Indigenous-Settler Geographies of Renewable Energy
Sessions - Calls for Participants
Indigenous-Settler Geographies of Renewable Energy
Organizers: Chad Walker1, Heather Castleden1, Diana Lewis2, Jeff Masuda1, Hannah Tait Neufeld3, Mary Beth Doucette4
1Queen’s University; 2Western University; 3The University of Guelph; 4Cape Breton University
Overview
This session will highlight research concerning Indigenous involvement and leadership in renewable energy initiatives around the world. As countries around the world transform their electricity systems away from centralized and carbon-intensive sources and toward renewable energy, communities playing host are being forever changed. Because these developments have grown to represent a higher percentage of energy grids, social scientists — and human geographers in particular — have become interested in studying the varied impacts and levels of public support seen across geographic contexts (Rand and Hoen, 2017; Sovacool, 2014).
In Canada, long-overdue promises to address the negative environmental, social, physical, mental, and spiritual impacts that extractive industries have had in traditional territories have led some to suggest renewable energy may be a vehicle for change. Indeed, Indigenous voices and early research is showing that these kinds of developments may indeed help contribute to reconciling relationships and nation-to-nation building between Indigenous and settler peoples (Kerr et al., 2015; Henderson, 2014; Krupa et al., 2015). Yet, despite the idyllic way these energy transformations are described in some of this literature, there is the potential to re-traumatize/re-violate and environmentally dispossess Indigenous peoples in ways similar to their experiences encountered through other more demonized forms of development (Tobias & Richmond, 2014). Even with regard to so-called ‘clean’ energy arising from large-scale hydroelectric development, severe impacts on Indigenous peoples and the land are being realized (Martin and Hoffman, 2009; Waldram, 1993; Walker et al., under review). Such endeavours may be read as a new form of (low-carbon) colonialism (Finley-Brook and Thomas, 2011). Thus, we especially invite critical and gendered approaches of these issues and discussion will focus on ways forward in terms of Indigenous energy security, autonomy, and sovereignty (Stefanelli et al., 2018).
We welcome scholarship covering a diversity of renewable energy technologies (e.g. wind, solar, hydro, tidal, geothermal, and bioenergy) as well as research by or in partnership with Indigenous communities. All social scientific work using a variety of quantitative, qualitative, and community-based approaches (including but not limited to surveys, interviews, focus groups, storytelling, sharing circles, photovoice, discourse analysis, and policy analysis) are invited to submit an abstract. For questions about the session, or to submit an abstract for consideration, contact Organizer Dr. Chad Walker (Queen’s University) at cw135@queensu.ca. Please limit abstracts to no more than 250 words and send my the deadline of March 22.