Fuelling toxic relations: Oil sands and settler colonialism in Canada

Abstract

How does the often-invisible nature of pollution affect people's physical health and psychosocial relations, and their well-being near major industrial projects? Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Alberta, Canada, this article explores this question by focusing on oil sands extraction on Cree, Dené and Métis nations' homelands with its environmental and socio-cultural consequences. Looking at different forms of dispossessions and Indigenous concepts of relationality and home, the author argues that pollution should be seen as an act of settler violence instead of merely a by-product of industry.