Northern Crises

Abstract

Using feminist disability studies and intersectionality, this article draws upon the ongoing resource extractions in Labrador, Canada to argue for examining local communities and relationships as one way to understand gender and global social, economic and environmental crises. The article explores how crises in Labrador have been constituted and maintained around global agendas of economic and resource development, historical and current colonial practices and a limited and constrained international relations with local Indigenous nations. The lives of women and their communities in Labrador illustrate one wave of a global crisis that extinguishes diversity and connection to the land in a race to extract natural resources, maintain global military power and gain profit in the global economy. The actions over the past thirty years by NATO and the Canadian federal, provincial and municipal governments, coupled with transnational mining corporations such as Vale, have “normalized” crisis in the communities and reduced the capacity of these communities and Indigenous nations to respond to the issues arising as a result of the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric development project. Yet the women and their communities illustrate their agency and reject an analysis of them exclusively as victims. Together with researchers and activists, the women in Labrador have built a community of practice in the Feminist Northern Network.

Keywords:

• feminist disability studies
• Indigenous
• intersectionality
• resource development
• hydroelectricity

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jane Stinson, Gail Baikie, Petrina Beals and others for creating and sustaining a reflective, collaborative and intersectional practice in FemNorthNet; the Labrador women who have generously shared their lives with us; and the reviewers for their suggestions to strengthen this article.

Notes on contributor

Deborah Stienstra held the Nancy's Chair in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University from 2013 to 2015, is Professor in Disability Studies at the University of Manitoba and co-led FemNorthNet from 2010 to 2015. In 2012, she published About Canada: Disability Rights (Fernwood Publishing).

Notes

1 See http://www.powerinourhands.ca/

2 In a personal conversation with the author in May 2014, Cynthia Enloe noted that she was invited to Labrador to support the Innu women during this time.

3 The Innu call the river Mista-Shipu and others call it the Grand or Churchill River.

4 To learn more about their project “Our Ancestors Are in Our Land, Water, and Air: A ‘Two-Eyed Seeing’ Approach to Environmental Health Research”, see http://www.heclab.com/research/current/our-ancestors-are-in-our-land-water-and-air/

Additional information

Funding

The research of the Feminist Northern Network was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Status of Women Canada.