Indigeneity, gender and class in decision-making about risks from resource extraction

ABSTRACT

Proposed copper-nickel mines in Northern Minnesota are an emblematic case of participatory environmental justice dynamics in contested decision-making processes around new risky forms and sites of resource extraction. The mines have been embroiled in an over-decade long review process and pose a threat to popular waterways as well as natural resources that are protected by treaties with Ojibwe tribes. I examine how various actors engage in decision-making processes, and how risks and benefits are assessed in ways shaped by intersectional dynamics of power. What voices and knowledges are privileged and silenced? Whose bodies and livelihoods are privileged? Through discourse analysis of public documents and observations at public hearings, I find intersectional health risks from pollution are overlooked while the rhetoric of economic benefits privileges white male workers. Native American tribes have a formal role in the environmental review process, which provides them with visibility and legitimacy, but indigenous concerns are articulated through the discourse of science and expertise, and still bracketed from major conclusions. I contribute to environmental justice scholarship by applying an intersectional framework toward gender, whiteness and indigeneity in decision-making about environmental risks, and how the politics of knowledge effects procedural environmental justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental justice
• decision-making
• intersectionality
• resource extraction

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the special edition editors for putting together the volume. David Pellow provided useful feedback and comments on my early drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Based on five-year estimates (2011–2015) from the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau for the area covered by the Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation Board – a state agency serving areas that have had iron-ore mining – encompassing 13,000 square miles in northeastern Minnesota, 50 cities, 129 townships, and 15 school districts.

2. Based on five year estimates (2006–2010) from the American Community Survey (ACS) of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erik Kojola

Erik Kojola is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota. His areas of interest are environmental justice, natural resources, labor, and political ecology. His research examines the interactions between the economy, culture, and the environment with an emphasis on how people perceive and mobilize around contentious environmental issues in ways shaped by power and inequality. He holds an MA from American University and a BA from Oberlin College.