Film: Mining on First Nation land – The First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun in Mayo/Yukon Territory
Gertrude Saxinger, Robert Gebauer, Jörg Oschmann, Susanna Gartler
University of Vienna, Austria and Austrian Polar Research Institute
Damage and Possibility: Artistic practice and world-making in extractive zones in the Americas
Siobhan Angus
Yale University
Unearthing frontier socio-ecological systems: contesting state-led extractivism in Russia and Ecuador
Julia Loginova and Denisse Elizabeth Rodríguez
University of Queensland / University of Melbourne and Monash University
Comments 32
Hello All from Australia (from Julia and Denisse),
We hope you enjoyed our video in which we shared some insights on the meaning of frontiers in high latitudes of Russia (Arctic tundra) and high altitudes of Ecuador (páramos). We contrast the extraction-centred concept of ‘the last frontiers to be developed’ with the notion of ‘the last frontiers to be defended’ recognising the all-encompassing relationships of reciprocity within socionatural engagements. As extractive projects threaten to modify not only natural cycles but myriad interdependencies with communities, resistance emerges and communities defend alternative futures.
Many thanks to the Extraction committee for setting up this collaborative space, and we are looking forward to meeting everyone and for the Extraction discussions!
Julia Loginova and Denisse Rodríguez
@Julia_Loginova
It was a very engaging and sound presentation. I am also working on a similar outlook. Thank you!
Hi Julia and Denisse,
I liked your presentation a lot. The content, but also the form, the one asking the other. It’s amazing to hear a comparison of countries that you wouldn’t easily “think” together. In both places people have strong ties to nature and it is inspiring to see how you root this in a description of both landscapes. The entanglements that you mention are extremly important to look in to – emotions, cosmology and embeddedness in nature – and how this demonstrates how we can not detach “the social”form “nature”, but should rather consider it as hybrid, entangled. it would be great to hear more about your methdology, how you came up with the idea of comparing, but also about how you engage with the theory, and link it to your findings.
Elisabet
Hi Elisabet,
Thanks for your kind comments. A key motivation for our uncommon comparison of the Russian and Ecuadorian cases was the realization of the extremely similar processes of (i) expansion of the extractive frontier into remote spaces previously marginal from national (and corporate) economic interests, (ii) legitimized by both states through discourses of national interest and national natural resources for sustainability, development and integration in the global economy, (iii) with the governments leading this resource-based development model, (iv) which threatens and impacts local lifeworlds interdependent with what we found out later, were so similar biomes, (v) but that is also contested by community-led socio-ecological movements.
We conducted fieldwork separately in both study areas. Our methodology was informed by ethnographic methods and for the analysis of our rich qualitative data we used conceptual frameworks based on socionature approaches: socio-ecosystems and hydrosocial territories from an emotional political ecology perspective, which allowed us to see resistance to extractive projects beyond the link already explored between emotions and mobilization (Brown & Pickerill, 2009; Cox, 2009; Della Porta, Diani, & Flam, 2015; Goodwin & Jasper, 2006; Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001; Jasper, 1998; Reed, 2014; Ruiz-Junco, 2013) toward a politicization of visceral socionatural engagements and embodied knowledge emerging within socio-ecological frontiers clashing with the government´s “re-creation” of these as resource frontiers.
Hi Denisse,
It’s amazing to see how similar processes occur across the globe, I also encountered many similarities between my work in Guatemala and the Philippines. I think the link between emotions and mobilization is crucial in your (and my own) work to understand how these attachments to nature and natural resources work.
Keep up the great work!
Hello Julia and Denisse,
Thank you very much for your presentation, it was trully interesting to have this comparison between Russia and Ecuador and your analytical framework seems very compatible to both cases. I am looking at the green extraction of wind power in India and particularly from this same resource frontier perspective and territorialisation process, and it is incredible to see how much “green” extraction is finally so similar to traditional forms. Thanks again,
David
Dear david – this is interesting. I also work on conflictivities around ‘green’and renewable energy – and keep asking: how renewable is it? And for whom? Raises many difficult and important questions about what sustainability is, and who is included in the energy transition. Would love to know more about your work! Elisabet
Dear Elisabet,
These are indeed essential questions, particularly since the notions of renewabality and sustainability have been strongly discussed and questionned and since the development of renewables is taking industrial scale…. If you want to know a bit more about my work you can have a look at my video presentation (published online today) in the renewable energy panel of this conference!
David
Will do now :). Thanks!
Dear panelists and visitors!
This is Elisabet, the chair of the panel – welcome to this amazing panel about indigenous knowledge and epistemologies. You are most welcome to ask questions and share observations here in the coments section!
Elisabet
Hi Julia and Denisse,
I enjoyed your discussion about state lead extractivism from a comparative approach. Your research made me reflect on how extractivism functions in Canada, where I am from. Here, the state plays a less direct role, but nonetheless does significant work to expropriate Indigenous lands for resource extraction, coordinate militarized responses against anti-pipeline blockades, and subsidize fossil fuel extraction in the Athabasca Tar Sands. My colleague, Samantha Spady, is presenting today on the role universities in Canada play in shaping extractive futures. As the commitment to extractivism in Canada demonstrates, the absence of direct state ownership in tar sands operations has not meant that the state has become uninvested in getting this oil to market. Thank you for this thoughtful presentation!
Dear Gertrude Saxinger, Robert Gebauer, Jörg Oschmann, Susanna Gartler,
What an inspiring film you made. It is fascinating to learn more about the history of mines, and how this has affected social relations in hte concerned communities. In addition, the film demonstrates so many of the contemporary tensions around mining: opportuniites for work and the violations of the rights of first Nations, how to ‘make money’ and respect the land according to the values of the First Nations. The need for training, in order to be qualified for many of the jobs in / related to the mine.
I found it really inspiring how much we could learn from such a brief film. Thanks so much for sharing!
Elisabet
I agree with Elisabet, this was such an interesting film. Conference participants may also be interested in the documentary Guardians of Eternity, which charts the impacts of Gold mining on the territory of Yellowknives Dene First Nation. http://www.guardiansofeternity.ca/
Thanks so much for sharing!
Thank you very much!
I saw guardians….. How inspiring!
Dear Elisabet,
Many many thanks for this! So glad!
Hi Julia and Denisse,
I liked your presentation a lot. The content, but also the form, the one asking the other. It’s amazing to hear a comparison of countries that you wouldn’t easily “think” together. In both places people have strong ties to nature and it is inspiring to see how you root this in a description of both landscapes. The entanglements that you mention are extremly important to look in to – emotions, cosmology and embeddedness in nature – and how this demonstrates how we can not detach “the social”form “nature”, but should rather consider it as hybrid, entangled. it would be great to hear more about your methdology, how you came up with the idea of comparing, but also about how you engage with the theory, and link it to your findings.
Elisabet
Thank you to the presenters for your interesting presentations! I have a few questions:
– Do the groups noted in Russia and Ecuador have some legal rights akin to what was noted in the film with the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun First Nation where companies must consult with First Nation(s) group in Yukon including as mandated in the Yukon Environmental Assessment Act?
– One theme that seemed to arise in some of the presentations was to do with desires for more self determination and a yearning for mechanisms to revive cultural / spiritual practices. (As a note, I thought the sign from Ecuador indicating mining along with ‘buen vivir’ made an impression; I found that sign particularly jarring, as I understood ‘buen vivir’ to be along the lines of the reciprocity and acknowledgement of everything being connected in the world that you’ve noted). Anyway, my question is: in addition to benefits often found in a wage-based economy (such as percentage of jobs to be allocated to locals), are there examples of IBAs / CBAs in the case of Yukon or other mechanisms in Ecuador and Russia where local groups have tied their agreement or opposition to mining development with the possibility of increasing their legal rights and / or mechanisms to revive cultural / spiritual practices? (e.g. support for language learning, allowing for more time on the land [e.g. the mine adapting scheduling accordingly to allow for this], etc.)
– My last question is: to what extent has technological innovations (e.g. drones, satellites) shifted the boundaries of these frontiers that you talk about?
– Thanks for the link to Guardians of Eternity Siobhan
Hi Alexandra, thank you for your questions! I will answer them based on my study of the case in Russia and let Denisse reply regarding Ecuador.
1. Legal rights/consultations: The situation in Russia with Indigenous legal rights and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is quite different from the Canadian case. There are some rights (regarding resource use) of “indigenous minority peoples of the North” but there is nothing like FPIC and Russia has not ratified international conventions that regulate this. In Komi, in the case that I studied, people were increasingly using the general requirement for public consultations before any high-risk activity, regulated by the environmental legislation (however, there are major issues of who get involved – I have a publication on relational justice if of interest). However, this public vote is a only a recommendation to the State expert review, who is under the pressure from higher levels of the Government for the rapid launch of export infrastructure. However, situation is different in other regions, e.g. the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Siberia where requirements for FPIC are regulated on the regional level and are enforced by the regional government. Also, in the case with multinational corporations, I think they follow the international practice as well, e.g. in Sakhalin offshore projects.
2. Extraction as mechanism to revive culture. You are right, the practices of Corporate Social Responsibility are focused on supporting the cultural/spiritual practices, such as funding for peoples’ gathering for major festival, funds for travelling schools and supply of products/fuel to remote settlements, and small grant programs. However, it is all great as long as people have land for pastures and there is no pollution and intrusion by workers of their spiritual sites. This is not the case, evident in violent conflicts between reindeer herders for access to land as significant part of tundra degraded.
3. The only way I can think of the role of satellites/drones in shifting the boundaries of frontiers is through communities (together with environmentalists) employing this to assess the scale of destruction/pollution, mapping and using the evidence to defend their rights for compensations. I think for locals to realise the scale of the projects and the impacts on land, rivers, shifted their motivation towards the urgent need to act to defend this frontier that might be the last that they have. Next year, I am planning to do somework on that aspect in Russia and the Amazon.
Thanks for your reply Julia – very interesting! If you could send the link to your publication on relational justice, that would be great.
Best wishes,
Alex
Adding to Julia´s comments. In the Ecuadorian case, starting by the fact that Ecuador was the first country in the world to recognize the rights of Nature in the Constitution (2008) and that it also demands consultations for resource extraction in indigenous and community territories, we have experienced for the last 12 years that a focus on rights is yet to be effective in the contestation of resource-based development, given that also many laws have been modified to ease the pathway to extraction while disenfranchising nature and communities in the areas where “strategic projects for development” are located.
As you well mentioned Alexandra, the first contradiction of our development model is that our constitution was supposed to enforce Buen Vivir (harmonious coexistence between society and nature) but its original meaning was co-opted by the former and current government to discursively legitimize extractivism, thus the shocking claim that mining will guarantee our good living. This, it is said in our mining code and development plans, will be done by redistributing extractive rents through social programs but understandings like the ones we have highlighted in our presentation cannot blindly agree with that model if it does not also account for the asymmetrical distributions of burdens for nature and local communities.
Of course, there are also cases in which extraction can actually serve as a tool for self determination. Alexandra, you will find very relevant the presentation “Indigenous perspectives on mining operations in Kanaky/New Caledonia” by Matthias Kowasch, Simon P.J. Batterbury, Antoine Cano Poady, and Chanel Ouetcho on July 9th. It is part of the conference stream Indigeneity, resistance, and communities stream, Panel 5: Living in extractive landscapes: community resistance to mining.
Dear Alexandra,
Your last question regarding “to what extent has technological innovations (e.g. drones, satellites) shifted the boundaries of these frontiers?” is very relevant to what Roy Cobby mentions in his comment below regarding mapping of unproductive lands. Land use and demarcation of “frontiers” based on notions of productivity (from a scientific, technical and political perspective) are not sensitive to “other” uses and meanings; this is precisely what the socio-ecological movements we worked with are trying to highlight. There is still a long way to go in that struggle but an alternative pathway could be a focus on knowledge co-production. In the Ecuadorian case there has been plenty of critique of the government´s use of scientific knowledge to justify extraction in such a fragile socio-ecosystem and in Colombia, where mining in paramos was banned, the contentious issue is now how to define where the paramo starts and those frontiers have proven very fluid according to political and corporate interests in resource exploitation.
Estimada Denisse,
Muchas gracias para las respuestas. Muy interesante.
Atentamente,
Alex
Thanks !!! this is a very interesting film . It is crucial to learn all the aspects of mining and extractivism and the it´s profound influence caused on social development. Environmental movements must incorporate the first nations vision of life and nature values . This movie represents an important tool to provide insight of that vision .
Thank you very much Hugo!
Thanks so much for sharing!
Dear Siobhan,
I was really fascinated by your presentation. It is really interesting to see how the meaning of materiality can transform in such a way! I was wondering how people in the areas of extraction give meaning to these materialities of the resources, and if they got to see how they were transformed into arts?
Thanks so much for your presentation!
Elisabet
Thank you for this question, Elisabet. Situating these materials within the extractive histories of a particular place is central to the meaning produced in both of these bodies of work. The relationality between the artist and the materials is amplified by an ongoing engagement with the communities that the materials are extracted from. In this sense, the networks of realitionality extend to community involvement. In Prieto’s practice, the soil was gifted to her by a friend who lives on the territory and she maintains an engagement with the politics of extraction in the region. Cariou is from the Tar Sands region. He describes how working with bitumen in an artistic medium helped reshape how he understood oil and extraction. Both practices model how a place-based approach enriches artistic explorations of extraction.
Thanks! This has so many links with more engaged and participatory forms of doing research, also because of the reciprocity, Do you have a background in Arts yourself? Keep up the great work!
Hi all! I’m Roy Cobby, from King’s College London. I will present at Knowledge production and data extraction stream Panel 2: Technology and infrastructure.
Thanks, Gertrude, Robert, Jörg and Susanna for the film which is a very nuanced examination of extractivism and its contradictory relationship with indigenous groups.
Siobhan, very interesting and suggestive that waste from the era of industrial transformation can be turned into artworks and suggest alternative imaginaries.
Julia and Denisse, in studying digital farming I am very concerned with the by default assumptions inscribed by designers through algorithms. In particular, they have this belief in the ability to address the so-called “yield gap” by sensoring and mapping fields that are yet to be exploited. In this process, the idea that certain populations are not using land as intended is very prevalent. Thanks for reflecting on this.
Thank you very much Roy. Actually the area of knowledge production emerged as pivotal topic when analyzing extraction in fragile ecosystems and “unproductive” lands. Epistemological clashes were a source of contention given that scientific studies were and are still used selectively to support the feasibility of extraction whereas “non-scientific” embodied knowledges in the Ecuadorian case affirm the existence of groundwater in this paramo, which could deem extraction economically and ecologically unfeasible.
Hi Denisse,
It’s amazing to see how similar processes occur across the globe, I also encountered many similarities between my work in Guatemala and the Philippines. I think the link between emotions and mobilization is crucial in your (and my own) work to understand how these attachments to nature and natural resources work.
Keep up the great work!