Neoliberal settler colonialism,Canada and the tar sands

Abstract

The Canadian government commenced the treaty-making process with the Indigenous peoples of the Athabasca region in 1870, motivated by the Geological Survey of Canada’s reports that petroleum existed in the area. This, in addition to the discovery of gold in the Klondike region, spurred an influx of unregulated settlement and resource extraction in the north. The trajectory of this history has continued to bring the Canadian settler state – and its oil industry stakeholders – into negotiation with indigenous Nations over the Athabasca tar sands. Currently contested is Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway project, which aims to move oil from the Edmonton, Alberta area by way of two massive pipelines covering 1,170km to Kitimat, British Columbia, where it would then be transported to Asia-Pacific markets by super-tankers. This paper examines the widespread criticism of the project from Indigenous and environmental groups, as well as responses to these objections by public/private partnerships between Enbridge, federal and provincial governments and their national security and counter-terrorism forces. It argues that recognising and naming contemporary forms of white settler colonialism, including these types of neoliberal partnerships, is required for new relations to become possible.

Keywords

#IdleNoMore Athabasca Chief Theresa Spence Enbridge fracking Northern Gateway Pipeline oil sands tar sands Yinka Dene Alliance

Settler colonialism is not just a historical phenomenon; its practices and processes operate still within a contemporary neoliberal framework. But they can be difficult to identify, track and dismantle. In the Canadian context, for example, ‘resource’ extraction projects billed as ‘ethical’ economic opportunities for all Canadians obscure and normalise ongoing processes of environmental racism, Indigenous oppression and violence. And Alberta’s tar sands,¹ notably the Athabasca deposits, provide a particularly demonstrative site where these politics play out with every barrel of bitumen extracted from Indigenous territories. Bitumen, from which a synthetic oil is produced, looks and smells like tar. The deposits are believed to be the second largest in the world and cover an area greater than England. They are extracted either by open surface mining, which strips huge areas of forest and open land or by ‘in situ’ (fracking) techniques, which, as Greenpeace graphically puts it, essentially boil the earth by injecting massive amounts of steam and gas to melt the bitumen out of the soil and into pipelines. Two tons of soil go into the extraction of every barrel of bitumen. The massive scale of these works, and the sight of them ‘before’ and ‘after’, is hard to comprehend. (See images on p. 50.)

Canadian energy giant Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project illustrates how white settler colonialism functions through complex relationships between the state, its national security forces, and private oil and gas companies. It reveals how racism and settler colonialism fundamentally structure contemporary social and economic life, requiring the wider Canadian public, as well as Indigenous Nations, to identify such projects as sites of ongoing settler colonialism.

Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project aims to move crude oil from the Edmonton, Alberta, area by way of two massive pipelines covering 1,170km to Kitimat, British Columbia, from where it would be transported to Asia-Pacific markets by super-tankers.² The project is intended to diversify the market for ‘Canada’s oil’, 99 per cent of which is currently exported to the US.³ It has been the target of widespread criticism from environmental and Indigenous groups, including the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of six Indigenous Nations banning the proposed pipelines from their territories.⁴ In response, the Canadian government established a new Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)-led anti-terrorism unit in June 2012 – the K Division Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET).⁵

According to Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud of National Security Criminal Investigations, the counter-terrorism unit is designed ‘to gather intelligence to prevent attacks before they happen’ and to protect the energy industry from ‘attacks by extremists’.⁶ While led by the RCMP, K Division includes officers from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Edmonton and Calgary police forces and the federal border patrol. INSETs already exist in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.⁷ The creation of K Division INSET was designed to protect the tar sands industry, including ‘400,000 kilometres of pipeline; more than 176,000 operating oil and gas wells; eight oil sands mines; five upgraders; and 250 in-situ oil extraction facilities, according to the Energy Resources Conservation Board’.⁸ K Division, described as playing a ‘critical role at the forefront of Canada’s Counter-terrorism strategy’,⁹ is a criminalising response to organised Indigenous objections to the Enbridge pipeline project and to the tar sands industry more generally, which relies on the traversal, excavation and destruction of sovereign Indigenous territories (including several unceded Indigenous territories) and poses significant threats to the environment.

INSETs were initially established following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US as part of Canada’s counter-terrorism strategy. Now, over a decade later, this latest iteration of INSET raises the question: what warrants the establishment of a new counter-terrorism unit and the ‘need to protect critical infrastructure’?¹⁰ According to Chief Larry Nooski of Nadleh Whut’en, ‘over 80 First Nations in BC have stated that they are totally opposed to Enbridge’s proposed pipelines’.¹¹ In Alberta, many Indigenous Nations have long objected to the tar sands industry, as Chief Roxanna Marcel of the Mikisew Cree First Nation states, ‘our message to both levels of government, to Albertans, to Canadians and to the world who may depend on oil sands for their energy solutions, is that we can no longer be sacrificed’.¹²

While most environmental groups¹³ protesting against the tar sands industry make only passing mention of its effects on Indigenous communities, others have begun working collaboratively with Indigenous groups in resisting the plan. The coalitions between Indigenous and environmental groups are necessary and pose a threat to neoliberal private-public partnerships – like Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project – but I argue that it is organised Indigenous resistance in particular that poses the greatest threat to both the tar sands industry and the colluding Canadian state. Movements asserting Indigenous sovereignty pose significant barriers to extractive industries working in settler colonial nation-states. It is the nagging issue of Indigenous sovereignty that won’t allow ‘the Indian problem’ to disappear.

As the scholar Patrick Wolfe has argued, settler colonialism is a structure and not an event, one that is informed by ‘the logic of elimination’, which he describes as ‘more than the summary liquidation of Indigenous people, though it includes that’.¹⁴ He goes on to further define settler colonialism as ‘an inclusive, land-centered project that coordinates a comprehensive range of agencies, from the metropolitan center to the frontier encampment, with a view to eliminate Indigenous societies’.¹⁵ The operation of this complex social formation is not dependent on ‘the presence or absence of formal state institutions or functionaries’, and thus can manifest itself through mercantilism, or neoliberal private-public partnerships.¹⁶

Indigenous scholar Andrea Smith has asked how white supremacy and settler colonialism intersect within the US and has challenged both Native studies and ethnic studies (and/or postcolonial studies) to engage in an exchange that recognises white supremacy as ‘constituted by separate and distinct, but still interrelated, logics’.¹⁷ Smith understands these logics as potentially different depending on historical or geographic context, but argues that ‘analyzing white supremacy in any context may benefit from not presuming a single logic but assessing how it might be operating through multiple logics (even as these multiple logics may vary)’.¹⁸ She identifies three dominant pillars or logics of white supremacy in the US: ‘(1) slaveability/anti-black racism which anchors capitalism; (2) genocide, which anchors colonialism; and (3) orientalism, which anchors war’.¹⁹ Drawing on Smith, I seek to understand how white supremacy works within the context of contemporary Canadian settler colonialism and, more specifically, in popular discussions of and government responses to Indigenous resistance to the Enbridge pipelines project. Just as settler colonialism continues to structure the Canadian nation-state and its relation to the land and to ‘natural resources’, it also structures neoliberal partnerships and their security forces, revealing, in the process, the development of new technologies and methods of maintaining control.

Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines project

According to Enbridge, ‘Canada’s oil sands are found in three deposits – the Athabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake areas in Alberta and part of Saskatchewan. The greatest quantity is found in the Athabasca deposit.’²⁰ The Northern Gateway pipeline is intended to transport 525,000 barrels of oil per day from Edmonton to Kitimat.²¹ This ‘westerly flow’ is intended to transport the synthetic form of oil manufactured from bitumen, a naturally occurring viscous and dense form of petroleum (chemically similar to asphalt) found mixed within sand, clay and water.²² Huseman and Short describe the extraction process as follows:

Oil sands-derived oil must be extracted by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells by ‘in situ’ techniques, which reduce the viscosity by injecting steam, solvents, and/or hot air into the sands. These processes use much more water than conventional oil extraction – three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil – and produce huge ‘tailing ponds’ (‘tailing lakes’ would be more accurate) into which over 480 million gallons of contaminated toxic waste water are dumped daily.²³

As many remote Indigenous communities continue to fight for access to drinking water, the tar sands industry expends and pollutes much needed clean water. The ‘easterly flow’ of the proposed pipelines, according to Enbridge, would carry an average of 193,000 barrels of imported diluent or condensate per day, used to thin the oil-like bitumen for transport through the pipelines.²⁴ After the crude bitumen arrives in Kitimat, it is to be transferred on to massive tanker ships at the proposed Terminal facility, and shipped through the Gulf Islands to its destination in either Asia-Pacific markets or the western United States.

Both the Alberta provincial government and the Canadian federal government have been vocal supporters of the project, whereas the provincial government of British Columbia remains critical, as it would stand to incur much of the environmental risk of the project, with most of the profits remaining in Alberta and elsewhere.²⁵ British Columbia’s reservations are perhaps also due to the persistent reports of Enbridge pipeline leaks and to a damning US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report released in July 2012, which examined Enbridge’s response to the Line 6B rupture on 25 July 2010 in Michigan. The NTSB found that Enbridge did not fix a defect in the pipeline that had been discovered five years prior to the leak, and that control-room staff responded poorly when the leak was detected. In fact, while millions of litres of oil began pouring into and around the Kalamazoo River in July 2010, Enbridge staff waited seventeen hours before responding.²⁶ ‘The Michigan spill affected more than 50 kilometres of waterways and wetlands, while about 320 people reported symptoms from crude oil exposure.’²⁷

Two years after the massive Line 6B leak in Michigan, Enbridge’s Line 14 leaked crude oil into the Wisconsin area, releasing an estimated 1,200 barrels of oil in July 2012.²⁸ Line 14 transports oil from the Canadian tar sands to Chicago-area refineries, and is a relatively new pipeline.²⁹ Considering all the companies transporting bitumen from the tar sands across Canada, beyond Enbridge’s vast pipeline network, Josh Wingrove³⁰ of the Globe and Mail has reported that:

Since 2011, there have been at least 10 oil spills, ranging from small to large, in Alberta. The biggest include one from a Plains Midstream pipe near Little Buffalo, where an estimated 4.5-million litres spilled in April, 2011, and another in December last year, near Judy Creek, Alta., where 1.9-million litres spilled from a Pengrowth Energy Corp. pipeline. There were two major spills in June, totalling as much as 700,000 litres.

As the NTSB investigation, Huseman and Short’s analysis, and many environmental groups’ reports illustrate, the extraction methods, processing and transportation of tar sands oil ultimately result in devastating environmental effects.³¹ Indigenous communities, who envision themselves as most intimately connected with their environment, are those very communities most devastated by the destructive mining and hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) processes.

It is perhaps predictable that, despite those staggering oil spill statistics, both the Alberta provincial and Canadian federal governments continue, through various means, to support more pipeline projects. While the Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent has apparently neglected to read the US NTSB report and continues to reiterate the supposed ‘safety’ of oil pipeline transportation,³² the federal government is ‘now taking measures to hinder critics’ ability to speak at regulatory hearings and shore up financial support’.³³ This is, of course, all happening on land that is either unceded by Indigenous communities or remains under treaty agreements negotiated primarily in the late nineteenth century. Though negotiated in bad faith on the part of the Crown and/or the Canadian state, these treaties nonetheless outline Indigenous rights on surrendered and reserve lands. Canadian courts have decided that one such right requires that interested parties engage in consultation with Indigenous Nations prior to undertaking any industrial or settlement projects that could have an adverse impact on treaty land. The rapid and massive proliferation of pipelines, refineries, mining and in situ excavation of bitumen, the sheer amount of clean water used in the processes, the oil spills and the billions of dollars made by oil companies working in the Athabasca tar sands have all been made possible by the outright dismissal of Indigenous treaty rights, self-determination and sovereignty.

Treaty 8, unceded territories and ‘bad deals’

Treaty 8, which was signed in 1899, covers most of northern Alberta, parts of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon – 840,000km².³⁴ Signed between the Cree and Athapaskans (or Dene) peoples and the Canadian government (led by Commissioner David Laird), the treaty process was commenced after the Geological Survey of Canada reported that petroleum existed in the region:³⁵

From 1870 until the treaty was eventually signed in 1899, the Canadian government received advice from missionaries, traders, geologists and geographers on the potential suitability of the proposed Treaty 8 region for settlement, resource extraction and economic development, and on the condition of the Indian population.³⁶

While the discovery of gold in the Klondike spurred an influx of unregulated settlement and mining in the north, and created a sense of urgency about gaining control of the region, it was reports of the tar sands that ultimately motivated the Canadian government to begin attempting to extinguish aboriginal title to the vast Athabasca resources.³⁷

Like all the numbered treaties, Treaty 8 was full of empty promises on the part of the settler government: that it would protect Indigenous ways of life, that the reserves being established would not confine them, and that Indigenous communities would be protected from white settlers.³⁸ In addition to Treaty 8, the Métis population of Alberta signed an agreement with the federal government, which was ratified in the 1990 Métis Settlements Accord Implementation Act.³⁹ The Métis of Alberta remain the only Métis population to be granted a land base through treaty negotiation.⁴⁰

Whether signed in the nineteenth century, or the twenty-first, these ‘agreements’ have never been fully upheld by the government, and have ultimately been about securing control over land and other resources. As the federal government continues to work with Enbridge and other tar sands companies today, it is not surprising that many Indigenous groups now hesitate to ‘sign on’. As Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik’uz Nation (and member of the Yinka Dene Alliance) explains:

Enbridge is talking a lot about doing deals, saying Nations should be proud about taking their money. We’ve seen it before. History is full of bad deals – often made when Indigenous Nations felt they had no other choice. We have a choice and we won’t sign away our future, and the safety of our waters and lands, to Enbridge. Taking cash to compromise our kids’ futures is nothing to be proud of.⁴¹

Chief Thomas’s comments were made when the Yinka Dene Alliance Nations collectively rejected Enbridge’s February 2011 ‘equity offer’, and speak to the long history of exploitative contracts offered to Indigenous Nations throughout Canada’s history. Often made under conditions of starvation and rapid settler encroachment, the numbered treaties offer examples of the ‘bad deals’ to which Chief Thomas refers. Even a cursory review of Canadian history throws up such ‘bad deals’ involving corporate parties.

In the period of Canada’s mercantile history, for example, raw resources were exported from the colony to the metropole for production and sale, with Indigenous Nations negotiating with British trading companies like the Hudson’s Bay Company (founded in 1670).⁴² Responsible for much of the mapping and early settlement in what is now Canada, the Hudson’s Bay Company worked with and on behalf of the British Crown to secure access to fur resources in particular, and survey the land for settlement. This history of corporate and government alliance, which ultimately functioned to strip Indigenous Nations of their land base, is still at work.

Today, however, corporations such as Enbridge have developed extensive ‘aboriginal’ policies and ‘equity offers’ cloaked in the language of self-determination and promising, for example, ‘opportunities in training and education, employment, procurement, business development, and community investment’.⁴³ In tune with Enbridge’s larger corporate social responsibility approach, its ‘Aboriginal and Native American Policy’ makes these promises in the language of ‘diversity’, ‘forthright and sincere consultation’, recognition of ‘legal and constitutional rights’, etc.⁴⁴ Working closely with the federal and provincial governments, companies like Enbridge continue Canadian traditions of private-public partnership in settlement and resource extraction. The petroleum industry also shares with government its ‘corporate responsibility’ strategies on how to deal with Indigenous populations in both Canada and the US. In such ways have the technologies of settlement and domination – like the reserve system – always been shared between governments and ‘stakeholders’.

Neoliberal ‘partnerships’, settler colonialism and white supremacy

Settler colonialism, as in Canada and the US, colludes with capital in a multitude of ways; land-centred, it requires private companies and public agencies to work together to secure access to land and resources while strategically managing ‘the Indian problem’.⁴⁵

In their study of private-public partnerships relating to the tar sands industry in Wood Buffalo, Alberta, Taylor and Friedel note several common areas where private corporations and public governments align themselves together. These include ‘developing a stable business climate that will result in reduced community dependence on social services’, and the desire to transform communal territory into individual property.⁴⁶ The Conservative Harper government is currently promoting its First Nations Property Ownership Initiative (FNPOI), a plan designed to convert reserve lands into private property owned by individuals.⁴⁷ This seismic legislative shift in Indigenous legislation would open up reserve land to non-Indigenous buyers and developers. The FNPOI has been further promoted through the Harper government’s Federal Budget Bill C-45, which advances legislation required to turn this neoliberal settlement strategy into law.

According to a 2010 resolution by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), land privatisation would ‘erode our collective rights in our reserved lands’, and ‘impose the colonizer’s model on our Peoples’.⁴⁸ The AFN resolution describes property ownership as ‘a concept that is in direct contradiction to first nation sacred responsibilities and distinct relationship to our territories’.⁴⁹ This settlement strategy is only one of the destructive elements of Bill C-45 that is being resisted by Indigenous peoples and their allies through the #IdleNoMore movement (see below). That neoliberalism figures individual private property as a fundamental and necessary element of human progress inevitably leads, within the structure of settler colonialism, to an attack on collective rights and Indigenous self-determination.

It is not surprising then, that Taylor and Friedel found that corporations tend to work individually with Indigenous groups and not collectively; they almost always exclude non-status Indigenous peoples and Métis communities from negotiations, while creating and encouraging competition and divisiveness across Indigenous communities.⁵⁰ Taylor and Friedel conclude that this era of neoliberal ‘partnership’ ultimately leads to more socio-economic disparity in Indigenous communities, personal and communal stress, environmental problems, contradictory messaging to Indigenous youth (for example, social and cultural networks are crucial but they must leave their communities for good work), and so on.⁵¹ For Taylor and Friedel, ‘nation-to-nation relationships that guarantee First Nation and Métis self-determination over land, identity, and political voice’⁵² require that non-aboriginals honour historic treaties and move away from the neoliberal ‘partnership’ approaches to Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations.

The authors fail, however, to address the deeply racialised nature of these relations and, while promoting ‘the importance of historical and cultural analysis of shifting Aboriginal-state relations over time’,⁵³ do not engage with the issue of white supremacy and the inherent violence of Canadian settler colonialism.⁵⁴ In effect, Taylor and Friedel appear to take the Canadian nation-state for granted even as they attempt to acknowledge different forms of governance within its borders, including the embedding of neoliberal corporations within government structures. For Smith, however, ‘[w]hen we do not presume the givenness of settler states, then it is not as difficult to recognise the racial nature of nation-states while simultaneously maintaining a non-pessimistic approach to ending white supremacy’.⁵⁵ While ending white supremacy may not be Taylor and Friedel’s aim, it is without doubt necessary for achieving the kind of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations free of the neoliberal imperative that they gesture towards. Without an analysis of the racial nature of the power dynamics at play in tar sands politics, crucial dimensions of social power are overlooked.

Figure 1.

Syncrude Plant in Alberta Tar Sands (photo: courtesy of Rezac/Greenpeace)

Figure 2.

Syncrude Oil Operations in Alberta Tar Sands (photo: courtesy of Rezac/Greenpeace)

‘Racism’, as Smith notes, ‘provides the anchor for maintaining settler colonialism’.⁵⁶ By examining how systemic and institutional racism has differently affected racialised communities in states like Canada, we may identify more clearly the always shifting technologies and rhetorics of settler colonialism, and better support Indigenous movements for self-determination.⁵⁷ As Indigenous people resist the new strategies of settlement through everyday practices of national resurgence, language revitalisation, story-telling, theorising, as well as through broad-based political mobilisations, the Canadian government and its security forces continue to work hand in glove with the petroleum industry to maintain and extend control.

The ‘nightmare scenario’ and criminalising dissent

According to a 2009 report prepared for the Canadian Defense & Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI), author Tom Flanagan suggests that violent and extra-legal resistance to industrial projects may come from any of the five following sources: individual saboteurs, eco-terrorists, mainstream environmentalists, First Nation and the Métis people.⁵⁸ Flanagan is considered in conservative circles to be an expert on Indigenous peoples in Canada; his report ‘Resource Industries and Security Issues in Northern Alberta’ contains a sizeable section on the Treaty 8 region and on Métis settlements in Alberta. It is important to note that the CDFAI board of directors includes: a leading oil and gas lawyer; a former Enbridge and TransCanada Pipelines Limited executive; a Royal Bank executive; Vice President of the Calgary Petroleum Club; a Senator; and, of course, several members of the Canadian Armed Forces.⁵⁹ Given how direct and strong the connections are between the tar sands industry and the Canadian military, and how Flanagan’s supposed expertise validates the notion of an Indigenous terrorist threat, it is not surprising that Alberta’s new counter-terrorism unit has been developed since the report’s publication and that the Yinka Dene Alliance leaders and others have been targeted.

There is nothing new in what Flanagan’s report alleges, as Indigenous people in Canada have long been characterised as ‘savage warriors’ posing a threat to white settlers.⁶⁰ It warns of ‘Caledonia-style’ blockades and occupations organised by ‘warrior societies’.⁶¹ It links Indigenous resistance to the theft of Six Nations’ land by housing developers and non-Indigenous Canadians to potential resistance to the continuing disregard for treaty rights in the Treaty 8 area and unceded territories in British Columbia by oil and gas companies. Flanagan writes:

A nightmare scenario from the standpoint of resource industries in northern Alberta would be a linkage between warrior societies and eco-terrorists. Members of warrior societies would brandish firearms and take public possession of geographical sites, while eco-terrorists would operate clandestinely, firebombing targets over a wide range of territory. The two processes could energize each other, leading in the extreme case to loss of life and a shutdown of industry over a wide area.⁶²

This dramatic future possibility is presented by Flanagan, along with summaries of key pieces of legislation and selective historical accounts of existing treaties and relevant case law, in order to paint a concise picture of future threats to the tar sands industry. Ultimately though, the report suggests:

If two or more of the five categories of people described above – saboteurs, eco-terrorists, mainstream environmentalists, Treaty 8 First Nations, and Métis – came together in a single movement, they could become a serious obstacle to development, given that innumerable roads, pipelines, and physical installations are widely spread across the huge, thinly settled, lightly policed territory of northern Alberta and adjacent areas of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. But such a convergent movement is unlikely to emerge, because of pronounced differences of interest and lifestyle among the potential opponents of development.⁶³

Thus, promoting division and non-co-operation between these ‘opponents of development’ is presented as the best way to ensure the ‘security’ of the tar sands. In addition to Enbridge’s ‘equity deals’, like those offered to band council⁶⁴ members of individual nations (not to tribal councils or hereditary Chiefs), which are divisive by design, ‘a national RCMP surveillance program monitoring First Nations that ran between 2007 and 2010 shared … intelligence reports about First Nations with the private sector, including energy companies’.⁶⁵ Enbridge did not disclose whether or not it had been exchanging information with the RCMP.⁶⁶ Given that resistance to the Northern Gateway project runs across many of Flanagan’s ‘categories of people’, it can be deduced that a version of his ‘nightmare scenario’ is already upon us.

In relation to the cooperation of environmentalist groups opposing the pipeline project and the Yinka Dene Alliance, reporters from The Toronto Star found that the RCMP had ‘gathered intelligence from unspecified “industry reports”, newspapers and websites, and Facebook and Flickr photo accounts’.⁶⁷ The reporters discovered that private meetings between First Nations and environmental organisations in November 2011 were monitored.⁶⁸ The Yinka Dene Alliance was mentioned in security reports as posing a threat to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project. This was followed on 6 June 2012 by the RCMP’s announcement of the creation of the Alberta INSET – K Division, mentioned previously.

K Division represents one-half of that two-pronged strategy that is being implemented by a coalition between the Canadian federal government and its security forces and the oil and gas industry. While Enbridge and other oil and gas companies engage in greenwashing campaigns, presenting their ‘equity offers’ to individual Indigenous band councils, and promoting their ‘Aboriginal and Native American Policies’ of corporate social responsibility, the police, military, intelligence and border control agencies combine forces to criminalise and surveille any resistance to the development of the tar sands. In order to further point up the racial logics of this two-pronged approach, the discourse of ‘ethical oil’ is particularly illustrative.

That Canadian oil is ‘ethical oil’ is a message popularised by lobbyist Ezra Levant and promoted through the Ethical Oil Institute, an industry lobby group headed by Levant with a strong online presence and with connections to the federal Conservative Party.⁶⁹ This discourse constructs tar sands bitumen as the ‘“Fair Trade” choice in oil’ in opposition to ‘conflict’ oil from ‘politically oppressive’ and ‘environmentally reckless regimes’.⁷⁰ The organisation goes on to valorise what it deems ‘ethical oil’ practices and argues that countries producing ‘ethical oil’ ‘protect the rights of women, workers, Indigenous peoples [sic] and other minorities including gays and lesbians’.⁷¹ In describing ‘conflict oil regimes’, ‘[s]ome Conflict Oil regimes’, it warns its audience, ‘even support terrorism’.⁷²

Here, the ‘ethical oil’ discourse works, first, to demonise Indigenous and environmental resistance (the terrorists ‘at home’) and, second, to characterise ‘conflict oil’ as the foreign threat that justifies wars abroad and securitisation ‘at home’.⁷³ In the case of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project, tar sands commodities have been characterised by the settler government and its private industry partners as features of Canadianness. Thus, to support Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project is to support a national cause for a national commodity. It is a cause that has the potential to bring wealth, create security and lodge solid ‘ethics’ firmly within the very identities of the wider Canadian public. Yet, even with Canadian government and security forces pairing up with oil and gas companies like Enbridge to share discursive strategies, intelligence information and other resources to fix ‘the Indian problem’, the powers of Indigenous resistance and resurgence have proven resilient and strong.

Bill C-45 and #IdleNoMore

In response to the Canadian federal government’s 2012 omnibus budget bill, Bill C-45, which has massively weakened and in some cases done away with environmental protection measures, and which amends over sixty pieces of legislation including the Indian Act all in one sweep,⁷⁴ Indigenous peoples have rallied with their allies worldwide against further destruction to the land and to Indigenous communities through the #IdleNoMore movement. As Anne Minh-Thu Quach of the Official Opposition noted in the House of Commons: ‘Before this bill, all waterways in Canada were automatically protected by the government, which was responsible for the common good. From now on, less than 1% of our waterways will be protected.’⁷⁵ Water protection remains a major concern for Indigenous Nations in Canada, and particularly for those in the Athabasca region like the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) who have called for health and environmental monitoring of tar sands projects for decades.⁷⁶ Environmental toxins including carcinogens, gene mutagens and endocrine disruptors have been poorly tracked by governments and, in cases where scientists have done the research, the government of Alberta and others have criticised their findings.⁷⁷

It is only recently that the cancer-causing compound – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs – was officially reported to have been found at dangerous levels in waterways near oil and gas excavation and production.⁷⁸ A recent New York Times article discussing the report and the PAH levels in the tar sands region stated:

Upgraders at some oil sands projects that separate the oil bitumen from its surrounding sand are believed to emit PAHs. And some scientists believe that vast ponds holding wastewater from that upgrading and from other oil sand processes may be leaking PAHs and other chemicals into downstream bodies of water.⁷⁹

While the report was federally funded, the self-same government has removed all protection from navigable waterways in Canada, creating a sense of great urgency among many to halt these contemporary settlement practices, end environmental racism and re-envision relations between Indigenous communities and the wider Canadian public.

Aided by social media and by Twitter in particular, and in response to the omnibus budget bill, #IdleNoMore was born – a diffuse and flexible call to action. The movement’s name #IdleNoMore was coined by four women in Saskatchewan (Jessica Gordon, Sheelah McLean, Sylvia McAdams and Nina Wilsonfeld) resisting the bill⁸⁰ and was soon after taken up by Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence and others. Chief Spence began a hunger strike on 11 December 2012, in protest against the federal government’s ongoing treaty violations, Bill C-45, and the neglect and chronic underfunding of Indigenous communities like Attawapiskat First Nation. Here, people continue to live under boil-water orders, in substandard housing and without proper health care or education systems in place – even while De Beers mines diamonds from their traditional lands. Chief Spence, who survived on fish broth and medicinal tea for over forty-four days, was demanding a meeting between Indigenous leaders, the Governor General (who represents the Crown) and the Prime Minister. This meeting has never been granted.⁸¹

While the #IdleNoMore movement remains inspired by Chief Spence’s efforts, and by the global support that Indigenous communities around the world have demonstrated (particularly those existing under settler colonial rule), it is fair to assume that the Canadian government, oil and gas companies like Enbridge, and security forces such as K Division are watching the events closely. The movement challenges the continuing projects of resource extraction and land theft, as well as the racist logics of the settler state that have marked relations between the wider Canadian population and Indigenous Nations even prior to Canadian confederation.

Understanding how racism is operating in this context of criminalised dissent and increased surveillance of Indigenous leaders enables diverse groups of non-Indigenous Canadians to better understand some of the contemporary mechanisms of white settler colonialism and their relation to it. Through movements like #IdleNoMore, moments of collective refusal become possible, where Indigenous peoples lead the way towards healthy relationships with the earth and with each other. These moments of possibility require a recognition and naming of contemporary forms of settler colonialism, including private/public neoliberal partnerships. Of these, the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines project, with its complementary, purpose-built security forces, and helpfully dismantled environmental protections, is one of the most ominous and outstanding.

Footnotes

Jen Preston is a PhD Candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University, Canada. Her current research focuses on Canadian white settler colonialism, its historical roots and contemporary processes.

References

I have chosen to use the term ‘tar sands’ to describe the bitumen rich and heavily exploited Athabasca region of Alberta, as well as other deposits of bitumen in Alberta and Saskatchewan. These territories are traditional lands of dozens of Indigenous nations, including the twenty-four First Nations named in Treaty 8 alone. While the term ‘oil sands’ is preferred by the oil and gas industry, and by the Canadian government, bitumen is a ‘tar-like’ substance in consistency, colour and odour that must be chemically processed to become ‘oil-like’.

Enbridge Inc., ‘Project at a Glance’, Northern Gateway Project (2012). Available at: http://www.northerngateway.ca/project-details/project-at-a-glance/; and Keller

, ‘Ottawa maintains support for Enbridge and Northern Gateway’, The Globe and Mail (19 July 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ottawa-maintains-support-for-enbridge-and-northern-gateway/article4426926/

American Petroleum Institute, ‘Fact sheet: oil from Canada’ (9 December 2011), available at: http://www.api.org/policy-and-issues/policy-items/oil%20sands/fact-sheet.aspx

The Yinka Dene Alliance are also the first signatories to the Save the Fraser Declaration, a declaration based on ancestral laws, which protects the Fraser River watershed regions (and the ocean migration routes of the salmon) from oil and gas exploration, extraction and pipelines. The Declaration has been signed by over 160 nations. For more information, or to read the Declaration see: http://yinkadene.ca/index.php/about

Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), ‘Creation of an RCMP-led INSET in Alberta’, Press Release (6 June 2012), available at: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/news-nouvelles/2012/06-06-inset-eisn-eng.htm

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), ‘Counter-terrorism unit to protect Alberta energy industry’ (6 June 2012), available at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/06/06/rcmp-counter-terrorism-oil.html

Tait

, ‘Ottawa launches counterterrorism unit’, The Globe and Mail (6 June 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/ottawa-launches-alberta-counterterrorism-unit/article4236422/

Ibid.

RCMP, ‘Creation’, op. cit.

10.

Ibid.

11.

International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), ‘Canada: Indigenous leaders reject pipeline equity offer’, Press Release (16 February 2011), available at: http://www.iwgia.org/news/search-news?news_id=100

12.

Marchel in Huseman

Short

, ‘“A slow industrial genocide”: oil sands and the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Alberta’, International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 16, no.1, 2012), pp. 216–37, p. 221.

13.

Such as: Greenpeace; Environmental Defense; the Climate Action Network; Forest Ethics; Dogwood Initiative; the ‘No Tankers’ campaign; The Pembina Institute, etc.

14.

Wolfe

, ‘Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native’, Journal of Genocide Research (Vol. 8, no. 4, 2006), pp. 387–409, p. 390.

15.

Ibid., p. 393.

16.

Ibid.

17.

Smith

, ‘Indigeneity, settler colonialism, white supremacy’, Global Dialogue (Vol. 12, no. 2, 2010), paras 1–31, para. 2.

18.

Ibid., para. 8.

19.

Ibid., para. 2.

20.

Enbridge Inc., ‘Oil sands fact sheet’, Northern Gateway Project (2011), available at: http://www.northerngateway.ca/assets/pdf/General%20Project%20-%20Regulatory/NGP-FS-01-003_Oil%20Sands.pdf

21.

Enbridge Inc., ‘Project’, 2012, op. cit.

22.

Huseman

Short

, ‘A slow industrial genocide’, op. cit., p. 220.

23.

Ibid., p. 221.

24.

Enbridge Inc., ‘Project’ (2012), op. cit.

25.

Keller, op. cit.; Simpson

, ‘You heard it here: Northern Gateway’s dead’, The Globe and Mail (5 October 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/you-heard-it-here-northern-gateways-dead/article4589760/

26.

Gardner

, ‘U.S. agency launches probe after Enbridge oil spill’, The Globe and Mail (28 July 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/us-agency-launches-probe-after-enbridge-oil-spill/article4446882/

27.

Keller , op. cit.

28.

Gardner , op. cit.

29.

Ibid.

30.

Wingrove

, ‘Small oil leak discovered in Alberta’, The Globe and Mail (26 July 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/small-oil-leak-discovered-in-alberta/article4442357/

31.

See for example: Greenpeace, ‘Deep Trouble: the reality of in situ tar sands operations’ (2011), available at: http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/Energy/tarsands/Resources/Reports/DEEP-TROUBLE-THE-REALITY-OF-IN-SITU-TAR-SANDS-OPERATIONS/; and Anthony Swift and Nathan Lemphers; Susan Casey-Lefkowitz; Katie Terhune; Danielle Droitsch, ‘Pipeline and tanker trouble: the impact to British Columbia’s communities, rivers and Pacific Coastline from tar sands oil transport’; Report from the National Resource Defense Council (November 2011), available at: http://www.nrdc.org/international/pipelinetrouble.asp

32.

Keller , op. cit.

33.

Tait , op. cit.

34.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC), ‘Treaty 8’ (2008), available at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/treaty8/index-e.html

35.

Huseman Short , op. cit., pp. 217–18; LAC, op. cit.

36.

Huseman Short , op. cit., p. 217.

37.

Ibid., p. 218.

38.

Ibid., p. 218; and LAC, op. cit.

39.

The Métis are a nation or people whose traditional homelands include Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, extending to parts of Ontario, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and parts of the northern United States. They emerged as a distinct nation over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the intermarriage of white settler populations and Indigenous nations, developing a distinct culture and tradition and land title. The Métis are recognised as one of the Indigenous groups represented by the term ‘Aboriginal’, whose rights are protected by the Constitution. The Métis National Council uses the following definition: ‘“Métis” means a person who self-identifies as Métis, is distinct from other Aboriginal peoples, is of historic Métis Nation Ancestry and who is accepted by the Métis Nation’ (Métis National Council, http://www.metisnation.ca/index.php/who-are-the-metis/citizenship). See also Flanagan

, ‘Resource industries and security issues in Northern Alberta’, report prepared for the Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute (2009), available at: http://www.cdfai.org/PDF/Resource%20Industries%20and%20Security%20Issues%20in%20Northern%20Alberta.pdf

40.

Flanagan , ibid.

41.

Thomas in IWGIA, op. cit.

42.

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), ‘HBC heritage – our history: timelines’, Hudson’s Bay Company website (2012), available at: http://www2.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history/timeline/hbc/

43.

Enbridge Inc., ‘Aboriginal and Native American policy’, Enbridge (2009), available at: http://www.enbridge.com/InYourCommunity/AboriginalCommunities/~/media/www/Site%20Documents/In%20Your%20Community/aboriginal-native-american-policy.ashx

44.

Ibid.

45.

Taylor and Friedel look at the effects of private-public partnerships on Indigenous nations in the context of the tar sands industry and identify three broad forms of historic relation between the federal government and Indigenous nations: fur trade colonialism; welfare colonialism; and neoliberal partnerships. Again, as the ‘logic of elimination’ continues to structure all three of these forms, and as settler colonialism is a unique structure distinct from ‘traditional’ colonialism – whereby colonisers ultimately aim to return to the metropole – these particularities are lost in Taylor and Friedel’s analysis. Nonetheless, Taylor and Friedel utilise this framework of three forms of relation in order to better understand the contemporary focus on private-public partnership approaches to education and training of First Nation and Métis people in the community of Wood Buffalo, Alberta, near Fort McMurray.

46.

Altamirano-Jiménez in Taylor and Friedel, op. cit., p. 821.

47.

Wingrove

, ‘Ottawa’s plan to allow private property on reserves re-ignites debate’, The Globe and Mail (6 August 2012), available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawas-plan-to-allow-private- property-on-reserves-reignites-debate/article4466019/

48.

AFN in Wingrove, op. cit.

49.

Ibid.

50.

Taylor Friedel , op. cit., pp. 831–2.

51.

Ibid., p. 832.

52.

Ibid.

53.

Ibid.

54.

As Smith warns, ‘the consequence of not developing a critical apparatus for intersecting all the logics of white supremacy, including settler colonialism, is that it prevents us from imagining an alternative to the racial state’. Smith, op. cit., para. 20.

55.

Ibid., para. 12.

56.

Ibid., para. 29.

57.

Smith notes, ‘we need to look at how “settlers” are differentiated through white supremacy’, thus complicating the settler/indigenous binary, which has been critiqued by many scholars. Ibid., para. 29.

58.

Flanagan , op. cit.

59.

Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI), ‘Board of Directors’ (2012), available at: http://www.cdfai.org/boardofdirectors.htm

60.

Lorenzo Veracini in Settler Colonialism: a theoretical overview (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) discusses the notion of the ‘Indian problem’ as a key part of the transferist rationale of settler colonialism and of the ‘Indigenous incarceration/criminalization/institutionalization’ transfer strategy in particular (pp. 45–6). Veracini has argued that settler colonial formations can be summarised ‘as domination for the purpose of transfer’ (p. 34), as ‘all settler projects are foundationally premised on fantasies of ultimately “cleansing” the settler body politic of its (indigenous and exogenous) alterities’ (p. 33). Linking this fantasy back to anxieties over sovereignty, Veracini writes, ‘treating the indigenous “problem” as a welfare matter … [or with] calls to “close the (socioeconomic) gap” between indigenous and non-indigenous constituencies are premised on indigenous dysfunction, not sovereign entitlement’ (p. 46).

61.

Flanagan , op. cit., p. 8. Caledonia is a municipality in southwestern Ontario, which lies on Six Nations of the Grand River (Haudenosaunee, Six Nations) territories. Conflict between the majority of the settler community and Indigenous peoples and their allies erupted between 2005–2007 over ongoing development projects on settler-unrecognised Indigenous lands. Indigenous activists and their allies occupied the Douglas Creek Estates development site, and created a blockade halting development by Henco Industries. In response, thousands of Caledonia’s settler residents held rallies and on several occasions confronted the Indigenous activists, resulting in racist and physical violence and increased police and government involvement in addressing the land dispute. See: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, available at: http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016337/1100100016338

62.

Flanagan , ibid., p. 9.

63.

Ibid., p. 12.

64.

The term ‘band council’ refers to the legal system of Indigenous governance imposed by the Canadian state through the Indian Act. Band councils do not necessarily recognise hereditary chiefs or elders, and are thus controversial governing bodies in many Indigenous communities. Chiefs or chief councillors of the band councils are thus not necessarily hereditary leaders.

65.

Lukacs

Groves

, ‘RCMP spied on B.C. natives protesting pipeline plan, documents show’, The Toronto Star (9 May 2012), available at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1175824--rcmp-spied-on-b-c-natives-protesting-pipeline-plan-documents-show

66.

Ibid.

67.

Ibid.

68.

Ibid.

69.

Smith’s notion of multiple logics of white supremacy, the intersection of the genocidal logic – which anchors colonialism – and the orientalist logic, which anchors war, is particularly prevalent in the recent messaging of ‘ethical’ Canadian oil. In the Canadian context, the orientalist logic combines with the genocidal logic in the tar sands, and justifies the use of these counter-terrorism/national security measures targeting Indigenous leaders working with environmental groups. Smith, op. cit.

70.

Ethical Oil, ‘About EthicalOil.org’, available at: http://www.ethicaloil.org/about/

71.

Ibid.

72.

Ibid.

73.

It is important to note that while Smith’s first logic of white supremacy (slaveability/anti-black racism) has not been a part of my analysis because it is not as evident in the context of the Canadian tar sands industry and opposition to it, it too is present. This white supremacist logic works as ‘the anchor of capitalism’ because it ultimately ‘commodifies all workers’ and uses racial hierarchy to value these ‘commodities’.

74.

Foote

, ‘Jobs and Growth Act, 2012’, Canada, House of Commons, Edited Hansard, 191. 41st Parliament, 1st session (4 December 2012), available at: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=1&DocId=5916282

75.

Minh-Thu Quach

, ‘Jobs and Growth Act, 2012’, ibid.

76.

Vasey

Saunders

Grant

, ‘Ethical Enbridge? The real story of Line 9 and the tar sands giga-project’, Rabble.ca (23 January 2013), available at: http://rabble.ca/news/2013/01/mcethicaltm-enbridge-line-9-and-tar-sands-gigaproject#.UP_nFYxqBoI.twitter

77.

Austen

, ‘Oil sand industry in Canada tied to higher carcinogen level’, New York Times (7 January 2013), available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/world/americas/oil-sand-industry-in-canada-tied-to-higher-carcinogen-level.html?_r=2&

78.

Ibid.

79.

Ibid.

80.

Charleyboy

, ‘Idle No More: Canada’s indigenous people are demanding a better deal’, Guardian (11 January 2013), available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/11/canada-indigenous-people-demand-better-deal

81.

Smith

, ‘Chief Theresa Spence set to end liquid-only diet Thursday’, The Toronto Star (23 January 2013), available at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1318822--delegation-working-on-end-to-theresa-spence-s-hunger-strike

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