Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Tara L Joly
Pathways
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, there is a need to understand how the pandemic has influence... more As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, there is a need to understand how the pandemic has influenced anthropological research. This paper presents the results of a research project examining these changes and the challenges anthropologists have faced in carrying out their research methods during the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the University of Northern British Columbia in the Fall semester of 2020, undergraduate students led this project and conducted five virtual, semi-structured interviews with socio-cultural anthropologists across Canada, from a variety of career stages and with diverse research approaches. Interview participants described virtual research methods involving a heavy reliance on video conferencing and digitally available resources, benefits and challenges of remote and digital ethnography, changes to immersion and the spatial-temporal aspects of communication, and outcomes of adopting new technologies. The pandemic affected these anthropologists ...
Human Ecology
with Clinton N. Westman We review literature about Canada’s oil sands, pertaining to Indigenous P... more with Clinton N. Westman We review literature about Canada’s oil sands, pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. We draw on a range of recent published and unpublished sources. We find that social science research on oil sands extraction has been inadequate, even as the region has undergone transformation. Available research suggests that Indigenous communities feel resigned to further loss of their subsistence landbase. Due to the rapid pace of expansion, emergent issues and questions exist that cannot be readily synthesized. Decision-makers are not specialists in Indigenous issues or social impacts, and are not always supported by experts within their organizations. There is a need to review the qualifications of some social science consultants who work on impact assessment and consultation. The most vulnerable Indigenous people and communities face worrying health risks and evident pollution as they lose access to special places and preferred sources of food and water, entailing loss of cultural, spiritual, and familial connections.
Anthropologica, 2021
Scientists working for oil companies in the Athabasca region are developing methods by which to r... more Scientists working for oil companies in the Athabasca region are developing methods by which to reclaim muskeg (boreal peatlands) on land disturbed by oil sands extraction. The Alberta government requires companies to reclaim disturbed land by achieving equivalent capability of the landscape to support an end land use. Indigenous community members instead define reclamation as establishing not only quantifiable ecological functions, but also relationships to their traditional territories. Tensions emerge as Indigenous concerns are often subsumed within bureaucratic discourses that favour scientific classification and quantification of land uses in reclaimed areas. Divergent responses to muskeg in reclamation activities are informed in part by these competing emphases on quantifiable landscapes as opposed to those that are relational and growing. This article traces this multiplicity through the examination of government and scientific literature and ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous communities in northern Alberta. Muskeg is used as an analytical tool to explore competing conceptions of land reclamation. Mistranslation of polysemantic terms like muskeg occur on an ontological level, and settler colonial relations and power imbalances between competing languages and knowledge systems proliferate in reclamation activities.
Ethnos, 2020
Westman, Clinton N., Tara L. Joly, H. Max Pospisil, and Katherine Wheatley. 2020. “Encountering M... more Westman, Clinton N., Tara L. Joly, H. Max Pospisil, and Katherine Wheatley. 2020. “Encountering Moose in a Changing Landscape: Sociality, Intentionality, and Emplaced Relationships.” Ethnos, November. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00141844.2020.1841262.
Drawing on research among Cree and Métis hunters, we consider how moose enter into situated relationships with humans, other beings, and one another. Moose engage in communicative acts exhibiting embodied intentionality and a relational theory of mind. Moose intentionalities and subjectivities are partly knowable to hunters through the co-constructed perceptual lens that develops as moose and humans make homes together in a shared landscape – a ‘domus’ as David Anderson puts it. Moose reward humans who deeply engage with them, sharing knowledge of moose life/death projects, intraspecies connections, and localised environments – in the hunting context and sometimes in other contexts as well. Moose and those who hunt them attempt to approach, engage, outwit, and beguile one another. In documenting both this contact zone and aspects of moose interiority and perception (umwelt), we contribute more-than-human knowledges from Indigenous people of northern Canada to theories of mutualistic relationships, entanglement, and emplacement.
Journal of Ethnobiology, 2019
Fort McMurray Métis Elders and land users have observed a decrease in the population density of f... more Fort McMurray Métis Elders and land users have observed a decrease in the population density of freshwater mussels (known locally as clams; Unionidae) in the lower Athabasca region (LAR) in recent decades. A community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, braided with Indigenous Knowledge, is used as a guiding framework to facilitate partnerships and create safe, ethical spaces across diverse knowledge systems to address questions about freshwater mussel health in a locally relevant and culturally appropriate way. Opportunities for Elders and land users to travel along the Athabasca and Clearwater rivers in search of freshwater mussels allowed for the renewal of personal and cultural relationships to place that was braided with the study of parameters relevant to Western science. Our search revealed the presence of fat muckets (Lampsilis siliquoidea), with a limited number of giant floaters (Anodonta grandis), in our study area. However, delineating the types of species present is only the beginning of our work to understand freshwater mussel health in the LAR. We present a methodological discussion that demonstrates the importance of prioritizing Indigenous Knowledge to answer questions that may not have been considered within Western knowledge systems and shows how diverse ways of knowing can be braided to create new learnings together. “Learning together,” in practice, means recognizing that each person has knowledge and skills to contribute, which also involves shared decision making. We maintain that by “learning together,” complex problems can be understood in ways that are more meaningful and insightful than they would be if Indigenous communities, government scientists, or research consultants studied them alone.
FULL CITATION: Debra Hopkins, Tara L. Joly, Harvey Sykes, Almer Waniandy, John Grant, Lorrie Gallagher, Leonard Hansen, Kaitlyn Wall, Peter Fortna, and Michelle Bailey "“Learning Together”: Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge Systems to Understand Freshwater Mussel Health in the Lower Athabasca Region of Alberta, Canada," Journal of Ethnobiology 39(2), 315-336, (17 June 2019). https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-39.2.315
Human Ecology, 2019
with Clinton N. Westman
We review literature about Canada’s oil sands, pertaining to Indigenous ... more with Clinton N. Westman
We review literature about Canada’s oil sands, pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. We draw on a range of recent published and unpublished sources. We find that social science research on oil sands extraction has been inadequate, even as the region has undergone transformation. Available research suggests that Indigenous communities feel resigned to further loss of their subsistence landbase. Due to the rapid pace of expansion, emergent issues and questions exist that cannot be readily synthesized. Decision-makers are not specialists in Indigenous issues or social impacts, and are not always supported by experts within their organizations. There is a need to review the qualifications of some social science consultants who work on impact assessment and consultation. The most vulnerable Indigenous people and communities face worrying health risks and evident pollution as they lose access to special places and preferred sources of food and water, entailing loss of cultural, spiritual, and familial connections.
The Extractive Industries and Society, 2018
A B S T R A C T Traditional land use (TLU) mapping is a key mechanism for Indigenous communities ... more A B S T R A C T Traditional land use (TLU) mapping is a key mechanism for Indigenous communities to defend their land use and occupancy in environmental impact assessments. Yet, when faced with TLU interview questions, some Métis community members express reluctance to share sensitive land use information. TLU mapping is linked to a broader history of cartographic colonialism that forces Indigenous peoples to subject themselves to western systems of geographic knowledge. This paper asks: what do moments of ethnographic refusal convey about TLU assessments and consultation? Refusal – a practice of rejecting state-driven recognition and asserting Indigenous sovereignty – reveals several methodological flaws with TLU studies that undermine the efficacy of consultation. Based on our TLU research with the McMurray Métis community, the authors describe how TLU studies can undervalue Indigenous geographic knowledge by deemphasizing cultural landscapes, compromising land use locations, and reducing understanding of impacts to site-specific analyses. These problems stem directly from state regulation that deems development inevitable and positions TLU studies as a catch-all mechanism for competing processes: impact assessments and the duty to consult. Attending to ethnographic refusal in TLU studies inspires a more culturally appropriate methodology that asserts Indigenous sovereignty of lands identified for resource extraction in Canada and worldwide.
Social Compass, 2017
Westman, CN and TL Joly. Visions of the great mystery: Grounding the Algonquian manitow concept. ... more Westman, CN and TL Joly. Visions of the great mystery: Grounding the Algonquian manitow concept. Social Compass 1-16.
This article provides an overview of the Algonquian manitow concept. Manitow is often translated as spirit, god or mythical being, but reflects more complex and culturally grounded ideas about power in animist ontologies. The article suggests that manitow should be translated with care, with attention to a range of meanings. The authors refer primarily to Cree examples from Alberta, Canada, but also take a broader view to consider examples from other Algonquian contexts. Beginning with a discussion of definitions, the article then turns to the concept’s theoretical career. The article provides data on the contemporary dynamics of the manitow in the context of Cree religious pluralism, as well as on the emplacement of manitow relations through toponymy, particularly as seen around lakes named manitow sâkahikan.
Book Projects by Tara L Joly
with Caitlin Downie (eds)
This edited volume explores the intersections of being queer and doing... more with Caitlin Downie (eds)
This edited volume explores the intersections of being queer and doing activism in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB, ᓂᐢᑕᐋᐧᔮᐤ, or nistawâyâw).
The overall objective of this book is to create more visibility and understanding of the queer and activist communities in Wood Buffalo. As home to both Indigenous communities and extractive industries including the infamous oil sands, representations of everyday life and social movements in the region often revolve around resource, labour, and environmental conflicts. However, there is a lesser known and thriving queer activist community that has been a driving force in creating community and safety for queer folkx in the region, as well as pushing for and making real change in municipal politics.
This book creates a space for exploring, reflecting, and celebrating these experiences, including the specific challenges and opportunities of queering activism in the region. The contributors to this edited collection include artists and non-artists, thinkers, activists, community members, and organizers. The book is a collection of prose, poetry, lyrical, and mixed media pieces that include topics such as resistance, social justice, human rights, identity, representation, belonging, and community building and life in Wood Buffalo.
Canada's oil sands industry is in the global public eye as both a major source of fossil fuel rev... more Canada's oil sands industry is in the global public eye as both a major source of fossil fuel revenues and a key contributor to climate change and pollution. After extraction is complete, the Alberta government requires oil companies to reclaim their lease areas, transforming post-extraction oil sands areas to a state of "equivalent capability" of land use, or rebuilding the productivity of a landscape. Labeling a landscape "productive", however, makes assumptions about what is and is not considered to be of value in nature. Often, rifts erupt between those values in and knowledge of the land held by oil companies, bureaucrats, scientists, and indigenous communities. This book is a landscape ethnography that engages with the issue of reclamation from a social science perspective, drawing on literature at the confluence of settler colonial studies and environmental anthropology. The aim is to produce a manuscript engaging with cutting-edge questions in anthropology about possibilities of living in damaged landscapes, in the context of a settler colonial state. Importantly, this book will be the first single-author, manuscript-length ethnography by an anthropologist about an Indigenous community's responses to oil sands development in Alberta. While I am not Indigenous, I draw on five years working in northern Alberta with the McMurray Métis community, including as a consultant in the region's applied burgeoning applied anthropology industry. Existing literature in environmental anthropology in Canada is dominated by First Nation and Inuit studies, with little attention paid to Métis-environmental relations. A focus on Métis studies is particularly timely considering the rapidly changing juridical context of Métis rights. The topic of reclamation provides a needed analytical entry point to analyze living in damaged landscapes (Tsing et al 2017) from a settler colonial lens (Wolfe 2006). This book has a potential for global appeal due to international attention on the tar sands, Indigenous rights, and the Anthropocene.
My book draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Fort McMurray from 2013-2014 with the local Métis community and peatland scientists to frame reclamation as a site of historically contingent encounter between Indigenous and settler peoples in the Athabasca region. The overall argument of the book is that reclamation is currently practiced in a way that privileges settler notions of land use which undermines opportunities for Indigenous peoples to "grow" and "heal" with a regenerated site (to use words of the Metis community). While reclamation might provide opportunities to re-grow a damaged landscape ecologically (often to a limited degree), reclamation areas ultimately represent a diminished landscape for Metis community members as they do not afford Metis land uses.
With Clinton Westman (first editor) and Lena Gross.
The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’... more With Clinton Westman (first editor) and Lena Gross.
The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’s most important energy sources and the subject of global attention in relation to climate change and pollution. This volume engages ethnographically with key issues concerning the oil sands by working from anthropological literature and beyond to explore how people struggle to make and hold on to diverse senses of home in the region. The contributors draw on diverse fieldwork experiences with communities in Alberta that are affected by the oil sands industry. Through a series of case studies, they illuminate the complexities inherent in the entanglements of race, class, Indigeneity, gender, and ontological concerns in a regional context characterized by extreme extraction. The chapters are unified in a common concern for ethnographically theorizing settler colonialism, sentient landscapes, and multispecies relations within a critical political ecology framework and by the prominent role that extractive industries play in shaping new relations between Indigenous Peoples, the state, newcomers, corporations, plants, animals, and the land.
PhD Thesis by Tara L Joly
Selected Reports by Tara L Joly
Anthropologica
The Canadian Anthropology Society is working to address sexualharassment and violence at institut... more The Canadian Anthropology Society is working to address sexualharassment and violence at institutional and community-based settings whereanthropologists undertake their work. In 2021, the newly formed SexualHarassment and Violence Working Group held a roundtable at the CASCAconference to start a conversation about sexual violence among CASCAmembers and to workshop best practices to prevent, disrupt, and respondto incidents of sexual harassment and violence that CASCA members mayexperience or observe. Here, the Working Group summarizes the process ofplanning, implementing, and following up the roundtable, focusing on specificactions taken by the organizers to ensure a safe conversational space before,during, and after the event. We demonstrate how the roundtable aligns withinthe larger framework of CASCA’s institutional history and future. The goalof this report is to provide a framework for convening difficult conversationsin professional settings, especially in an online environmen...
In April 2018, the Fort McMurray Métis Local 1935 tasked us with undertaking a study examining th... more In April 2018, the Fort McMurray Métis Local 1935 tasked us with undertaking a study examining the cultural history and significance of Moccasin Flats, a predominantly Métis settlement that was demolished by the town of Fort McMurray between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Elders and leadership of the McMurray Métis community identified the Moccasin Flats evictions as a research priority and a central issue for Truth and Reconciliation for their community. However, no comprehensive study of the evictions or their impacts has been completed to date.
Our objective was to answer the following questions we developed in collaboration with the McMurray Métis Board of Directors, with a focus on Métis-specific concerns:
• What was the history and significance of Moccasin Flats as a Métis space?
• Why did the town of Fort McMurray and/or the Alberta government evict the families living at Moccasin Flats?
• What were the social and economic impacts of the evictions on the evicted families and the McMurray Métis community?
• What are some possible avenues for reconciliation regarding the Moccasin Flats evictions?
To answer these questions, we used archival and oral history research methods that we have developed in our training in history and anthropology. We have worked to triangulate oral history interviews, archival documents, and maps to answer our research questions.
The report shows how Moccasin Flats was an important Métis home, with recorded Métis occupancy since around 1870. It was part of an Indigenous homeland and a central location for the exercise of Indigenous rights to hunt, trap, fish, and gather for subsistence. It shows how The New Town of Fort McMurray collaborated with Northward Developments Ltd. (Syncrude) to evict the Métis families at Moccasin Flats to build the River Park Glen housing tower and a proposed marina that was never built.
This study identified two general themes of impacts on the Métis community in Fort McMurray: (1) cultural impacts to a Métis way of life, including social fragmentation, disruption of relationships to the land, and related intergenerational trauma; and (2) socio-economic impacts, such as housing insecurity, economic impacts, and exposure to racism. The report concludes with compensation and reconciliation recommendations documented in interviews.
Report with Clinton N. Westman synthesizing recent literature on impacts, benefits, and participa... more Report with Clinton N. Westman synthesizing recent literature on impacts, benefits, and participatory processes for Indigenous communities in the oil sands region. This project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's Knowledge Synthesis Grant.
Selected Conference Presentations by Tara L Joly
Anthropology In Our Backyards, 2020
Public Talk, Nov. 26, 2020
Oil sands companies in northern Alberta are required to reclaim land ... more Public Talk, Nov. 26, 2020
Oil sands companies in northern Alberta are required to reclaim land disturbed by their extractive activities. Reclaimed land is meant to resemble a naturally-occurring boreal forest, but reclamation has been criticized for ‘desertifying’ a landscape that, prior to extraction, consisted largely of muskeg (peatlands).
What is the social and cultural context for the creation of these landscapes? Of what value is muskeg, anyways? And, importantly, what does land reclamation mean for Indigenous rights and land use? This talk will consider these questions by examining ways that muskeg and its reclamation appear in Indigenous, government, and scientific discourses.
https://video.unbc.ca/media/Growing+%28With%29+MuskegA+Oil+Sands+Reclamation+and+Health+-+Dr.+Tara+Joly+-+November+26+2020/0_50xn8dx7/195207
In the Athabasca region of subarctic Canada, oil companies are required by the Alberta government... more In the Athabasca region of subarctic Canada, oil companies are required by the Alberta government to reclaim land disturbed by their extractive activities. Company scientists design reclamation areas to become self-sustaining boreal forests that afford Indigenous and commercial land uses. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with the McMurray Métis community, in this paper I explore how oil company discourse frames reclamation as a sustainable gift to Indigenous communities that is fundamentally different from Métis notions of gift giving with a sentient environment. Oil companies present reclamation as a spectacle of corporate social responsibility that envisions a utopian future separate from a past in which human-environmental relations were inherently destructive. Instead, Métis community members aim to re-establish reciprocal relationships with the reclaimed environment through a relational process of healing. To explore these contrasting perspectives, I describe gifts offered in two journeys through reclamation areas: a walk with Métis Elders and an oil company bus tour. The journeys afford contrasting movements, processes of gift giving, and relationships with the environment, which highlight how conflicts proliferate between Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors. Further, by centering commodity histories in narratives of reclamation, oil companies silence stories of Métis dispossession on oil sands leases and the reclaimed landscape does not allow for the renewal of Métis-environment relations. Ultimately I argue that the gifting of reclaimed land is entangled in historically contingent settler colonial processes that seek not to establish reciprocity, but to erase Indigenous presence on the land and create settler space.
Traditional Land Use (TLU) mapping has become a key mechanism for incorporating Indigenous land u... more Traditional Land Use (TLU) mapping has become a key mechanism for incorporating Indigenous land use information into impact assessments. TLU mapping is an invaluable tool for Indigenous communities to affirm use and occupancy, yet some community members refuse to share land use information in TLU studies. We examine these moments of refusal to argue that TLU mapping is linked to a broader history of cartographic colonialism that forces Indigenous peoples to subject themselves to western systems of geographic knowledge. Based on our work as research consultants with the Fort McMurray Métis, we describe how TLU studies can be perceived by communities as subjugating Indigenous geographic knowledge in several ways: by lacking emphasis on cultural landscapes, by compromising land use locations, and by using site-specific analysis. We suggest how TLU studies may be conducted in a more culturally appropriate way that asserts Indigenous sovereignty of lands identified for resource extraction.
Land use is a key concept guiding environmental management in the Athabasca oil sands region in s... more Land use is a key concept guiding environmental management in the Athabasca oil sands region in subarctic Canada. Land use planning compartmentalises activities into a variety of spatially-bound categories, including extractive or traditional use areas. Indigenous land rights also hinge upon demonstrating evidence of site-specific land use and occupancy in Traditional Land Use assessments. As a Fort McMurray Métis elder explained, “If you don’t use it, you lose it”. This paper is a reflection on this statement, exploring how the Métis, government, and oil companies define land use and how use is connected to multiplicities of loss on traplines. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Fort McMurray, Alberta, I compare settler colonial definitions of land use that stem from John Locke’s labour theory of property with Métis legal orders that are rooted in notions of sharing, respect, and reciprocity. I explore a case of competing land uses on an ancestral Métis trapline to outline how these multiple definitions of use converge and compete in practice. Performing land use according to rigid regulatory definitions has high stakes for the actors involved, as territorial, economic, ecological, or relational losses proliferate. I conclude by suggesting that indigenous peoples like the McMurray Métis are actively and creatively adapting their performances of land use to assert sovereignty and remain in dialogue with a powerful state.
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Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Tara L Joly
Drawing on research among Cree and Métis hunters, we consider how moose enter into situated relationships with humans, other beings, and one another. Moose engage in communicative acts exhibiting embodied intentionality and a relational theory of mind. Moose intentionalities and subjectivities are partly knowable to hunters through the co-constructed perceptual lens that develops as moose and humans make homes together in a shared landscape – a ‘domus’ as David Anderson puts it. Moose reward humans who deeply engage with them, sharing knowledge of moose life/death projects, intraspecies connections, and localised environments – in the hunting context and sometimes in other contexts as well. Moose and those who hunt them attempt to approach, engage, outwit, and beguile one another. In documenting both this contact zone and aspects of moose interiority and perception (umwelt), we contribute more-than-human knowledges from Indigenous people of northern Canada to theories of mutualistic relationships, entanglement, and emplacement.
FULL CITATION: Debra Hopkins, Tara L. Joly, Harvey Sykes, Almer Waniandy, John Grant, Lorrie Gallagher, Leonard Hansen, Kaitlyn Wall, Peter Fortna, and Michelle Bailey "“Learning Together”: Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge Systems to Understand Freshwater Mussel Health in the Lower Athabasca Region of Alberta, Canada," Journal of Ethnobiology 39(2), 315-336, (17 June 2019). https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-39.2.315
We review literature about Canada’s oil sands, pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. We draw on a range of recent published and unpublished sources. We find that social science research on oil sands extraction has been inadequate, even as the region has undergone transformation. Available research suggests that Indigenous communities feel resigned to further loss of their subsistence landbase. Due to the rapid pace of expansion, emergent issues and questions exist that cannot be readily synthesized. Decision-makers are not specialists in Indigenous issues or social impacts, and are not always supported by experts within their organizations. There is a need to review the qualifications of some social science consultants who work on impact assessment and consultation. The most vulnerable Indigenous people and communities face worrying health risks and evident pollution as they lose access to special places and preferred sources of food and water, entailing loss of cultural, spiritual, and familial connections.
This article provides an overview of the Algonquian manitow concept. Manitow is often translated as spirit, god or mythical being, but reflects more complex and culturally grounded ideas about power in animist ontologies. The article suggests that manitow should be translated with care, with attention to a range of meanings. The authors refer primarily to Cree examples from Alberta, Canada, but also take a broader view to consider examples from other Algonquian contexts. Beginning with a discussion of definitions, the article then turns to the concept’s theoretical career. The article provides data on the contemporary dynamics of the manitow in the context of Cree religious pluralism, as well as on the emplacement of manitow relations through toponymy, particularly as seen around lakes named manitow sâkahikan.
Book Projects by Tara L Joly
This edited volume explores the intersections of being queer and doing activism in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB, ᓂᐢᑕᐋᐧᔮᐤ, or nistawâyâw).
The overall objective of this book is to create more visibility and understanding of the queer and activist communities in Wood Buffalo. As home to both Indigenous communities and extractive industries including the infamous oil sands, representations of everyday life and social movements in the region often revolve around resource, labour, and environmental conflicts. However, there is a lesser known and thriving queer activist community that has been a driving force in creating community and safety for queer folkx in the region, as well as pushing for and making real change in municipal politics.
This book creates a space for exploring, reflecting, and celebrating these experiences, including the specific challenges and opportunities of queering activism in the region. The contributors to this edited collection include artists and non-artists, thinkers, activists, community members, and organizers. The book is a collection of prose, poetry, lyrical, and mixed media pieces that include topics such as resistance, social justice, human rights, identity, representation, belonging, and community building and life in Wood Buffalo.
My book draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Fort McMurray from 2013-2014 with the local Métis community and peatland scientists to frame reclamation as a site of historically contingent encounter between Indigenous and settler peoples in the Athabasca region. The overall argument of the book is that reclamation is currently practiced in a way that privileges settler notions of land use which undermines opportunities for Indigenous peoples to "grow" and "heal" with a regenerated site (to use words of the Metis community). While reclamation might provide opportunities to re-grow a damaged landscape ecologically (often to a limited degree), reclamation areas ultimately represent a diminished landscape for Metis community members as they do not afford Metis land uses.
The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’s most important energy sources and the subject of global attention in relation to climate change and pollution. This volume engages ethnographically with key issues concerning the oil sands by working from anthropological literature and beyond to explore how people struggle to make and hold on to diverse senses of home in the region. The contributors draw on diverse fieldwork experiences with communities in Alberta that are affected by the oil sands industry. Through a series of case studies, they illuminate the complexities inherent in the entanglements of race, class, Indigeneity, gender, and ontological concerns in a regional context characterized by extreme extraction. The chapters are unified in a common concern for ethnographically theorizing settler colonialism, sentient landscapes, and multispecies relations within a critical political ecology framework and by the prominent role that extractive industries play in shaping new relations between Indigenous Peoples, the state, newcomers, corporations, plants, animals, and the land.
PhD Thesis by Tara L Joly
Selected Reports by Tara L Joly
Our objective was to answer the following questions we developed in collaboration with the McMurray Métis Board of Directors, with a focus on Métis-specific concerns:
• What was the history and significance of Moccasin Flats as a Métis space?
• Why did the town of Fort McMurray and/or the Alberta government evict the families living at Moccasin Flats?
• What were the social and economic impacts of the evictions on the evicted families and the McMurray Métis community?
• What are some possible avenues for reconciliation regarding the Moccasin Flats evictions?
To answer these questions, we used archival and oral history research methods that we have developed in our training in history and anthropology. We have worked to triangulate oral history interviews, archival documents, and maps to answer our research questions.
The report shows how Moccasin Flats was an important Métis home, with recorded Métis occupancy since around 1870. It was part of an Indigenous homeland and a central location for the exercise of Indigenous rights to hunt, trap, fish, and gather for subsistence. It shows how The New Town of Fort McMurray collaborated with Northward Developments Ltd. (Syncrude) to evict the Métis families at Moccasin Flats to build the River Park Glen housing tower and a proposed marina that was never built.
This study identified two general themes of impacts on the Métis community in Fort McMurray: (1) cultural impacts to a Métis way of life, including social fragmentation, disruption of relationships to the land, and related intergenerational trauma; and (2) socio-economic impacts, such as housing insecurity, economic impacts, and exposure to racism. The report concludes with compensation and reconciliation recommendations documented in interviews.
Selected Conference Presentations by Tara L Joly
Oil sands companies in northern Alberta are required to reclaim land disturbed by their extractive activities. Reclaimed land is meant to resemble a naturally-occurring boreal forest, but reclamation has been criticized for ‘desertifying’ a landscape that, prior to extraction, consisted largely of muskeg (peatlands).
What is the social and cultural context for the creation of these landscapes? Of what value is muskeg, anyways? And, importantly, what does land reclamation mean for Indigenous rights and land use? This talk will consider these questions by examining ways that muskeg and its reclamation appear in Indigenous, government, and scientific discourses.
https://video.unbc.ca/media/Growing+%28With%29+MuskegA+Oil+Sands+Reclamation+and+Health+-+Dr.+Tara+Joly+-+November+26+2020/0_50xn8dx7/195207
Drawing on research among Cree and Métis hunters, we consider how moose enter into situated relationships with humans, other beings, and one another. Moose engage in communicative acts exhibiting embodied intentionality and a relational theory of mind. Moose intentionalities and subjectivities are partly knowable to hunters through the co-constructed perceptual lens that develops as moose and humans make homes together in a shared landscape – a ‘domus’ as David Anderson puts it. Moose reward humans who deeply engage with them, sharing knowledge of moose life/death projects, intraspecies connections, and localised environments – in the hunting context and sometimes in other contexts as well. Moose and those who hunt them attempt to approach, engage, outwit, and beguile one another. In documenting both this contact zone and aspects of moose interiority and perception (umwelt), we contribute more-than-human knowledges from Indigenous people of northern Canada to theories of mutualistic relationships, entanglement, and emplacement.
FULL CITATION: Debra Hopkins, Tara L. Joly, Harvey Sykes, Almer Waniandy, John Grant, Lorrie Gallagher, Leonard Hansen, Kaitlyn Wall, Peter Fortna, and Michelle Bailey "“Learning Together”: Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge Systems to Understand Freshwater Mussel Health in the Lower Athabasca Region of Alberta, Canada," Journal of Ethnobiology 39(2), 315-336, (17 June 2019). https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-39.2.315
We review literature about Canada’s oil sands, pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. We draw on a range of recent published and unpublished sources. We find that social science research on oil sands extraction has been inadequate, even as the region has undergone transformation. Available research suggests that Indigenous communities feel resigned to further loss of their subsistence landbase. Due to the rapid pace of expansion, emergent issues and questions exist that cannot be readily synthesized. Decision-makers are not specialists in Indigenous issues or social impacts, and are not always supported by experts within their organizations. There is a need to review the qualifications of some social science consultants who work on impact assessment and consultation. The most vulnerable Indigenous people and communities face worrying health risks and evident pollution as they lose access to special places and preferred sources of food and water, entailing loss of cultural, spiritual, and familial connections.
This article provides an overview of the Algonquian manitow concept. Manitow is often translated as spirit, god or mythical being, but reflects more complex and culturally grounded ideas about power in animist ontologies. The article suggests that manitow should be translated with care, with attention to a range of meanings. The authors refer primarily to Cree examples from Alberta, Canada, but also take a broader view to consider examples from other Algonquian contexts. Beginning with a discussion of definitions, the article then turns to the concept’s theoretical career. The article provides data on the contemporary dynamics of the manitow in the context of Cree religious pluralism, as well as on the emplacement of manitow relations through toponymy, particularly as seen around lakes named manitow sâkahikan.
This edited volume explores the intersections of being queer and doing activism in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB, ᓂᐢᑕᐋᐧᔮᐤ, or nistawâyâw).
The overall objective of this book is to create more visibility and understanding of the queer and activist communities in Wood Buffalo. As home to both Indigenous communities and extractive industries including the infamous oil sands, representations of everyday life and social movements in the region often revolve around resource, labour, and environmental conflicts. However, there is a lesser known and thriving queer activist community that has been a driving force in creating community and safety for queer folkx in the region, as well as pushing for and making real change in municipal politics.
This book creates a space for exploring, reflecting, and celebrating these experiences, including the specific challenges and opportunities of queering activism in the region. The contributors to this edited collection include artists and non-artists, thinkers, activists, community members, and organizers. The book is a collection of prose, poetry, lyrical, and mixed media pieces that include topics such as resistance, social justice, human rights, identity, representation, belonging, and community building and life in Wood Buffalo.
My book draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Fort McMurray from 2013-2014 with the local Métis community and peatland scientists to frame reclamation as a site of historically contingent encounter between Indigenous and settler peoples in the Athabasca region. The overall argument of the book is that reclamation is currently practiced in a way that privileges settler notions of land use which undermines opportunities for Indigenous peoples to "grow" and "heal" with a regenerated site (to use words of the Metis community). While reclamation might provide opportunities to re-grow a damaged landscape ecologically (often to a limited degree), reclamation areas ultimately represent a diminished landscape for Metis community members as they do not afford Metis land uses.
The Canadian oil sands are one of the world’s most important energy sources and the subject of global attention in relation to climate change and pollution. This volume engages ethnographically with key issues concerning the oil sands by working from anthropological literature and beyond to explore how people struggle to make and hold on to diverse senses of home in the region. The contributors draw on diverse fieldwork experiences with communities in Alberta that are affected by the oil sands industry. Through a series of case studies, they illuminate the complexities inherent in the entanglements of race, class, Indigeneity, gender, and ontological concerns in a regional context characterized by extreme extraction. The chapters are unified in a common concern for ethnographically theorizing settler colonialism, sentient landscapes, and multispecies relations within a critical political ecology framework and by the prominent role that extractive industries play in shaping new relations between Indigenous Peoples, the state, newcomers, corporations, plants, animals, and the land.
Our objective was to answer the following questions we developed in collaboration with the McMurray Métis Board of Directors, with a focus on Métis-specific concerns:
• What was the history and significance of Moccasin Flats as a Métis space?
• Why did the town of Fort McMurray and/or the Alberta government evict the families living at Moccasin Flats?
• What were the social and economic impacts of the evictions on the evicted families and the McMurray Métis community?
• What are some possible avenues for reconciliation regarding the Moccasin Flats evictions?
To answer these questions, we used archival and oral history research methods that we have developed in our training in history and anthropology. We have worked to triangulate oral history interviews, archival documents, and maps to answer our research questions.
The report shows how Moccasin Flats was an important Métis home, with recorded Métis occupancy since around 1870. It was part of an Indigenous homeland and a central location for the exercise of Indigenous rights to hunt, trap, fish, and gather for subsistence. It shows how The New Town of Fort McMurray collaborated with Northward Developments Ltd. (Syncrude) to evict the Métis families at Moccasin Flats to build the River Park Glen housing tower and a proposed marina that was never built.
This study identified two general themes of impacts on the Métis community in Fort McMurray: (1) cultural impacts to a Métis way of life, including social fragmentation, disruption of relationships to the land, and related intergenerational trauma; and (2) socio-economic impacts, such as housing insecurity, economic impacts, and exposure to racism. The report concludes with compensation and reconciliation recommendations documented in interviews.
Oil sands companies in northern Alberta are required to reclaim land disturbed by their extractive activities. Reclaimed land is meant to resemble a naturally-occurring boreal forest, but reclamation has been criticized for ‘desertifying’ a landscape that, prior to extraction, consisted largely of muskeg (peatlands).
What is the social and cultural context for the creation of these landscapes? Of what value is muskeg, anyways? And, importantly, what does land reclamation mean for Indigenous rights and land use? This talk will consider these questions by examining ways that muskeg and its reclamation appear in Indigenous, government, and scientific discourses.
https://video.unbc.ca/media/Growing+%28With%29+MuskegA+Oil+Sands+Reclamation+and+Health+-+Dr.+Tara+Joly+-+November+26+2020/0_50xn8dx7/195207
Oral history offers a method for indigenous communities in northeastern Alberta to demonstrate land use and cultural continuity threatened by industrial development, but is criticized for translating traditional knowledge into written documents that lay dormant on library shelves. Yet just as the Athabasca River naturally flows in currents, so do traditional teachings. We describe the Mark of the Métis canoe trip as an attempt to bring an experiential element to Métis Elders’ interviews about their lives on the land and waterways. We explore how honouring Elders’ traditional knowledge by treating it as alive is a necessary means of cultural learning.
The practical impacts of my findings lie in conceptual and instrumental applications. First, my findings explore varying ontological underpinnings of reclamation activities and have potential to inform or reframe debates surrounding reclamation policy. Specifically my work indicates reclamation cannot be deemed successful for Aboriginal communities without a relational approach to human-environment engagements. Second, my findings may influence the development of reclamation policy and legislation to meaningfully include Aboriginal rights. In particular, I call provincial and federal governments to develop an oil sands reclamation policy that includes participatory processes for Aboriginal communities. Third, my findings uphold Métis rights in a historically contingent political context which tends to render Métis issues less visible. My research may then support the development of Métis-specific legislation and policy that would recognise rights including occupancy and harvesting.
My findings also have potential to impact anthropological methodology and theory. I suggest that a relational approach to human-environment engagements as communicated by my Métis interlocutors can inform the development of an ethical relationality (Donald 2009) in anthropological research methodology. Theoretically, I seek to inform debates surrounding the ontological turn by exploring the intersections of political ontology with political economy as it relates to landscape studies. In so doing, I develop an ethnographic profile of the Athabasca oil sands that seeks to move beyond one-dimensional, binary representations of industrial development and Aboriginal relations.
I will showcase my research’s impacts with a multimedia poster presentation. Ratroot will be employed as a metaphor to describe my findings and their impacts. Multimedia to be used in the presentation includes a sample of ratroot, video clips and photos of ratroot harvesting in subarctic wetlands, land use maps, textual narratives of ratroot from oral history interviews, and narratives from official reclamation documents. These multimedia pieces will directly relate to and help describe each research impact outlined above.