Strategy or Survival: How Settler Environmentalist and Indigenous Relationships to Land Impact Collaborative Anti-Pipeline Activism

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Interrupting Settler Colonial Erasures in Curricular Spaces: Statues, Pipelines, and Charter Schooling Spaces

Abstract

This paper draws from research on collaborative anti-pipeline activism between Indigenous peoples and settler environmentalists in Canada. It aims to support this work through examining it in the context of settler and Indigenous relationships to Land. Activation of land rights through court battles and encampments is considered by many to be key to stopping pipelines; however, the relationships settlers have to land and land rights are often very different from those of Indigenous people and attempts to collaborate can inadvertently reinforce colonial systems. This paper presents a nuanced view of Indigenous – environmental anti-pipeline collaborative efforts with the goal of identifying pathways forward that align with Indigenous futurity (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013), and contributing to theoretical and applied understanding of collaborations.

Author

• Anjali Helferty, University of Toronto