By Gerald McKay, Melanie O’Gorman, Steph McLachlan, Alex Keoni Oldroyd and Maya Rad-Spice (forthcoming). Book Chapter in ‘Thinking Big about Small-Scale Fisheries in Canada’, TBTI Global Publication Series, St. John’s, NL,Canada
By Robin Neckoway in 2022
Abstract: There are many stories yet to be told about the development of hydroelectric power in Northern Manitoba. Increasingly, accounts of Indigenous people have been coming to light in hearings for the Needs For and Alternatives To, and The Clean Environment Commission. What is more, research has been increasingly conducted around the disturbing accounts of Hydro development reported by Indigenous people. Yet curiously, there is still little to be told through the province’s archives about the true impact of hydro development on the province’s social, political, and economic history. Historically, the official narrative has mainly focused on the dams and their placement, with narrow economic benefits and efficient management in mind. Here, the focus of development has largely ignored the sacrifices incurred by citizens—namely, Indigenous peoples. However, Indigenous people have steadfastly claimed that there are gaps and fissures in these accounts, and that the official narrative does not tell the true story behind the personal impacts of development bought through the devastation to the environment, and the land-based economies that once made up the social fabric of the north—let alone, the colonial violence which has come along with it. This thesis is about knowledge, power, archives, and colonialism. It seeks to address distortions within the province’s archival record and explores accounts of Hydro development. It highlights the dangers posed by absences and silences by interrogating the gaps found within the official archive. It suggests these absences are not only a danger to societal memory, social justice, and democratic oversight; but contribute to the ongoing colonial project by making it easy to deny or distort any knowledge essential to broader contextualizations behind the dispossession, displacement, and colonial violence, that has gone into hydro development. Additionally, it further suggests that there is a need to rethink the orientation of the official record to include Indigenous voices, which are largely absent and should be included within the contexts of the appraisal process.
By Victoria Grima in 2022
Abstract: Perceptions of Western society and Indigenous cultures towards the caring of Askiy, the Earth, contrast dramatically with one another. On one hand, Indigenous people have intertwined their coexistence with that of Nature since time immemorial, which has given rise to their cultural heritage and identity. On the other hand, western society has largely viewed the environment as a source of natural resources that are used to satisfy societal needs. This dichotomy is readily apparent when it comes to hydro power in northern Canada. This research aims to explore how Eurocentric land management policies together with the legacy brought forth by the Hydropower discourse have affected the seasonal movement of Indigenous people across Manitoba’s northern landscape and their longstanding land-use and harvesting activities. This was achieved by integrating Indigenous Traditional Environmental Knowledge with Geographical Spatial Information (GIS) technologies. Participatory GIS processes based on the Map Biography Model (MBM) were shaped by the northern nethowe-ithiniwak, Cree speaking people of Nisicawayāsihk (Nelson House) Cree Nation. Maps were generated that reflect the multi-generational knowledge and lived experiences of community members, and that document hydro-related changes in space and time. The revised MBM evolved organically at its own pace, mostly reflecting the experiences of the nethowe-ithiniwak whom I interviewed as well as from many community-led boat, driving, and aerial trips throughout the affected landscape centering on Nipi, Water. These outcomes revealed how western society continues to view natural resources as objects that can be readily and sometimes drastically manipulated to fulfill its needs. Such perceptions transformed the free rumbling sound of Nipi, water, which normally constitutes the essence of northern Indigenous identity, into a static and open-water storage reservoir. These actions have resulted in a Nisicawayāsihk that is 23% of its pre-colonial cultural landscape. The resulting region is not only smaller but also irrevocably damaged by hydropower infrastructure. Yet, despite the drastic changes across this landscape, the nethowe-ithiniwak continue to practice their traditional livelihoods and to assert their sovereignty throughout this region.
By Johann Strube and Kimberley Anh Thomas in 2021
Abstract: Transboundary water governance between the United States and Canada – a historically described as cooperative and harmonious – has been instrumental to Settler colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples around the Great Lakes. At Rainy Lake, on the border between the American state of Minnesota and the Canadian province of Ontario, transboundary water governance supported a binational, Settler colonial joint venture through which European-descended Settlers established themselves in this area. It allowed for the construction of hydroelectric dams that enabled industrial development but also damaged ecosystems and species on which local Ojibwe and Métis communities depended, particularly the lake’s wild rice (Zizania palustris) stands. We reconceptualise transboundary water governance in the region by expanding the framework of hydro-hegemony to include relations between Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Nations. By recognising Indigenous Nations and Settler colonial states as having equal status in political negotiations around the use of water, our analysis reveals negative hydro-hegemony between the United States and Canada on one side, and Indigenous Nations on the other. We advance hydrocolonialism as a framework for describing these relationships. Hydrocolonialism persists through the ongoing exclusion of Indigenous Nations from nation-to-nation diplomacy; this exclusion is particularly embedded in the functioning of the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty and the International Joint Commission which it established.
By Tanjina Tahsin in 2021
Abstract: Indigenous communities look for learning opportunities that reflect and build on their cultural traditions, land-based experiences, and worldviews. Western science contrasts with Indigenous ways of learning and knowing since it is more quantitative, analytical and based on experimentation. Yet Indigenous students continue to be underrepresented in the scientific disciplines. One way of addressing such gaps is to bridge the two knowledge systems in ways that simultaneously affirm the importance of both. The research aims to explore how Indigenous knowledge and science might be better integrated and intends to build capacity around both science and traditional culture among Indigenous youth using land-based learning camps. It was combined with participatory action research (PAR) and Indigenous methodology and uses “two-eyed seeing” as a guiding principle in that no one worldview is allowed to dominate over the other. In summer 2019, four camps were conducted across Manitoba (in Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, Keeseekoowenin Ojibway First Nation, Sagkeeng First Nation, and O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation) and one in northwestern Ontario (in Couchiching First Nation). The land-based camps prioritized local environmental issues and community engagement by ensuring true and meaningful participation at all stages of the camp and provided Indigenous communities with the opportunity to share the power of knowledge production. Scientists, Elders and knowledge keepers shared their own insights, mostly focusing on local declines in water quality. Camps were generally well received by all host communities. Final reports that provided the outcomes of scientific testing in accessible and impactful ways were especially useful, although they might have better represented Elder teachings. These camps represent a valuable opportunity for communities to build their capacity in the sciences while also affirming the importance of cultural traditions and community aspirations. In so doing, the camps represent an important way of lessening the education gap and of further developing community resilience when it comes to protecting their environments and cultural traditions alike.
By Rebecca Kingdon in 2021
Abstract: Around the world, community members and their allies are advocating against the development of dams that degrade ecosystems and inflict serious social, cultural, and ecological damages. Despite extensive research on these impacts, construction has continued under the marketing of dams as “clean”, “green”, and “sustainable” solutions to achieve water and energy security in the context of climate change. This thesis is in part a response to these claims and reflects the experiences and knowledges of impacted community members, activists, and researchers from over 25 watersheds around the world that have begun to collaborate in a transnational advocacy network (TAN) to heal from, challenge, and even halt dam development. Over a two-year period (2019-2021), participatory action research methods were utilized – including semi-structured qualitative interviews, surveys, actions, and meetings – to capture the emergence of this network known as Dam Watch International (DWI). To illustrate the need for DWI, this thesis first explores the experiences of community members living with and fighting the injustices of dam development. It then shares the opportunities and challenges of creating a community-centred network for collaboration. Through this work, this thesis contributes further understandings of the damaging extent of dams, demonstrating that systemic and systematic injustices enable the continuation of this construction in multiple regions of the world. It also highlights that community members and allies are committed to finding justice through culturally relevant means that are centred in Indigenous and local knowledge. The insights shared here emphasize that opportunities exist for collaboration among those that continue to fight for sovereignty and justice.
By Jessica Jacobson Konefall, Peter Kulchyski, Ramona Neckoway in 2020
Abstract: In 2014, Peter Kulchyski and Ramona Neckoway began touring hydro-impacted Ininew communities. This now annual hydro tour is an intense seven-day circuit filled with long drives, boat tours, discussion, revelation, outrage, and—above all—kindness and generosity. Relationships on the hydro tour involve engagement with bush dispositions, with ways of life developed in and through an engagement with the temporalities, spatialities, subjectivities, languages, and knowledges of egalitarian gathering and hunting peoples. In the city, hydroelectricity is taken for granted; it is seen through the possessive, instrumental rationality that underlines people’s roles as workers and citizens. This contrasts with the face-to-face encounters between community- and urban-based activists, artists, and academics that occur during the hydro tours. Those participating may witness Ininew performances and embodied practices that are both culturally specific and fundamentally human. The relationships developed on the hydro tour enact performances of care and vulnerability in which ethical concern responds to festering social wounds. Perceiving vulnerability and responding to it with care is labour, the work of relationship. Distribution of social wealth is unequal, raced, and gendered, yet it can be transformed through caring practice; such transformations require Ininew leadership.
By Emily Henderson in 2019
Abstract: This thesis investigates whether non-Indigenous individuals can be participants in the Indigenous performance arts field in order for the work to contribute to the reconciliation process in Canada. A questionnaire and an interview was administered to the Indigenous and non-Indigenous production, performance and audience members of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s 2014 production Going Home Star – Truth and Reconciliation i) to determine whether there are appropriate roles for non-Indigenous performers in any aspect of Indigenous performance ii) to ascertain if the Indigenous performance arts can be used as a space for cross-cultural collaboration and iii) to establish ethical best practices for non-Indigenous individuals to be participants in this field. The interviews determined that non-Indigenous individuals can be participants in Indigenous performance arts. However, it is recommended that first, an effort should be made to recruit and offer roles to qualified Indigenous artists, in addition to verifying that the performance is a productive space for cross-cultural collaboration in order to work toward the goal of reconciliation. In regard to ethical best practices, the participants’ responses resulted in the creation of four protocols: Indigenous Community and Elder Involvement, Education, Indigenous Culture and Ceremony, and Personal Reflection which should be enacted in every cross-cultural collaboration in order to ensure its success. The thesis concludes that cross-cultural collaboration in the Indigenous performance arts is a productive space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians to contribute to the conversations of reconciliation.
By Erin Yaremko in 2018
Abstract: This thesis examines the deep systematic connections between First Nations people and the destruction of land and water in northern Manitoba. Using life story interviews as its main sources, it brings voice to those affected, allowing those who directly experienced these historical events to tell their side of the story in their own words and their own way. The thesis argues that Manitoba Hydro and the Provincial government of Manitoba used colonial strategy in forcing the people of Chemawawin Nation and South Indian Lake off their original land to produce hydroelectric development along bordering water systems. Both Manitoba Hydro and the government of Manitoba failed to create proper resource management-based partnership with the people of South Indian Lake and the Chemawawin Nation. Social impacts directly related to the physical destruction of the original land and water systems developed over time to affect both the people of Chemawawin and South Indian Lake. These social impacts include: Loss of sustainable employment, water transportation safety issues, loss of community connection and safety, increase in physical and mental health problems, and higher levels of alcohol and drug abuse.
by Caolan Barr in 2018
Abstract: This thesis examines how dispossession was produced for Anishinaabeg communities of Treaty 3 through interlocking processes of legal discourse, cultural production and development. It traces the genealogical origins of infrastructure through a series of dams built across Northwestern Ontario from 1871 until 1926. In Treaty 3, the discursive foundations for infrastructure and development were laid through a series of expeditions and legal decisions that justified and facilitated settler expansion. Likewise, development involved a set of mutually constitutive and reciprocal forms of epistemic, ontological, symbolic and material violence. In this work, I argue that dispossession is structural to settler colonialism and the defining feature which ties a set of seemingly disparate histories and processes together in Treaty 3. Recognizing gaps in the literature and colonial archive, I call for the development of new practices of inquiry that allow us to provincialize and unsettle the normativity of colonial violence and narratives.
by Asfia Gulrukh Kamal, Joseph Dipple, Steve Ducharme, Leslie Dysart in 2018
Abstract: Hydroelectric “development” in Canada has been criticized for the lack of meaningful consideration of community perspectives. This article shares the case of the O-Pipon-Na-PiwinCree Nation (OPCN) in northern Manitoba, Canada, and the impact of mainstream water resource management strategies over their culture and livelihood. Through consideration of Kistihtamahwin, OPCN’s concept of water governance, as well as the promises made in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), this article argues that the lack of meaningful consultation and engagement with local resource users as well as the concept of Kistihtamahwin has led to the destruction of a successful fishery, which resulted in severe socioeconomic loss, environmental degradation, and cultural loss in the community. We found that for meaningful application of UNDRIP in Indigenous water governance, local cultural strategies and traditional knowledge are essential.
By Ramona Neckoway in 2018
Abstract: Manitoba Hydro is a public utility located in Manitoba and operates a vast hydroelectric network in Manitoba. Energy produced in northern Manitoba is carried south through an intricate web of transmission towers, lines and other facilities. The vast hydroelectric network throughout Manitoba cuts across many indigenous territories and the regions discussed within this study in northern Manitoba are the homelands of Ith-in-e-wuk (Cree peoples). The histories and timelines discussed as part of this study point to widespread and far-reaching implications and impacts related to energy production in northern Manitoba. A number of indigenous communities in northern Manitoba have experienced micro (individual) and macro (collective) impacts related to the production of hydro power and many Ith-in-e-wuk have experienced impacts on their lands, livelihoods and in their communities. Thus, many places, sites and histories have been greatly affected. This study aims to chart a chronology of hydroelectric energy production in northern Manitoba. It also seeks to inscribe a critical perspective concerning hydroelectric energy production in northern Manitoba and aims to carry forward the decolonizing traditions, ushered in by the Cree who became the Northern Flood Committee in the mid 1970’s.
By Stephane McLachlan, David Scott, Aimée Craft, Ramona Neckoway in 2018
About: A cross-cultural critique of the socio-environmental dimensions of the Manitoba Minnesota Transmission Project (MMTP), as presented for the National Energy Board (NEB) Hearings in 2018. The report was prepared to inform the NEB by providing written and oral evidence in regards to the MMTP hearings.
By Joseph Dipple in 2015
Abstract: Over the past century, Manitoba has promoted the construction of hydroelectric dams as a means of producing energy. These projects are produced on Indigenous territory and bring these communities into direct conflict with the province and Manitoba Hydro. Recently, Manitoba Hydro has promoted partnerships with affected First Nations. These partnerships provide communities the “opportunity” to purchase shares of the dams with the goal of gaining profits. Partnerships have been established for two projects as a means of suggesting social licence. Social licence is an informal licence provided by a community to show support and consent for a project in their area. A progressive definition of social licence is when communities provide “free, prior, and informed consent.” Partnership agreements in northern Manitoba do not provide social licence, as the communities involvement in the project, and the means by which the partnership is established do not provide “free, prior, and informed consent.”
By Melanie O’Gorman and Jerry Buckland in 2015
Abstract: This study uses content analysis of an environmental hearing to examine different views on the construction of a hydro dam in northern Manitoba. We found both support for and opposition to the Keeyask dam project, a partnership between the hydro utility and four First Nations communities. Proponents noted the project’s inclusive model and employment and revenue benefits for local people. Opponents warned of negative impacts on the environment and psycho-social health, and the risks of working with a utility that has a bad track record. While Keeyask is an improvement over past projects, the partnership will require vigilant monitoring and implementation-to-plan if the benefits are to flow to indigenous people.
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