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"Muskrat Falls and Standing Rock: Infrastructure Projects on Indigenous Lands in Canada and the US"
Speaker: Colin Samson, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK
Chair: Ronald Niezen, William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies and Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy, Faculties of Law and of Arts, McGill University
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Colin Samson is a sociologist based at the University of Essex. He has worked with the Innu peoples of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula since 1994. His book A Way of Life that Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu (2003) won the Pierre Savard Award. He is also author of A World You Do Not Know: Settler Societies, Indigenous Peoples and the Attack on Cultural Diversity (2013) and with Carlos Gigoux, Indigenous Peoples and Colonialism: A Global Perspective (2017). Colin collaborated with filmmaker Sarah Sandring on the films ‘Nutshimit’ (2010) and ‘Nutak’ (2013) about the recent and historical experiences of the Mushuau Innu. He is currently completing a book entitled Colonialism and Universal Human Rights: The Ongoing Hypocrisies of Western Societies.
Recent conflicts between indigenous groups and governments over the use and ownership of lands in North America have exposed deep ambiguities about legality, property, human rights and even democracy itself. Uncertainties derive from tensions between historical acts of nation-to-nation recognition and current governmental practice. This presentation will explore the role of legal ambiguities in two ongoing land disputes; Muskrat Falls megadam in northern Labrador, Canada and the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) at Standing Rock, North Dakota. Regarding the siting of the Muskrat Falls in the heart of Innu land at mishta-shipu (‘Churchill River’), I will look at the comprehensive land claims process, the premises of Aboriginal Title, the text of the Innu Nation agreement-in-principle with Canada, and the status of Innu land rights in relation to other groups. As a comparison, I shall argue that the conflict at Standing Rock relates to the status of 19th century treaties between the US and the Sioux, legislative acts, judicial rulings, the Executive Order of January 2017 and the actions of the police and military during the 2016 DAPL protests. In both cases, similar legal ambiguities regarding the integrity of indigenous rights granted by the state may account for the violation of lands ostensibly granted to indigenous peoples. Having explored these ambiguities, we can better pinpoint the legitimacy of the dam and the pipeline and the access to justice of indigenous peoples in North America. Finally, as some Native American scholars have advocated, I will assess whether and how international law, specifically UNDRIP, might apply.