Activating Decolonial Data Possibilities

• In Event: Activating Context: Data Ethics, Data Sovereignty, Data Justice

Abstract

This talk shares the decolonial and anti-colonial approaches towards environmental data that we are using at our Indigenous-led Environmental Data Justice Lab to disrupt the colonial force of data in our latest project, Visualizing Colonial Violence. At the Technoscience Research Unit, we begin with commitments to Indigenous sovereignty, land protection, the “Pollution is Colonialism” framework developed by Métis scholar Max Liboiron, and the work of EDAction. Our Visualizing Colonial Violence project focuses on the chemical violence in in Canada’s Chemical Valley, where 40% of the nation’s petrochemicals are refined and which occupies Anishinaabe territory, and activates data produced within a permission-to-pollute system for environmental justice and decolonial futures. Our project is building interactive applications using archival material, resituated industry-reported data, and Indigenous STS approaches to reframe settler colonial data in terms of its relation with colonialism and responsibilities to land with the goal of placing the burden of environmental harms on polluters and the permission-to-pollute state practices instead of frontline communities. This talk describes the ways the project seeks to responsibilize profound colonial and capitalist data created by the state and industry with obligations to land and decolonial futures. As we connect our work to and learn from the movements that have coalesced around data sovereignty and data justice, we also seek to put into practice the Dish with One Spoon Treaty, Indigenous feminist approaches to consent, and decolonial approaches to history that reframe Chemical Valley as an interruption into ongoing Indigenous presence.

Authors

• Michelle Murphy, University of Toronto

• Kristen Bos, University of Toronto