Disposable waste, lands and bodies under Canada’s gendered nuclear colonialism

ABSTRACT

Nuclear colonialism, or the exploitation of Indigenous lands and peoples to sustain the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining and refining to nuclear energy and weapons production and the dumping of the resulting nuclear waste, occurs in many parts of the world and has generated considerable protest. This article focuses on a contemporary and ongoing case of nuclear colonialism in Canada: attempts to site two national deep geological repositories (DGRs) for nuclear waste on traditional First Nations land in Southwestern Ontario near the world’s largest operational nuclear power plant. Through histories of the rise of nuclear power and nuclear waste policy-making and their relationship to settler colonialism in Canada, as well as actions taken by the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) and white settler anti-nuclear waste movements, the article explores how gender is at work in nuclear colonialism and anti-nuclear waste struggles. Gender is explored here in terms of the patriarchal nuclear imperative, the appropriation of Aboriginal land through undermining Aboriginal women’s status and the problematic relationship between First Nations and white settler women-led movements in resistance to nuclear waste burial from a feminist decolonial perspective

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear waste
• gendered nuclear colonialism
• white settler colonialism
• patriarchal nuclear imperative
• Canada

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Fulbright Canada and York University for enabling her to serve as a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in North American Integration to conduct this research, the University of Cincinnati Taft Research Center for its additional research support, anonymous reviewers for their invaluable input and members of the SON, SOS and SOS Great Lakes from whom I continue to learn so much.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anne Sisson Runyan is Professor of Political Science and faculty affiliate ofWomen’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Her books include four editions of Global Gender Issues (with V. Spike Peterson; a fifth single-authored edition entitled Global Gender Politics forthcoming), two editions of Gender and Global Restructuring (with Marianne Marchand) and Feminist (Im)Mobilities in Fortressing North America (with Amy Lind, Patricia McDermott and Marianne Marchand). She has served on the editorial board of the International Feminist Journal of Politics since its inception and also as one of its associate editors.

Notes

1. Following First Nations feminist scholar Lawrence (2004, 21), I use Indigenous, Native, Aboriginal and Indian largely interchangeably because these monikers are variously used over time by Indigenous peoples themselves in North America, even though the last is a white settler term and historically used in white settler legislation to regulate the lives of Indigenous peoples. First Nations in Canada, who are party to treaties and have reserves, are co-sovereigns of a sort with the Canadian state, but there are also mixed-blood (Native and white) peoples in Canada often included in contemporary references to Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples in Canada, such as the Metis.

2. Although the enactment of settler colonialism is not limited to past and present white populations in Canada or other settler colonial states, as im/migrants of colour also exercise and benefit from this oppressive system (see, for example, Bannerji 2000), in this case and a number of others in North America, rural settler communities adjacent to Native reserves and/or in more remote areas targeted for nuclear waste burial tend to be predominantly white.

3. This preceding abbreviated history is drawn from the Save Our Saugeen Shores (SOS) website at http://saveoursaugeenshores.org/.

4. The following summary of land surrenders is based largely on the Saugeen Ojibway Nation Claims Update Newsletter 2016.

5. This description of contemporary SON land and compensation claim draws from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation Claims Update Newsletter 2016.

6. This letter is publically available at the administrative office of the Saugeen First Nation.

7. The following summaries of actions taken by SOS, Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump and SOS Great Lakes are derived from their respective websites at http://saveoursaugeenshores.org/, http://stopthegreatlakesnucleardump.com/ and http://www.sosgreatlakes.org/.

8. Examples include interviews conducted with Cheryl Grace, former President of SOS and current Council Member of Saugeen Shores, on October 8, 2016; Jill Taylor, President of SOS Great Lakes and summer resident of Saugeen Shores, on November 26, 2016; and Joyce Johnston, member and former Council Member of the Chippewas of Nawash, on October 18, 2016. Informal conversations include one with Lester Anaquot, current Chief of the Saugeen First Nation, on November 15, 2016, who, in addition to Chief Greg Nadjiwon of the Chippewas of Nawash, I have since more formally interviewed (Anaquot on September 12, 2017 and Nadjiwon on October 4, 2017).