Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History -- The Contemporary North

Today I continue my series of posts about Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History, the new book that I am co-editing with Brad Martin, to be published later this year by University of Calgary Press.  Please see here, here and here for my previous posts about Ice Blink.

In this excerpt from our introduction we describe how chapters by Hans Carlson, Paul Nadasdy, Arn Keeling and John Sandlos, Emilie Cameron, and me contribute to our understanding of the recent history of northern Canada. Their accounts examine several factors that have together transformed the north and its relations to the rest of Canada and the world: hydroelectric development, land claims agreements, mining, contaminants and climate change.

Environmental History and the Contemporary North

By the late 1960s, the future of the northern environment had become a matter of active debate. Some foresaw rapid development, especially of its energy resources, and continued integration into global markets. In 1961, Canada Oil and Gas Land Regulations set the terms for petroleum exploration. Activity expanded after 1968, when oil was found in Alaska, raising hopes for geologically similar regions in Canada, including the Mackenzie Delta/Beaufort Sea and High Arctic regions. Hydroelectric projects in British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, and Labrador, and oil sands development in northeastern Alberta, illustrated the provinces� belated interest in their own �forgotten� norths. They also testified to how many now viewed the north as an energy-rich hinterland�a prospect welcomed in Ottawa and the provincial capitals, but one that aroused concern and controversy elsewhere. Protection of the northern environment became a national issue, encouraged by both the wider emergence of environmentalism in Canada and elsewhere and by specific concerns about threats to �fragile� northern ecosystems. These concerns also testified to the influence of science on views of the northern environment. Although this notion of a fragile north soon faded, by the 1990s global change, including contaminants, depletion of stratospheric ozone, and especially climate change had begun to dominate scientific perceptions of this environment.

For many, however, the assertion of Indigenous authority over land, water, and wildlife became central to their vision of the future of the north. Land claim negotiations and self-government agreements provided opportunities for Aboriginal people to regain authority over land and resources, restoring ties between place and livelihood ruptured by state interventions. By 1973 Dene, M�tis, Inuvialuit, and Inuit had formed representative organizations, initiating a dramatic political evolution rooted in a longer history of resistance to the state. New resource management institutions drew on both scientific and Indigenous knowledge, including a view of northern landscapes not as uninhabited wildernesses but as social and cultural systems. Aboriginal environmental politics have continued to evolve, through activism, legal affirmation of treaty rights, development of co-management arrangements, and the assertion of Indigenous knowledge. Evolving views of the relations between people, economies, and the northern environment have also been important, including affirmation of the central role of hunting and food gathering in Indigenous communities, and the place of Indigenous people in circumpolar environmental affairs.

Five chapters examine this era in northern environmental history. We begin in northern Quebec, where a lengthy history of exploitation of furs, forests, minerals, and rivers has reflected the imperatives of both global resource demands, and, more recently, Quebec nationalism. Exploring the consequences of this history for people and the land, Hans Carlson takes us on his travels with the Cree. His companions� stories record the ties between place, livelihood, and culture, and their efforts to negotiate their past, present, and uncertain future. In 1975, the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement provided the legal basis for the Cree to pursue their way of life in terms of their own practices and knowledge. Development has nevertheless transformed their relations with the land, creating a new politics in which they have both adapted to and challenged change�in part by forming links with other places, as in 1990, when they brought their opposition to the Great Whale hydroelectric project to New York City, traveling by Odeyak (a canoe-kayak hybrid). These travels are also, as Carlson explains, an opportunity to reflect on the ties between personal history and the history of a place, stories of the past and present events, and memory, meaning, and the land.

From Quebec, we travel west to the Yukon. Land claims and self-government agreements under the 1993 Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement established Indigenous authority over much of the territory and its resources. As Paul Nadasdy explains, however, these agreements have also reshaped how people relate to the land, to animals, and to each other. Because they are based on territorial jurisdiction�the foundation of modern states�they have required Aboriginal people to think territorially: to become managers and to create bureaucracies framed in the language of maps. But in doing so they risk neglecting the social relations between people and animals that once formed the basis of land-use practices, in effect securing their future at the expense of their past.

Mines have a finite lifespan, and scores of abandoned sites now lie scattered across the north�sixty-four in the Yellowknife region alone. Many still release contaminants, forming a toxic �landscape of exposure� with lasting environmental and social impacts. As Arn Keeling and John Sandlos explain, understanding this legacy requires linking the histories of labour and of landscape to form a perspective on mining more elaborate than the simple cycles of boom and bust. Such a view also accommodates distinctive features of the industry in the north, including remote locations and the presence of Indigenous people, whose ways of life render them more vulnerable to contaminants and to damage to local living resources. Today, rising mineral prices are encouraging efforts to reopen or remediate some mines. Keeling and Sandlos identify in these efforts the continuing influence of the past on the future of northern mining: when these �zombie� mines are brought back to life, so too are memories of the conflicts they once provoked.

Northern contaminants come not only from mines and other local sources, but from more distant places. In my chapter, I explain how these substances�including radioactive fallout, particulates, and pesticides and other persistent organic pollutants�have encouraged new scientific perspectives and methods, novel environmental and health initiatives, and a new relationship between Indigenous peoples, scientists, and governments. This is partly a story of surprise; the discovery of contaminants in northern ecosystems, animals, and food confounded assumptions about what �belongs� in the northern environment. While contaminants gave scientists an opportunity to extend their historical role as interpreters of the northern environment, Indigenous communities and institutions asserted their own perspectives on these substances and their significance to food, health, and knowledge. Contaminants thus provide an opportunity to examine the distinctive social dynamics and structures of northern environmental knowledge, and the material relations between the north and the rest of the world.

Images of melting sea ice have made climate change the most obvious link between the north and the rest of the planet. Emilie Cameron considers its implications for northerners, their livelihoods, and their �right to be cold.� Climate science implies certain ideas about time, space, and action: it focuses on the future, seeks prediction and adaptation, and assumes that local places are self-evident. It also implies that, however useful Indigenous knowledge may be in relation to these places, it has little to add to global perspectives. However, a more critical perspective on scale and knowledge can open up other ways of understanding northern climate change. One way is by encouraging an awareness of the history of climate science itself, including its formation in the context of colonization, and the local character of its �global� perspective. As Cameron explains, this awareness can also provide a basis for enabling northerners to contribute to a more inclusive understanding of the consequences of global change for the north.