Indigenous resistance isn’t an economic impediment; it’s based on a desire to protect First Nations’ land and culture, making it one of Canada’s last lines of defence against environmental damage.
Increasingly, investors won’t back large infrastructure projects due to uncertainty as to how Indigenous groups will react to proposed changes. In British Columbia, Indigenous groups have opposed the Northwest Pipeline, creating an added layer of economic uncertainty for investors. Though routinely portrayed as an obstacle, rooted in a profound relationship to the land, Indigenous resistance may be one of Canada’s final safeguards against environmental degradation.
While the Canadian government continues to put fiscal gain ahead of environmental conservation, Indigenous leaders and activists have emerged as one of our nation’s strongest defences in protecting natural resources from irreversible damage. Resistance shouldn’t be understood through colonial frameworks alone, but instead, as a fundamental difference in how Indigenous communities and the settler state view humanity’s relationship to land. Many Indigenous communities see land as a storied site, an area in which both history and identity are simultaneously stored.
To Indigenous peoples, land isn’t just something to be conquered, nor is it nothing more than a resource to extract profit from. Land is a living, breathing reflection of humanity. For many, protecting land physically also means protecting an ideology and ways of knowing that have suffered under colonial erasure.
Beyond a shared responsibility to protect their land, many Indigenous families and bands have also experienced displacement due to pipeline projects’ instincts to prioritize profit over people. Companies and large infrastructure projects not only have a propensity to encroach on Indigenous land without a written treaty or any spoken consent, but they also destroy the ecosystems that many households rely on year-round.
Indigenous resistance to pipeline development is not only necessary in the fight against colonial violence, but also pivotal in protecting our environment from corporate greed.
As many Canadians grow weary of hearing about the constant degradation of land for a profit that they’ll never see, Indigenous activists continue to fight for clean water and safe habitats for Canada’s native fauna. However, Indigenous resistance doesn’t mean that the fight to protect our environment from exploitative practices should be a burden carried by First Nations alone. Instead, Canadians who benefit daily from shared land and resources could take a lesson from Indigenous ways of knowing.
Canadians have a responsibility not just to ourselves, but to the ecosystems that sustain us, and the future generations who will one day inhabit them. It’s high time that most Canadians stop viewing our lives as solely our own and begin to educate ourselves and others through Indigenous doctrines that understand social obligation and cultural ties to Canadian soil.
Claire is a 4th year Film and Political Science student and The Journal’s Senior Video Editor.
Tags
Activism, Canadian Wildlife, environmentalism, Indigenous Resistance, pipelines
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.