring/reporting.
The system for monitoring and enforcement at mines in Nunavut is in urgent need of reform. There are numerous instances where parties could have acted differently. Most notably, NIRB could have acted on the comments and concerns from the government of Nunavut and Inuit organizations, clearly directed the company to implement required mitigation measures, and promptly notified federal authorities of problems with non-compliance.
Because it has—rather paternalistically—retained jurisdiction over mining in Nunavut, it is ultimately the federal government’s responsibility to repair the regulatory system. Canada owes the Inuit of Baker Lake, and all of Nunavut, an explanation of how it will uphold their treaty rights and end these widespread problems with non-compliance.
This paper contributes to the literature about environmental impact assessment follow-up, with ca... more This paper contributes to the literature about environmental impact assessment follow-up, with case studies of stakeholder advisory groups associated with three mining projects in Nunavut, Canada. Based on an analysis of regulatory documents, we conclude that stakeholder advisory groups, as constituted and currently operating in Nunavut, are undermining aspects of the environmental assessment process. For example, potential impacts to wildlife that are invaluable to Inuit communities, as well as proposed measures to mitigate these impacts, have repeatedly been deferred to post-approval discussions in advisory groups. As a result, potential impacts and proposed mitigations are not adequately assessed during decision-making and permitting. Opportunities for public participation are curtailed, as advisory groups have no mechanism for public involvement and suffer from limited transparency. Moreover, these advisory groups have proven to be ineffective forums for guiding post-approval monitoring and addressing project effects. Other jurisdictions can learn from these experiences. A failure to implement best practice principles and stakeholder advice can lead to negative social and ecological outcomes.
This paper considers the degree to which the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ accurately describ... more This paper considers the degree to which the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ accurately describes the political economy of Nunavut’s commercial fisheries. Offshore fisheries adjacent to Nunavut were initially dominated by institutions based in southern Canada, and most economic benefits were captured by southern jurisdictions. Decades of political struggle have resulted in Nunavut establishing a role for itself in both the management of offshore resources and the operation of the offshore fishing industry. However, key decisions about fishery management are made by the federal government, and many benefits from Nunavut’s offshore fisheries continue to accrue to southern jurisdictions. The concept of internal colonialism is therefore a useful concept for understanding the historical development and contemporary conflicts over offshore fisheries. By contrast, Nunavut’s inshore fisheries were established as community development initiatives intended to promote economic well-being and...
This chapter provides an overview of political conflicts in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland in... more This chapter provides an overview of political conflicts in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland in Canada), over the extraction of energy resources, including oil, natural gas, uranium, and hydroelectricity. We use a regional approach that features a historical overview for each of the four land-claim regions that comprise Inuit Nunangat. These regional histories show that resistance to energy resource extraction has been an important driver of Inuit political development. The formation of Inuit organizations, the recognition of Inuit legal rights, and the negotiation of modern land-claims agreements have all been driven (to varying degrees) by conflicts with extractive industries. Our chapter also shows that the recognition of Inuit legal rights and the negotiation of land-claim agreements have resulted in an increased willingness on the part of Inuit political organizations to collaborate with extractive industries. However, in all cases, Inuit and their representative organizations have continued to resist specific types of extraction that they consider to be especially risky or otherwise contrary to their interests. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the political and economic challenges Inuit communities face as a result of extractive capitalism.
This article contributes to scholarly debates about the role of conservation in the reproduction ... more This article contributes to scholarly debates about the role of conservation in the reproduction of capitalist social relations with a case study on marine protected areas in the Canadian Arctic. Unlike historic parks in Canada, and modern parks in the Global South, new parks and protected areas in Canada are not cases of ‘primitive accumulation’ or ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Drawing on Gramscian historical materialism, we argue that their relationship to capital accumulation is primarily one of legitimization. Protected areas play a complex and contradictory role in the reproduction of capitalism in northern Canada. Because they protect important wildlife habitat and hunting grounds from extraction, and insofar as they usually entail support for fishing and hunting practices, the establishment of new protected areas can help reproduce Indigenous hunting and fishing economies. They therefore help maintain the conditions of possibility for a future anti-capitalist and decolonial social transformation. Moreover, because protected areas remove land from extractive capital’s sphere of activity, their establishment entails real material concessions to Indigenous communities from extractive capital. However, in the absence of a clearly articulated program for a broader social transformation, these concessions help create the conditions for Indigenous peoples to consent to an economy based on extraction and are therefore fundamental to the hegemony of extractive capital in Northern Canada. Thus, protected areas are part of an unstable equilibrium of compromises that extractive hegemony is premised on.
This paper considers the relevance of Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the state to debates about hydr... more This paper considers the relevance of Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the state to debates about hydrocarbon extraction and environmental assessment in Canada. I begin with a brief summary of Poulanztas’ work, followed by an overview of the politics of hydrocarbon extraction in Canada. Next, I examine recent public policy debates about the assessment and regulation of energy extraction in Canada. These debates, which focus on the concept of “regulatory capture,” fall victim to many of the problems Poulantzas identifies with instrumentalist approaches to the state. Critical accounts of regulatory capture have helped expose the fact that oil companies exercise an incredible degree of control over the Canadian state. However, it offers limited guidance for long-term strategies to confront extractive capital. In the section on “Environmental assessment and extractive hegemony,” I draw on Poulantzas to examine recent academic debates about the role of environmental assessment in the reproduction of extractive capitalism in Canada. Scholars have shown a more nuanced understanding of the power dynamics at play in the assessment and regulation of energy projects in Canada. Nevertheless, engagement with Poulantzas’ work can help deepen and expand these critiques, especially his emphasis on the role of state-organized material concessions in producing consent to capitalism.
There is now an extensive body of academic literature examining how the environmental movement co... more There is now an extensive body of academic literature examining how the environmental movement contributed to the colonization of Indigenous peoples and development of capitalism in northern Canada. This paper contributes to these discussions by considering how environmental assessment (EA) helped enable hydrocarbon extraction in the Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) region of Nunavut in the 1970s and 1980s. When exploration activities began to threaten the Inuit harvesting economy, communities protested with letters and petitions. The federal government responded to Inuit resistance by referring proposed exploratory drilling and extraction to its new EA process. While Inuit won significant victories during some assessments of proposed exploratory drilling and extraction, federal EA ultimately helped create the conditions for Inuit to consent to oil extraction. EA helped impose material compromises between Inuit and hydrocarbon industries, including preferential hiring of Inuit, a reduction in the scope of proposed extraction, and the rejection of especially controversial proposals for offshore drilling. These concessions, combined with a collapse in the market for sealskins due to international boycotts, persuaded several Qikiqtani communities to support oil extraction in the 1980s. The ensuing extraction and export of oil from the High Arctic accelerated processes of colonial dispossession and reinforced colonial political dynamics.
As the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this crisis will have significant and lasting implications for the relationship between extractive industries and Indigenous communities. Using a case study from Canada, this paper examines how the political dynamics of industry-Indigenous relations have changed and speculates about how these dynamics might continue to change in the future. The economic crisis has already intensified political conflicts and struggles between Indigenous peoples and mining, oil, and gas companies. We identify and discuss four points of conflict between Indigenous communities and extractive industries that have become more acute as a result of the current economic crisis. It is important for researchers to pay close attention to how these conflicts are affected by the pandemic, in order to help Indigenous communities develop strategies to cope with changes in industry-Indigenous relations.
Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement , 2019
This article examines the contemporary mining industry in Nunavut, Canada to determine whether la... more This article examines the contemporary mining industry in Nunavut, Canada to determine whether land claims and other negotiated agreements have enabled Inuit to capture wealth produced by extraction. It examines the geographic distribution of wealth produced by Nunavut’s extractive economy and considers several structural limits to economic development through private-sector extraction in Northern Canada. Although the 1993 Nunavut Agreement has allowed Inuit to increase their share of extraction based wealth, most wealth still accrues to other jurisdictions. The extractive economy therefore remains a colonial economy, because it continues to benefit external interests disproportionately.
The 1993 Nunavut Agreement was intended to help resolve disputes over resource extraction and fac... more The 1993 Nunavut Agreement was intended to help resolve disputes over resource extraction and facilitate responsible development in Nunavut. However, conflicts have persisted. In the Kivalliq region, debates over uranium mining and mining in caribou calving grounds have caused divisions between different representative organizations created by the Nunavut Agreement. Scholars have explained these conflicts with reference to the structures created by the Nunavut Agreement, especially the corporate structure of the territory’s Inuit organizations. While this is an important factor driving these conflicts, I argue that the system of land rights created by the Nunavut Agreement, especially the extinguishment of Aboriginal title, is also an important causal factor in these disputes. I begin with an overview of the concept of Aboriginal title and its extinguishment in British-Canadian law. Next, I discuss the Nunavut Agreement’s provisions for land rights, especially the exchange of Aboriginal title over a large territory for fee-simple ownership over relatively small parcels of land. This is followed by an examination of the conflicts over uranium mining and mining in calving grounds. I conclude that the provisions of the Nunavut agreement intended to provide ‘certainty’ for capital investment have in some cases had the opposite effect by fueling ongoing conflicts.
David Serkoak, now an Elder, was only a child when his family was repeatedly relocated by the Gov... more David Serkoak, now an Elder, was only a child when his family was repeatedly relocated by the Government of Canada throughout the Arctic, in order to clear the land for government operations and to centralize Inuit populations under government control and surveillance. For nearly three decades he has researched the history of his people in collaboration with community Elders, and has worked to educate the public about what happened to the Ahiarmiut as part of his ongoing quest for compensation and an apology from the Government of Canada.
In 2016, Francisca Linconao, a Mapuche elder and spiritual leader, was arrested for her alleged r... more In 2016, Francisca Linconao, a Mapuche elder and spiritual leader, was arrested for her alleged role in a confrontation between Mapuche protesters and landowners in Chile. Linconao and ten others were held without bail for well over a year, despite scant evidence connecting them to any crime. That same year, an Inuk grandmother named Beatrice Hunter was arrested for taking part in the occupation of the construction site of a hydroelectric project in northern Canada. A year later, Hunter was jailed for defying a court order requiring her to stay away from the construction site. The imprisonment of these indigenous women exemplifies a central aspect of what John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and others have called “ecological imperialism”—the ecological dimensions of the imperialist relationship between the periphery and core of the global capitalist economy.
Markides and Forsythe (Eds.) "Looking Back and Living Forward: Indigenous Research Rising Up". , 2018
This chapter contributes to the academic study of the cold war Arctic by centering Inuit resistan... more This chapter contributes to the academic study of the cold war Arctic by centering Inuit resistance to the militarization and of the Arctic. To properly understand the extent of Inuit resistance to cold war militarization, I argue, we must consider the close relationship between the nuclear industry and cold war militarization. Indeed, for many Inuit politicians, these two issues were inseparable. My focus is on discursive resistance – what Inuit call Kiumajut (‘talking back’), and what western activists sometimes call ‘speaking truth to power’ (Kulchyski & Tester, 2007). I examine statements made by Inuit politicians which criticized the way the cold war manifested in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland).
In 1993, Inuit completed negotiations of the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement with the Governments of... more In 1993, Inuit completed negotiations of the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement with the Governments of Canada and the Northwest Territoriesgnwt, creating a new institutional framework for the governance of land and mineral resources. Caribou habitat management in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut demonstrates that this new institutional framework has poorly served Inuit hunters, as their long-stated demand for protection of critical caribou habitant and areas of high cultural value from mineral exploration and extraction remains unmet. The institutions which dominate land and mineral resource governance in Nunavut are ill-suited to represent hunters’ interests, while institutions which represent hunters directly are not provided significant resources or power in land management decisions.
The Inuit community of Clyde River has restated its opposition to a proposal by the oil industry to conduct offshore seismic surveys near the community’s hunting grounds. The proposal is currently being assessed by the National Energy Board (NEB), and Nunavut communities are waiting for the board to finish analyzing submissions and make a decision on the file. Residents of several communities on Baffin Island have repeatedly opposed this proposal since it was first brought forward in 2011. Nunavut’s Inuit organizations have recommended the proposal not be approved until a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is conducted on the broader question of oil and gas development in the area. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada has initiated an SEA, and preliminary meetings were held in Baffin communities in February 2014. However, the NEB has indicated that the SEA process will not alter its assessment of the proposed seismic survey. The consortium proposing the survey has begun advertising job openings for the proposed project in local media, with an expected start date of August 2014
Along a mining road in Nunavut, truckers move gold ore from its extraction point to a mill for pr... more Along a mining road in Nunavut, truckers move gold ore from its extraction point to a mill for processing.
Whale Tail, the site where the metal is pulled from the earth, is a satellite mine to the older Meadowbank project, which operated from 2010-2018. Workers haul ore from Whale Tail to the mill at the old Meadowbank mine site. The high traffic haul road is 50 km long and intersects with the migratory paths of several herds of barren ground caribou, an invaluable resource for the nearby Inuit community of Baker Lake.
When the Whale Tail mine was first approved in 2018, the proponent, Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. repeatedly committed to working with a stakeholder advisory group to ensure “zero harm” to caribou. Once the mine began production, the company switched its rhetoric about zero harm with arguments about the need to balance environmental protection with project economics.
Monitoring documents make clear that Agnico Eagle violated project terms and conditions by unilaterally relaxing caribou protection measures on several instances. In 2020 the company attempted to weaken requirements—which were outlined in its approved management plans—for closing the haul road during caribou migrations, without first consulting the advisory group as they were required to do. Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut pushed back and forced Agnico Eagle to withdraw these changes, but the company still failed to fully implement protection measures for over 22,000 caribou—almost 40 per cent of the caribou that migrated through the project area that year.
These actions sparked frustration and concern from Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut, most notably in written comments to the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB). Created by the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the NIRB is the co-management board responsible for the Environmental Impact Assessment of mining projects in Nunavut. NIRB screens and reviews proposals for mineral exploration and mining in Nunavut, and makes recommendations to the federal government regarding whether projects should be approved and, if so, under what conditions. It is the federal government that ultimately decides whether mining projects should be approved. Canada is also responsible for enforcing project terms and conditions, with NIRB playing an important role in oversight and monitoring.
The Government of Nunavut, Kivalliq Inuit Association, and Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization regularly identified and expressed deep concern in written submissions to NIRB around Agnico Eagle’s monitoring deficiencies and the company’s failures to properly implement management plans to protect caribou. The Government of Nunavut repeatedly urged NIRB to intervene and direct Agnico Eagle to adhere to the terms and conditions of its project certificate. The NIRB paid little attention to these submissions, which raises broader questions around the implementation and enforcement of terms and conditions for mining projects in Nunavut.
In October 2022, the Deputy Minister of Environment for the Government of Nunavut wrote to NIRB and Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), requesting that NIRB direct Agnico Eagle to implement the required mitigation measures pertaining to caribou. They also asked CIRNAC to fulfill their mandate under the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and ensure the mine’s compliance with its project terms and conditions.
CIRNAC subsequently conducted an investigation into non-compliance at the Whale Tail mine, which concluded in May 2023 that Agnico Eagle was not complying with project terms and conditions regarding caribou. The report included an order requiring the company to “implement diligently the Terrestrial Ecological Management Plan” for the Whale Tail project. It concluded that Agnico Eagle’s actions amounted to “non-compliance and willful disobedience” that had harmed caribou.
The federal investigation identified numerous instances of non-compliance. In 2019 the haul road was ‘closed’ for 92 days due to the presence of migrating caribou. However, on 82 of those days non-essential traffic—including convoys of haul trucks—continued to use the road. In both 2018 and 2019, Agnico Eagle did not carry out road surveys for caribou with the required frequency. One road received no surveys at all in summer 2018.
The investigation also identified serious deficiencies in the quality of monitoring and research conducted by Agnico Eagle to inform their environmental management and mitigate negative impacts. The company had chronic issues with data reporting, missing information, and misleading analyses—which also made it difficult to verify if the management plan was being followed, and to assess if mitigation measures were effective.
In 2018, the company used incorrect seasons and time frames for caribou road surveys, leading to “misleading statistical analysis.” Agnico Eagle reported that caribou numbers during the 2019 spring and fall migrations were “the highest since surveys began”, suggesting mitigations were successful; however, after reviewing the data the federal investigator found this to be “factually incorrect and misleading.” And in a written statement cited in the federal investigator’s report, the Government of Nunavut described important conclusions about caribou interactions with road infrastructure in the company’s 2019 report, conclusions made without any supporting data, as “a concerning trait that leads to unnecessary confusion and disinformation amongst reviewers, regulators and the public at large.”
The federal order affirms that the company must comply with all project terms and conditions, including implementing approved management plans, and may not unilaterally and arbitrarily weaken or remove protection measures. However, it does not include any penalty—which reflects the reality that companies often suffer little consequence for repeated non-compliance. It is unclear whether the federal order will result in mining companies like Agnico Eagle changing their approach to monitoring and mitigation at mining projects in Nunavut.
Part of the significance of the order lies in the fact that it is directed to Agnico Eagle. The company owns and operates two of the three operating mines in Nunavut, one mining project currently in care and maintenance, and numerous mineral exploration projects in the territory. Because of its substantial role in the territorial economy, Agnico Eagle holds a considerable amount of political and economic power over governance institutions in Nunavut.
The problem of non-compliance in Nunavut is also not limited to Agnico Eagle. In a recent book with Inuk Elder Joan Scottie and social scientist Jack Hicks, Bernauer documented several examples where mineral exploration companies—some operating in critical caribou habitat that the Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization is fighting to protect from the mining industry—repeatedly violated terms and conditions regarding project clean-up, fuel storage, and wildlife monitoring/reporting.
The system for monitoring and enforcement at mines in Nunavut is in urgent need of reform. There are numerous instances where parties could have acted differently. Most notably, NIRB could have acted on the comments and concerns from the government of Nunavut and Inuit organizations, clearly directed the company to implement required mitigation measures, and promptly notified federal authorities of problems with non-compliance.
Because it has—rather paternalistically—retained jurisdiction over mining in Nunavut, it is ultimately the federal government’s responsibility to repair the regulatory system. Canada owes the Inuit of Baker Lake, and all of Nunavut, an explanation of how it will uphold their treaty rights and end these widespread problems with non-compliance.
This paper contributes to the literature about environmental impact assessment follow-up, with ca... more This paper contributes to the literature about environmental impact assessment follow-up, with case studies of stakeholder advisory groups associated with three mining projects in Nunavut, Canada. Based on an analysis of regulatory documents, we conclude that stakeholder advisory groups, as constituted and currently operating in Nunavut, are undermining aspects of the environmental assessment process. For example, potential impacts to wildlife that are invaluable to Inuit communities, as well as proposed measures to mitigate these impacts, have repeatedly been deferred to post-approval discussions in advisory groups. As a result, potential impacts and proposed mitigations are not adequately assessed during decision-making and permitting. Opportunities for public participation are curtailed, as advisory groups have no mechanism for public involvement and suffer from limited transparency. Moreover, these advisory groups have proven to be ineffective forums for guiding post-approval monitoring and addressing project effects. Other jurisdictions can learn from these experiences. A failure to implement best practice principles and stakeholder advice can lead to negative social and ecological outcomes.
This paper considers the degree to which the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ accurately describ... more This paper considers the degree to which the concept of ‘internal colonialism’ accurately describes the political economy of Nunavut’s commercial fisheries. Offshore fisheries adjacent to Nunavut were initially dominated by institutions based in southern Canada, and most economic benefits were captured by southern jurisdictions. Decades of political struggle have resulted in Nunavut establishing a role for itself in both the management of offshore resources and the operation of the offshore fishing industry. However, key decisions about fishery management are made by the federal government, and many benefits from Nunavut’s offshore fisheries continue to accrue to southern jurisdictions. The concept of internal colonialism is therefore a useful concept for understanding the historical development and contemporary conflicts over offshore fisheries. By contrast, Nunavut’s inshore fisheries were established as community development initiatives intended to promote economic well-being and...
This chapter provides an overview of political conflicts in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland in... more This chapter provides an overview of political conflicts in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland in Canada), over the extraction of energy resources, including oil, natural gas, uranium, and hydroelectricity. We use a regional approach that features a historical overview for each of the four land-claim regions that comprise Inuit Nunangat. These regional histories show that resistance to energy resource extraction has been an important driver of Inuit political development. The formation of Inuit organizations, the recognition of Inuit legal rights, and the negotiation of modern land-claims agreements have all been driven (to varying degrees) by conflicts with extractive industries. Our chapter also shows that the recognition of Inuit legal rights and the negotiation of land-claim agreements have resulted in an increased willingness on the part of Inuit political organizations to collaborate with extractive industries. However, in all cases, Inuit and their representative organizations have continued to resist specific types of extraction that they consider to be especially risky or otherwise contrary to their interests. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the political and economic challenges Inuit communities face as a result of extractive capitalism.
This article contributes to scholarly debates about the role of conservation in the reproduction ... more This article contributes to scholarly debates about the role of conservation in the reproduction of capitalist social relations with a case study on marine protected areas in the Canadian Arctic. Unlike historic parks in Canada, and modern parks in the Global South, new parks and protected areas in Canada are not cases of ‘primitive accumulation’ or ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Drawing on Gramscian historical materialism, we argue that their relationship to capital accumulation is primarily one of legitimization. Protected areas play a complex and contradictory role in the reproduction of capitalism in northern Canada. Because they protect important wildlife habitat and hunting grounds from extraction, and insofar as they usually entail support for fishing and hunting practices, the establishment of new protected areas can help reproduce Indigenous hunting and fishing economies. They therefore help maintain the conditions of possibility for a future anti-capitalist and decolonial social transformation. Moreover, because protected areas remove land from extractive capital’s sphere of activity, their establishment entails real material concessions to Indigenous communities from extractive capital. However, in the absence of a clearly articulated program for a broader social transformation, these concessions help create the conditions for Indigenous peoples to consent to an economy based on extraction and are therefore fundamental to the hegemony of extractive capital in Northern Canada. Thus, protected areas are part of an unstable equilibrium of compromises that extractive hegemony is premised on.
This paper considers the relevance of Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the state to debates about hydr... more This paper considers the relevance of Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the state to debates about hydrocarbon extraction and environmental assessment in Canada. I begin with a brief summary of Poulanztas’ work, followed by an overview of the politics of hydrocarbon extraction in Canada. Next, I examine recent public policy debates about the assessment and regulation of energy extraction in Canada. These debates, which focus on the concept of “regulatory capture,” fall victim to many of the problems Poulantzas identifies with instrumentalist approaches to the state. Critical accounts of regulatory capture have helped expose the fact that oil companies exercise an incredible degree of control over the Canadian state. However, it offers limited guidance for long-term strategies to confront extractive capital. In the section on “Environmental assessment and extractive hegemony,” I draw on Poulantzas to examine recent academic debates about the role of environmental assessment in the reproduction of extractive capitalism in Canada. Scholars have shown a more nuanced understanding of the power dynamics at play in the assessment and regulation of energy projects in Canada. Nevertheless, engagement with Poulantzas’ work can help deepen and expand these critiques, especially his emphasis on the role of state-organized material concessions in producing consent to capitalism.
There is now an extensive body of academic literature examining how the environmental movement co... more There is now an extensive body of academic literature examining how the environmental movement contributed to the colonization of Indigenous peoples and development of capitalism in northern Canada. This paper contributes to these discussions by considering how environmental assessment (EA) helped enable hydrocarbon extraction in the Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) region of Nunavut in the 1970s and 1980s. When exploration activities began to threaten the Inuit harvesting economy, communities protested with letters and petitions. The federal government responded to Inuit resistance by referring proposed exploratory drilling and extraction to its new EA process. While Inuit won significant victories during some assessments of proposed exploratory drilling and extraction, federal EA ultimately helped create the conditions for Inuit to consent to oil extraction. EA helped impose material compromises between Inuit and hydrocarbon industries, including preferential hiring of Inuit, a reduction in the scope of proposed extraction, and the rejection of especially controversial proposals for offshore drilling. These concessions, combined with a collapse in the market for sealskins due to international boycotts, persuaded several Qikiqtani communities to support oil extraction in the 1980s. The ensuing extraction and export of oil from the High Arctic accelerated processes of colonial dispossession and reinforced colonial political dynamics.
As the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this crisis will have significant and lasting implications for the relationship between extractive industries and Indigenous communities. Using a case study from Canada, this paper examines how the political dynamics of industry-Indigenous relations have changed and speculates about how these dynamics might continue to change in the future. The economic crisis has already intensified political conflicts and struggles between Indigenous peoples and mining, oil, and gas companies. We identify and discuss four points of conflict between Indigenous communities and extractive industries that have become more acute as a result of the current economic crisis. It is important for researchers to pay close attention to how these conflicts are affected by the pandemic, in order to help Indigenous communities develop strategies to cope with changes in industry-Indigenous relations.
Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement , 2019
This article examines the contemporary mining industry in Nunavut, Canada to determine whether la... more This article examines the contemporary mining industry in Nunavut, Canada to determine whether land claims and other negotiated agreements have enabled Inuit to capture wealth produced by extraction. It examines the geographic distribution of wealth produced by Nunavut’s extractive economy and considers several structural limits to economic development through private-sector extraction in Northern Canada. Although the 1993 Nunavut Agreement has allowed Inuit to increase their share of extraction based wealth, most wealth still accrues to other jurisdictions. The extractive economy therefore remains a colonial economy, because it continues to benefit external interests disproportionately.
The 1993 Nunavut Agreement was intended to help resolve disputes over resource extraction and fac... more The 1993 Nunavut Agreement was intended to help resolve disputes over resource extraction and facilitate responsible development in Nunavut. However, conflicts have persisted. In the Kivalliq region, debates over uranium mining and mining in caribou calving grounds have caused divisions between different representative organizations created by the Nunavut Agreement. Scholars have explained these conflicts with reference to the structures created by the Nunavut Agreement, especially the corporate structure of the territory’s Inuit organizations. While this is an important factor driving these conflicts, I argue that the system of land rights created by the Nunavut Agreement, especially the extinguishment of Aboriginal title, is also an important causal factor in these disputes. I begin with an overview of the concept of Aboriginal title and its extinguishment in British-Canadian law. Next, I discuss the Nunavut Agreement’s provisions for land rights, especially the exchange of Aboriginal title over a large territory for fee-simple ownership over relatively small parcels of land. This is followed by an examination of the conflicts over uranium mining and mining in calving grounds. I conclude that the provisions of the Nunavut agreement intended to provide ‘certainty’ for capital investment have in some cases had the opposite effect by fueling ongoing conflicts.
David Serkoak, now an Elder, was only a child when his family was repeatedly relocated by the Gov... more David Serkoak, now an Elder, was only a child when his family was repeatedly relocated by the Government of Canada throughout the Arctic, in order to clear the land for government operations and to centralize Inuit populations under government control and surveillance. For nearly three decades he has researched the history of his people in collaboration with community Elders, and has worked to educate the public about what happened to the Ahiarmiut as part of his ongoing quest for compensation and an apology from the Government of Canada.
In 2016, Francisca Linconao, a Mapuche elder and spiritual leader, was arrested for her alleged r... more In 2016, Francisca Linconao, a Mapuche elder and spiritual leader, was arrested for her alleged role in a confrontation between Mapuche protesters and landowners in Chile. Linconao and ten others were held without bail for well over a year, despite scant evidence connecting them to any crime. That same year, an Inuk grandmother named Beatrice Hunter was arrested for taking part in the occupation of the construction site of a hydroelectric project in northern Canada. A year later, Hunter was jailed for defying a court order requiring her to stay away from the construction site. The imprisonment of these indigenous women exemplifies a central aspect of what John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and others have called “ecological imperialism”—the ecological dimensions of the imperialist relationship between the periphery and core of the global capitalist economy.
Markides and Forsythe (Eds.) "Looking Back and Living Forward: Indigenous Research Rising Up". , 2018
This chapter contributes to the academic study of the cold war Arctic by centering Inuit resistan... more This chapter contributes to the academic study of the cold war Arctic by centering Inuit resistance to the militarization and of the Arctic. To properly understand the extent of Inuit resistance to cold war militarization, I argue, we must consider the close relationship between the nuclear industry and cold war militarization. Indeed, for many Inuit politicians, these two issues were inseparable. My focus is on discursive resistance – what Inuit call Kiumajut (‘talking back’), and what western activists sometimes call ‘speaking truth to power’ (Kulchyski & Tester, 2007). I examine statements made by Inuit politicians which criticized the way the cold war manifested in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland).
In 1993, Inuit completed negotiations of the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement with the Governments of... more In 1993, Inuit completed negotiations of the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement with the Governments of Canada and the Northwest Territoriesgnwt, creating a new institutional framework for the governance of land and mineral resources. Caribou habitat management in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut demonstrates that this new institutional framework has poorly served Inuit hunters, as their long-stated demand for protection of critical caribou habitant and areas of high cultural value from mineral exploration and extraction remains unmet. The institutions which dominate land and mineral resource governance in Nunavut are ill-suited to represent hunters’ interests, while institutions which represent hunters directly are not provided significant resources or power in land management decisions.
The Inuit community of Clyde River has restated its opposition to a proposal by the oil industry to conduct offshore seismic surveys near the community’s hunting grounds. The proposal is currently being assessed by the National Energy Board (NEB), and Nunavut communities are waiting for the board to finish analyzing submissions and make a decision on the file. Residents of several communities on Baffin Island have repeatedly opposed this proposal since it was first brought forward in 2011. Nunavut’s Inuit organizations have recommended the proposal not be approved until a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is conducted on the broader question of oil and gas development in the area. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada has initiated an SEA, and preliminary meetings were held in Baffin communities in February 2014. However, the NEB has indicated that the SEA process will not alter its assessment of the proposed seismic survey. The consortium proposing the survey has begun advertising job openings for the proposed project in local media, with an expected start date of August 2014
Review of Brenda Parlee and Ken Caine (eds) (2018). When The Caribou Do Not Come: Indigenous Know... more Review of Brenda Parlee and Ken Caine (eds) (2018). When The Caribou Do Not Come: Indigenous Knowledge and Adaptive Management in the Western Arctic. Vancouver: UBC Press
Review of Chris Southcott and Francis Abele (eds) (2017) "Care, Cooperation, and Activism in Cana... more Review of Chris Southcott and Francis Abele (eds) (2017) "Care, Cooperation, and Activism in Canada's Northern Social Economy". University of Alberta Press
Review of Shipley, T. (2017). "Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras". Betw... more Review of Shipley, T. (2017). "Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras". Between the Lines Press.
Born at a traditional Inuit camp in what is now Nunavut, Joan Scottie has spent decades protectin... more Born at a traditional Inuit camp in what is now Nunavut, Joan Scottie has spent decades protecting the Inuit hunting way of life, most famously with her long battle against the uranium mining industry. Twice, Scottie and her community of Baker Lake successfully stopped a proposed uranium mine. Working with geographer Warren Bernauer and social scientist Jack Hicks, Scottie here tells the history of her community’s decades-long fight against uranium mining.
Scottie’s I Will Live for Both of Us is a reflection on recent political and environmental history and a call for a future in which Inuit traditional laws and values are respected and upheld. Drawing on Scottie’s rich and storied life, together with document research by Bernauer and Hicks, their book brings the perspective of a hunter, Elder, grandmother, and community organizer to bear on important political developments and conflicts in the Canadian Arctic since the Second World War.
In addition to telling the story of her community’s struggle against the uranium industry, I Will Live for Both of Us discusses gender relations in traditional Inuit camps, the emotional dimensions of colonial oppression, Inuit experiences with residential schools, the politics of gold mining, and Inuit traditional laws regarding the land and animals. A collaboration between three committed activists, I Will Live for Both of Us provides key insights into Inuit history, Indigenous politics, resource management, and the nuclear industry.
AWARDS
SHORTLISTED, John W. Dafoe Book Prize (2023)
REVIEWS
“I Will Live for Both of Us is the first-hand account of an incredible woman’s resistance to uranium mining in her region specifically, but it is also a detailed description of the history of colonialism in the Kivalliq region, and the past and present structures that perpetuate colonialism. It shines a light on the critical activism that has been happening in this region over the course of decades.”
– Willow Scobie, Professor, Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa
“I Will Live for Both of Us offers a unique and important contribution to our understanding of the history and contemporary debates around mining in the Canadian North. It foregrounds the voice and activism of an Inuk woman, Joan Scottie, and documents her long struggle against the incursions of uranium mining in the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut. Written accessibly it will appeal to readers interested in the North, Indigenous issues, and industrial development.”
– Arn Keeling, Co-author of Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners
“The authors bring detailed insights into the context of neoliberal resource extraction and ongoing processes of colonial dispossession, making the book of great interest for Inuit, Canadian, and international audiences, alike. The text, dynamic and accessible without forsaking depth, will certainly lend itself to research, classroom and popular reading. And its focus on historical and contemporary Inuit resistance will provide inspiration—and, indeed, a suite of tactics—for community organizers.”
– Rebecca Hall, Canadian Journal of Development Studies
“I Will Live For Both of Us shows the dynamics of ‘resource colonialism’ through the life experiences and struggles of an Inuit leader. As such, it draws invaluable political conclusions while providing an inspiring narrative of resistance.”
– John Clarke, Counterfire
“A formidable problem mining in Canada’s Arctic has been facing is not below ground but above it — a resolute granny named Joan Scottie.
The Inuit elder in Nunavut’s Baker Lake is not just a thorn in the side of the mining industry, she’s the whole bush.”
– Barry Criag, Winnipeg Free Press
“This book is a fascinating look into a little-known struggle, presented in a format that is deeply personal and emotionally engaging, but also analytical and informative. The specific political and institutional critiques are crucially important to anyone working in or trying to understand the part of the Arctic claimed by Canada.”
– MiningWatch Canada
“I Will Live for Both of Us is a tremendous work of oral history that intersects with critical studies in environmental history. This book will appeal to researchers, instructors and students interested in history of the North, Indigenous histories, and resource extraction internationally. This story of mining, colonialism and resistance will resonate with other Indigenous nations around the world.”
– Oral History Society
This book should be read, first and foremost, by young activists who want to read, learn from and perhaps be inspired by a David and Goliath story; by northernists and those interested in the politics of northern development; by environmentalists concerned about how their concerns are dealt with at the extraction end of world; by students of modern treaties and Indigenous rights and culture who want to know what happens after a treaty is settled.
– Peter Kulchyski, Canadian Dimension
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Joan Scottie is an Inuk Elder living in the community of Qamani’tuaq Baker Lake, Nunavut. Joan was born and raised on the land at a traditional Inuit camp. Since the 1980s, she has been a vital voice for Inuit opposition to uranium mining. Joan is a grandmother and avid hunter.
Warren Bernauer is a postdoctoral fellow at the Natural Resources Institute and the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of Manitoba.
Jack Hicks worked for Inuit organizations for more than thirty years. He is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan.
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Papers by Warren Bernauer
Whale Tail, the site where the metal is pulled from the earth, is a satellite mine to the older Meadowbank project, which operated from 2010-2018. Workers haul ore from Whale Tail to the mill at the old Meadowbank mine site. The high traffic haul road is 50 km long and intersects with the migratory paths of several herds of barren ground caribou, an invaluable resource for the nearby Inuit community of Baker Lake.
When the Whale Tail mine was first approved in 2018, the proponent, Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. repeatedly committed to working with a stakeholder advisory group to ensure “zero harm” to caribou. Once the mine began production, the company switched its rhetoric about zero harm with arguments about the need to balance environmental protection with project economics.
Monitoring documents make clear that Agnico Eagle violated project terms and conditions by unilaterally relaxing caribou protection measures on several instances. In 2020 the company attempted to weaken requirements—which were outlined in its approved management plans—for closing the haul road during caribou migrations, without first consulting the advisory group as they were required to do. Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut pushed back and forced Agnico Eagle to withdraw these changes, but the company still failed to fully implement protection measures for over 22,000 caribou—almost 40 per cent of the caribou that migrated through the project area that year.
These actions sparked frustration and concern from Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut, most notably in written comments to the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB). Created by the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the NIRB is the co-management board responsible for the Environmental Impact Assessment of mining projects in Nunavut. NIRB screens and reviews proposals for mineral exploration and mining in Nunavut, and makes recommendations to the federal government regarding whether projects should be approved and, if so, under what conditions. It is the federal government that ultimately decides whether mining projects should be approved. Canada is also responsible for enforcing project terms and conditions, with NIRB playing an important role in oversight and monitoring.
The Government of Nunavut, Kivalliq Inuit Association, and Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization regularly identified and expressed deep concern in written submissions to NIRB around Agnico Eagle’s monitoring deficiencies and the company’s failures to properly implement management plans to protect caribou. The Government of Nunavut repeatedly urged NIRB to intervene and direct Agnico Eagle to adhere to the terms and conditions of its project certificate. The NIRB paid little attention to these submissions, which raises broader questions around the implementation and enforcement of terms and conditions for mining projects in Nunavut.
In October 2022, the Deputy Minister of Environment for the Government of Nunavut wrote to NIRB and Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), requesting that NIRB direct Agnico Eagle to implement the required mitigation measures pertaining to caribou. They also asked CIRNAC to fulfill their mandate under the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and ensure the mine’s compliance with its project terms and conditions.
CIRNAC subsequently conducted an investigation into non-compliance at the Whale Tail mine, which concluded in May 2023 that Agnico Eagle was not complying with project terms and conditions regarding caribou. The report included an order requiring the company to “implement diligently the Terrestrial Ecological Management Plan” for the Whale Tail project. It concluded that Agnico Eagle’s actions amounted to “non-compliance and willful disobedience” that had harmed caribou.
The federal investigation identified numerous instances of non-compliance. In 2019 the haul road was ‘closed’ for 92 days due to the presence of migrating caribou. However, on 82 of those days non-essential traffic—including convoys of haul trucks—continued to use the road. In both 2018 and 2019, Agnico Eagle did not carry out road surveys for caribou with the required frequency. One road received no surveys at all in summer 2018.
The investigation also identified serious deficiencies in the quality of monitoring and research conducted by Agnico Eagle to inform their environmental management and mitigate negative impacts. The company had chronic issues with data reporting, missing information, and misleading analyses—which also made it difficult to verify if the management plan was being followed, and to assess if mitigation measures were effective.
In 2018, the company used incorrect seasons and time frames for caribou road surveys, leading to “misleading statistical analysis.” Agnico Eagle reported that caribou numbers during the 2019 spring and fall migrations were “the highest since surveys began”, suggesting mitigations were successful; however, after reviewing the data the federal investigator found this to be “factually incorrect and misleading.” And in a written statement cited in the federal investigator’s report, the Government of Nunavut described important conclusions about caribou interactions with road infrastructure in the company’s 2019 report, conclusions made without any supporting data, as “a concerning trait that leads to unnecessary confusion and disinformation amongst reviewers, regulators and the public at large.”
The federal order affirms that the company must comply with all project terms and conditions, including implementing approved management plans, and may not unilaterally and arbitrarily weaken or remove protection measures. However, it does not include any penalty—which reflects the reality that companies often suffer little consequence for repeated non-compliance. It is unclear whether the federal order will result in mining companies like Agnico Eagle changing their approach to monitoring and mitigation at mining projects in Nunavut.
Part of the significance of the order lies in the fact that it is directed to Agnico Eagle. The company owns and operates two of the three operating mines in Nunavut, one mining project currently in care and maintenance, and numerous mineral exploration projects in the territory. Because of its substantial role in the territorial economy, Agnico Eagle holds a considerable amount of political and economic power over governance institutions in Nunavut.
The problem of non-compliance in Nunavut is also not limited to Agnico Eagle. In a recent book with Inuk Elder Joan Scottie and social scientist Jack Hicks, Bernauer documented several examples where mineral exploration companies—some operating in critical caribou habitat that the Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization is fighting to protect from the mining industry—repeatedly violated terms and conditions regarding project clean-up, fuel storage, and wildlife monitoring/reporting.
The system for monitoring and enforcement at mines in Nunavut is in urgent need of reform. There are numerous instances where parties could have acted differently. Most notably, NIRB could have acted on the comments and concerns from the government of Nunavut and Inuit organizations, clearly directed the company to implement required mitigation measures, and promptly notified federal authorities of problems with non-compliance.
Because it has—rather paternalistically—retained jurisdiction over mining in Nunavut, it is ultimately the federal government’s responsibility to repair the regulatory system. Canada owes the Inuit of Baker Lake, and all of Nunavut, an explanation of how it will uphold their treaty rights and end these widespread problems with non-compliance.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429275470-25/energy-extraction-resistance-political-change-inuit-nunangat-warren-bernauer-jonathan-peyton
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718521000191
environmental assessment in Canada. I begin with a brief summary of Poulanztas’ work, followed by an overview of the politics of hydrocarbon extraction in Canada. Next, I examine recent public policy debates about the assessment and regulation
of energy extraction in Canada. These debates, which focus on the concept of “regulatory capture,” fall victim to many of
the problems Poulantzas identifies with instrumentalist approaches to the state. Critical accounts of regulatory capture have
helped expose the fact that oil companies exercise an incredible degree of control over the Canadian state. However, it
offers limited guidance for long-term strategies to confront extractive capital. In the section on “Environmental assessment
and extractive hegemony,” I draw on Poulantzas to examine recent academic debates about the role of environmental
assessment in the reproduction of extractive capitalism in Canada. Scholars have shown a more nuanced understanding of
the power dynamics at play in the assessment and regulation of energy projects in Canada. Nevertheless, engagement with
Poulantzas’ work can help deepen and expand these critiques, especially his emphasis on the role of state-organized material
concessions in producing consent to capitalism.
As the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this crisis will have significant and lasting implications for the relationship between extractive industries and Indigenous communities. Using a case study from Canada, this paper examines how the political dynamics of industry-Indigenous relations have changed and speculates about how these dynamics might continue to change in the future. The economic crisis has already intensified political conflicts and struggles between Indigenous peoples and mining, oil, and gas companies. We identify and discuss four points of conflict between Indigenous communities and extractive industries that have become more acute as a result of the current economic crisis. It is important for researchers to pay close attention to how these conflicts are affected by the pandemic, in order to help Indigenous communities develop strategies to cope with changes in industry-Indigenous relations.
The full paper is available here (no paywall): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X20301544
https://www.northernpublicaffairs.ca/index/volume-6-issue-1/ahiarmiut-relocations-and-the-search-for-justice/
https://monthlyreview.org/2018/01/01/from-wallmapu-to-nunatsiavut/
activists sometimes call ‘speaking truth to power’ (Kulchyski & Tester, 2007). I examine statements made by Inuit politicians which criticized the way the cold war manifested in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland).
The Inuit community of Clyde River has restated its opposition to a proposal by the oil industry to conduct offshore seismic surveys near the community’s hunting grounds. The proposal is currently being assessed by the National Energy Board (NEB), and Nunavut communities are waiting for the board to finish analyzing submissions and make a decision on the file. Residents of several communities on Baffin Island have repeatedly opposed this proposal since it was first brought forward in 2011. Nunavut’s Inuit organizations have recommended the proposal not be approved until a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is conducted on the broader question of oil and gas development in the area. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada has initiated an SEA, and preliminary meetings were held in Baffin communities in February 2014. However, the NEB has indicated that the SEA process will not alter its assessment of the proposed seismic survey. The consortium proposing the survey has begun advertising job openings for the proposed project in local media, with an expected start date of August 2014
Whale Tail, the site where the metal is pulled from the earth, is a satellite mine to the older Meadowbank project, which operated from 2010-2018. Workers haul ore from Whale Tail to the mill at the old Meadowbank mine site. The high traffic haul road is 50 km long and intersects with the migratory paths of several herds of barren ground caribou, an invaluable resource for the nearby Inuit community of Baker Lake.
When the Whale Tail mine was first approved in 2018, the proponent, Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. repeatedly committed to working with a stakeholder advisory group to ensure “zero harm” to caribou. Once the mine began production, the company switched its rhetoric about zero harm with arguments about the need to balance environmental protection with project economics.
Monitoring documents make clear that Agnico Eagle violated project terms and conditions by unilaterally relaxing caribou protection measures on several instances. In 2020 the company attempted to weaken requirements—which were outlined in its approved management plans—for closing the haul road during caribou migrations, without first consulting the advisory group as they were required to do. Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut pushed back and forced Agnico Eagle to withdraw these changes, but the company still failed to fully implement protection measures for over 22,000 caribou—almost 40 per cent of the caribou that migrated through the project area that year.
These actions sparked frustration and concern from Inuit organizations and the Government of Nunavut, most notably in written comments to the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB). Created by the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the NIRB is the co-management board responsible for the Environmental Impact Assessment of mining projects in Nunavut. NIRB screens and reviews proposals for mineral exploration and mining in Nunavut, and makes recommendations to the federal government regarding whether projects should be approved and, if so, under what conditions. It is the federal government that ultimately decides whether mining projects should be approved. Canada is also responsible for enforcing project terms and conditions, with NIRB playing an important role in oversight and monitoring.
The Government of Nunavut, Kivalliq Inuit Association, and Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization regularly identified and expressed deep concern in written submissions to NIRB around Agnico Eagle’s monitoring deficiencies and the company’s failures to properly implement management plans to protect caribou. The Government of Nunavut repeatedly urged NIRB to intervene and direct Agnico Eagle to adhere to the terms and conditions of its project certificate. The NIRB paid little attention to these submissions, which raises broader questions around the implementation and enforcement of terms and conditions for mining projects in Nunavut.
In October 2022, the Deputy Minister of Environment for the Government of Nunavut wrote to NIRB and Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), requesting that NIRB direct Agnico Eagle to implement the required mitigation measures pertaining to caribou. They also asked CIRNAC to fulfill their mandate under the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and ensure the mine’s compliance with its project terms and conditions.
CIRNAC subsequently conducted an investigation into non-compliance at the Whale Tail mine, which concluded in May 2023 that Agnico Eagle was not complying with project terms and conditions regarding caribou. The report included an order requiring the company to “implement diligently the Terrestrial Ecological Management Plan” for the Whale Tail project. It concluded that Agnico Eagle’s actions amounted to “non-compliance and willful disobedience” that had harmed caribou.
The federal investigation identified numerous instances of non-compliance. In 2019 the haul road was ‘closed’ for 92 days due to the presence of migrating caribou. However, on 82 of those days non-essential traffic—including convoys of haul trucks—continued to use the road. In both 2018 and 2019, Agnico Eagle did not carry out road surveys for caribou with the required frequency. One road received no surveys at all in summer 2018.
The investigation also identified serious deficiencies in the quality of monitoring and research conducted by Agnico Eagle to inform their environmental management and mitigate negative impacts. The company had chronic issues with data reporting, missing information, and misleading analyses—which also made it difficult to verify if the management plan was being followed, and to assess if mitigation measures were effective.
In 2018, the company used incorrect seasons and time frames for caribou road surveys, leading to “misleading statistical analysis.” Agnico Eagle reported that caribou numbers during the 2019 spring and fall migrations were “the highest since surveys began”, suggesting mitigations were successful; however, after reviewing the data the federal investigator found this to be “factually incorrect and misleading.” And in a written statement cited in the federal investigator’s report, the Government of Nunavut described important conclusions about caribou interactions with road infrastructure in the company’s 2019 report, conclusions made without any supporting data, as “a concerning trait that leads to unnecessary confusion and disinformation amongst reviewers, regulators and the public at large.”
The federal order affirms that the company must comply with all project terms and conditions, including implementing approved management plans, and may not unilaterally and arbitrarily weaken or remove protection measures. However, it does not include any penalty—which reflects the reality that companies often suffer little consequence for repeated non-compliance. It is unclear whether the federal order will result in mining companies like Agnico Eagle changing their approach to monitoring and mitigation at mining projects in Nunavut.
Part of the significance of the order lies in the fact that it is directed to Agnico Eagle. The company owns and operates two of the three operating mines in Nunavut, one mining project currently in care and maintenance, and numerous mineral exploration projects in the territory. Because of its substantial role in the territorial economy, Agnico Eagle holds a considerable amount of political and economic power over governance institutions in Nunavut.
The problem of non-compliance in Nunavut is also not limited to Agnico Eagle. In a recent book with Inuk Elder Joan Scottie and social scientist Jack Hicks, Bernauer documented several examples where mineral exploration companies—some operating in critical caribou habitat that the Baker Lake Hunters and Trappers Organization is fighting to protect from the mining industry—repeatedly violated terms and conditions regarding project clean-up, fuel storage, and wildlife monitoring/reporting.
The system for monitoring and enforcement at mines in Nunavut is in urgent need of reform. There are numerous instances where parties could have acted differently. Most notably, NIRB could have acted on the comments and concerns from the government of Nunavut and Inuit organizations, clearly directed the company to implement required mitigation measures, and promptly notified federal authorities of problems with non-compliance.
Because it has—rather paternalistically—retained jurisdiction over mining in Nunavut, it is ultimately the federal government’s responsibility to repair the regulatory system. Canada owes the Inuit of Baker Lake, and all of Nunavut, an explanation of how it will uphold their treaty rights and end these widespread problems with non-compliance.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429275470-25/energy-extraction-resistance-political-change-inuit-nunangat-warren-bernauer-jonathan-peyton
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718521000191
environmental assessment in Canada. I begin with a brief summary of Poulanztas’ work, followed by an overview of the politics of hydrocarbon extraction in Canada. Next, I examine recent public policy debates about the assessment and regulation
of energy extraction in Canada. These debates, which focus on the concept of “regulatory capture,” fall victim to many of
the problems Poulantzas identifies with instrumentalist approaches to the state. Critical accounts of regulatory capture have
helped expose the fact that oil companies exercise an incredible degree of control over the Canadian state. However, it
offers limited guidance for long-term strategies to confront extractive capital. In the section on “Environmental assessment
and extractive hegemony,” I draw on Poulantzas to examine recent academic debates about the role of environmental
assessment in the reproduction of extractive capitalism in Canada. Scholars have shown a more nuanced understanding of
the power dynamics at play in the assessment and regulation of energy projects in Canada. Nevertheless, engagement with
Poulantzas’ work can help deepen and expand these critiques, especially his emphasis on the role of state-organized material
concessions in producing consent to capitalism.
As the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, it is becoming increasingly apparent that this crisis will have significant and lasting implications for the relationship between extractive industries and Indigenous communities. Using a case study from Canada, this paper examines how the political dynamics of industry-Indigenous relations have changed and speculates about how these dynamics might continue to change in the future. The economic crisis has already intensified political conflicts and struggles between Indigenous peoples and mining, oil, and gas companies. We identify and discuss four points of conflict between Indigenous communities and extractive industries that have become more acute as a result of the current economic crisis. It is important for researchers to pay close attention to how these conflicts are affected by the pandemic, in order to help Indigenous communities develop strategies to cope with changes in industry-Indigenous relations.
The full paper is available here (no paywall): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X20301544
https://www.northernpublicaffairs.ca/index/volume-6-issue-1/ahiarmiut-relocations-and-the-search-for-justice/
https://monthlyreview.org/2018/01/01/from-wallmapu-to-nunatsiavut/
activists sometimes call ‘speaking truth to power’ (Kulchyski & Tester, 2007). I examine statements made by Inuit politicians which criticized the way the cold war manifested in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland).
The Inuit community of Clyde River has restated its opposition to a proposal by the oil industry to conduct offshore seismic surveys near the community’s hunting grounds. The proposal is currently being assessed by the National Energy Board (NEB), and Nunavut communities are waiting for the board to finish analyzing submissions and make a decision on the file. Residents of several communities on Baffin Island have repeatedly opposed this proposal since it was first brought forward in 2011. Nunavut’s Inuit organizations have recommended the proposal not be approved until a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is conducted on the broader question of oil and gas development in the area. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada has initiated an SEA, and preliminary meetings were held in Baffin communities in February 2014. However, the NEB has indicated that the SEA process will not alter its assessment of the proposed seismic survey. The consortium proposing the survey has begun advertising job openings for the proposed project in local media, with an expected start date of August 2014
Scottie’s I Will Live for Both of Us is a reflection on recent political and environmental history and a call for a future in which Inuit traditional laws and values are respected and upheld. Drawing on Scottie’s rich and storied life, together with document research by Bernauer and Hicks, their book brings the perspective of a hunter, Elder, grandmother, and community organizer to bear on important political developments and conflicts in the Canadian Arctic since the Second World War.
In addition to telling the story of her community’s struggle against the uranium industry, I Will Live for Both of Us discusses gender relations in traditional Inuit camps, the emotional dimensions of colonial oppression, Inuit experiences with residential schools, the politics of gold mining, and Inuit traditional laws regarding the land and animals. A collaboration between three committed activists, I Will Live for Both of Us provides key insights into Inuit history, Indigenous politics, resource management, and the nuclear industry.
AWARDS
SHORTLISTED, John W. Dafoe Book Prize (2023)
REVIEWS
“I Will Live for Both of Us is the first-hand account of an incredible woman’s resistance to uranium mining in her region specifically, but it is also a detailed description of the history of colonialism in the Kivalliq region, and the past and present structures that perpetuate colonialism. It shines a light on the critical activism that has been happening in this region over the course of decades.”
– Willow Scobie, Professor, Sociological and Anthropological Studies, University of Ottawa
“I Will Live for Both of Us offers a unique and important contribution to our understanding of the history and contemporary debates around mining in the Canadian North. It foregrounds the voice and activism of an Inuk woman, Joan Scottie, and documents her long struggle against the incursions of uranium mining in the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut. Written accessibly it will appeal to readers interested in the North, Indigenous issues, and industrial development.”
– Arn Keeling, Co-author of Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners
“The authors bring detailed insights into the context of neoliberal resource extraction and ongoing processes of colonial dispossession, making the book of great interest for Inuit, Canadian, and international audiences, alike. The text, dynamic and accessible without forsaking depth, will certainly lend itself to research, classroom and popular reading. And its focus on historical and contemporary Inuit resistance will provide inspiration—and, indeed, a suite of tactics—for community organizers.”
– Rebecca Hall, Canadian Journal of Development Studies
“I Will Live For Both of Us shows the dynamics of ‘resource colonialism’ through the life experiences and struggles of an Inuit leader. As such, it draws invaluable political conclusions while providing an inspiring narrative of resistance.”
– John Clarke, Counterfire
“A formidable problem mining in Canada’s Arctic has been facing is not below ground but above it — a resolute granny named Joan Scottie.
The Inuit elder in Nunavut’s Baker Lake is not just a thorn in the side of the mining industry, she’s the whole bush.”
– Barry Criag, Winnipeg Free Press
“This book is a fascinating look into a little-known struggle, presented in a format that is deeply personal and emotionally engaging, but also analytical and informative. The specific political and institutional critiques are crucially important to anyone working in or trying to understand the part of the Arctic claimed by Canada.”
– MiningWatch Canada
“I Will Live for Both of Us is a tremendous work of oral history that intersects with critical studies in environmental history. This book will appeal to researchers, instructors and students interested in history of the North, Indigenous histories, and resource extraction internationally. This story of mining, colonialism and resistance will resonate with other Indigenous nations around the world.”
– Oral History Society
This book should be read, first and foremost, by young activists who want to read, learn from and perhaps be inspired by a David and Goliath story; by northernists and those interested in the politics of northern development; by environmentalists concerned about how their concerns are dealt with at the extraction end of world; by students of modern treaties and Indigenous rights and culture who want to know what happens after a treaty is settled.
– Peter Kulchyski, Canadian Dimension
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Joan Scottie is an Inuk Elder living in the community of Qamani’tuaq Baker Lake, Nunavut. Joan was born and raised on the land at a traditional Inuit camp. Since the 1980s, she has been a vital voice for Inuit opposition to uranium mining. Joan is a grandmother and avid hunter.
Warren Bernauer is a postdoctoral fellow at the Natural Resources Institute and the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of Manitoba.
Jack Hicks worked for Inuit organizations for more than thirty years. He is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan.