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Abstract
In the context of the growing global drive for mineral resources, Canada’s northern territories have become a focal point for the rapid expansion of mineral extraction. Occurring within the terms of Canada’s largest Indigenous land claim, the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement, the negotiation of Baffinland’s Mary River Mine provides a case study of the dynamics of consultation within communities impacted by large-scale mining projects. Using Freudenburg’s 2005 “privileged accounts” framework, our findings elucidate the power dynamics in the consultation processes between multinational mining corporations and Indigenous communities.
Notes
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Rooted in International Human Rights Law, FPIC refers specifically to participatory mechanisms geared towards consulting and/or gaining the consent of Indigenous groups before developing large-scale development projects. But we also recognize that there are distinctions between the terms engagement, participation, and consultation. Where these distinctions are relevant, we draw attention to them.
2 At the time of writing, Bill C- 262 was still at the Senate for final debate and voting.
3 Public consultations are one element in the project proposal screening process: https://www.nirb.ca/nirb-processes.
4 Altamirano-Jiménez, Indigenous Encounters with Neoliberalism, 115.
5 McPherson, New Owners in Their Own Land.
6 McPherson, New Owners in Their Own Land, xxi.
7 McPherson, New Owners in Their Own Land, xxi.
8 Szablowski, “Operationalizing Free, Prior, and Informed Consent,” Critical Perspectives on Resource Extraction Governance.
9 See Bernauer, “The Limits to Extraction.”
10 Nunavut Iron Ore is a subsidiary of The Energy & Minerals Group.
11 Szablowski, “Operationalizing Free, Prior, and Informed Consent”; Mayes et al., “‘Our’ Community”; and Sawyer and Gomez, “Transnational Governmentality and Resource Extraction.”
12 Szablowski, Critical Perspectives on Resource Extraction Governance.
13 Freudenburg, “Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts.”
14 Davidson and Grant, “The Double Diversion.”
15 As recent evidence indicates, approval at this stage is not guaranteed. In the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s (NIRB) Final Hearing Report (June 2016) pertaining to a different mine in western Nunavut, NIRB recommended that the project not be approved.
16 Dewer, “Nunavut and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.”
17 McPherson, New Owners in Their Own Land.
18 Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the organization that administers the Nunavut Land Claim, projects that Baffinland will pay out 1.8 billion dollars in revenue. (https://ipolitics.ca/2011/11/28/inuit-to-levy-royalties-on-arctic-resources/).
19 NIRB, Final Hearing Report, xi.
20 Projects involving oil, gas, and electricity are, however, overseen by the National Energy Board (NEB).
21 NIRB, Final Hearing Report, 39.
22 NIRB, Final Hearing Report, 39.
23 DFO, 2019. Concerns raised by the communities about the impact of the project were addressed by the Proponent during consultations based on these assessments. By 2019, both the NIRB and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans raised concerns that the agreed-upon conditions, upon which approval was based, were not being met. The April 2019 DFO report concluded that “DFO Science disagrees with the Proponent’s overall conclusion that the proposed project operations will inflict no significant impacts on the marine ecosystem…The overall conclusion of no significant impact on any marine mammal, and no long term impacts, is difficult to accept” (Ibid.).
24 Lemke, Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique; Himley, “Regularizing Extraction in Andean Peru.”
25 Himley, “Regularizing Extraction in Andean Peru.”
26 Pyysiainen et al, “Neoliberal Governance and ‘Responsibilization’of Agents.”
27 Miller and Rose, Governing the Present.
28 Lemke, “'The Birth of Bio-politics,'” 201.
29 Barnett et al. 2008; Brown, “Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy.”
30 Foucault, “Power/Knowledge.”; Evans et al, “Structuring Neoliberal Governance.”
31 Cameron and Levitan, “Impact and Benefit Agreements,” 47.
32 Cameron and Levitan, “Impact and Benefit Agreements,” 47.
33 St. Laurent and le Billon, “Staking Claims and Shaking Hands,” 597.
34 Fontana and Grugel, “The Politics of Indigenous Participation”; Mayes et al, “‘Our’ Community”; Cooke and Kothari, The Case for Participation as Tyranny; Himley, “Regularizing Extraction in Andean Peru.”
35 Mayes et al, “‘Our’ Community,” 399.
36 Szablowski, Critical Perspectives on Resource Extraction Governance.
37 Welker, “‘Corporate Security Begins in the Community.’”
38 See Cooke and Kothari, The Case for Participation as Tyranny.
39 Freudenburg, “Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts.”
40 Davidson and Grant, “The Double Diversion.”
41 Freudenburg and Alario, “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” 168.
42 Foucault, “Power/Knowledge”; Freudenburg, “Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts”; Freudenburg and Alario, “Weapons of Mass Distraction.”
43 Ware, “Public Moral Values.”
44 Ware, “Public Moral Values,” 307.
45 Freudenburg and Alario, “Weapons of Mass Distraction,”147.
46 Transcripts of these meetings are publicly available in English on their website and can be downloaded and saved as .pdf documents.
47 NIRB files #08MN053.
48 Maher, “Squeezing Psychological Freedom.”
49 Maher, “Squeezing Psychological Freedom.”
50 Cooke and Kothari, The Case for Participation as Tyranny.
51 Maher, “Squeezing Psychological Freedom,” 3.
52 Welker, “‘Corporate Security Begins in the Community.’”
53 Welker, “‘Corporate Security Begins in the Community.’”
54 Szablowski, “Operationalizing Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.”
55 Kulcsar et al, "Privileged Access and Rural Vulnerabilities.”
56 Dokis, Where the Rivers Meet.
57 Dokis, Where the Rivers Meet, 132.
58 Dokis, Where the Rivers Meet, 145, emphasis added.
59 Freudenburg and Alario, “Weapons of Mass Distraction.”
60 Freudenburg and Alario, “Weapons of Mass Distraction,”147.
61 Consultation Participant 1, Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1176–77.
62 Szablowski, “Operationalizing Free, Prior, and Informed Consent,” 112.
63 Barnhardt and Kawagley, “Indigenous Knowledge Systems.”
64 Tagalik, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, 4.
65 There is at least one precedent for surveying an entire community in advance of a proposal: in 2010, the Kivalliq Inuit Association (KIA) administered surveys in Baker Lake “to gauge public opinion of the Kiggavik [uranium mine] proposal” (Kulchyski and Bernauer, “Modern Treaties, Extraction, and Imperialism,”13).
66 Igloolik, Nunavut, July 25, 2012, 1967–1968.
67 Igloolik, Nunavut, July 25, 2012, 1967–1968.
68 Pond Inlet, January 2014, 1054.
69 Igloolik, July 25, 1936–937.
70 Igloolik, July 25, 1920.
71 Caine and Krogman, “Powerful or Just Plain Power-Full,” 87.
72 Egeland et al, “Food Insecurity”; Rosol et al., “Prevalence of Affirmative Responses.”
73 Graburn, Eskimos Without Igloos.
74 Billson, “Inuit Dreams, Inuit Realities,” 289.
75 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1261–262.
76 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1261–262.
77 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1269–270.
78 This pattern is well documented in Amnesty International (2016), Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Gender, Indigenous Rights, and Energy Development in Northeast British Columbia, Canada. www.amnesty.org.
79 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1270–271.
80 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1265–66.
81 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1276.
82 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1278–279.
83 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 17, 2012, 405.
84 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 17, 2012, 409.
85 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 17, 2012, 419–20.
86 Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012, 1225–226.
87 Amnesty International, 2016: 4.
88 Bernauer, “The Limits to Extraction, 26.
89 Mills et al., Gender in Research, 3.
90 Mills et al., Gender in Research, 3.
91 Sharma, “The Impact of Mining on Women.”
92 Boutet et al, “Historical Perspectives.”
93 Boutet et al, “Historical Perspectives, 199.
94 Monture, Thunder in My Soul, and Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks.
95 Igloolik, Nunavut, July 24, 2012: 1759.
96 Madsen, Baffinland, Iqaluit, Nunavut, July 20, 2012: 1202–204.
97 MacDonald et al., “Reciprocity in the Canadian Dene Diamond Mining Economy,” 69.
98 Gombay, “Placing Economies,” 20.
99 Cooke and Kothari, The Case for Participation as Tyranny, 14–15.
100 Pynchon, 251, cited in Freudenburg, and Alario, “Weapons of Mass Distraction, 159.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Willow Scobie
Willow Scobie teaches in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Kathleen Rodgers
Kathleen Rodgers teaches in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.