Challenge Area

The global challenge this research attempts to address is that of economic racism, and its effects across geographies of Indigenous conservation and protection. The goal of this work is to generate new knowledge around the increasing recognition of Indigenous Peoples roles in biodiversity conservation and the parallel challenge of supporting Indigenous efforts to chart sovereign pathways for future generations. The strangle hold that capitalist production has on Western modes of environmental protection is of global concern. This work will look at the ways economics are produced as tacit belief systems which create perilous conflations of Indigenous sovereignty, protected areas, and Western economic orthodoxy. It hopes to begin lifting a corner on the tightly sealed frame of colonial environmental and economic racism.

Geographic Perspective

Indigenous geographies, environmental geography, critical development studies, and economic geography converge in a critical nexus to unravel the problematic relationalities of economic belief systems.

The turn to Indigenous-led conservation largely fails to address the parallel requirement of Indigenous communities to engage with the Western cash economy. There is an absence of research which connects the two main scholarly explorations of Indigenous conservation and economic development. Generally, the literature is divided into two camps: work on protected areas, which has emphasized Indigenous rights and responsibilities pertaining to conservation, and a settler-led economic development literature, which attempts to analyze Indigenous Peoples’ interactions with market economic models, with no mention of critical environmental stewardship. Stemming from this gap in the literature, it follows that if economic development through conservation and Indigenous environmental stewardship depends on Indigenous agreement with Western economic orthodoxies, this may be counterproductive to resurgence and decolonization. Does this gap in literature and practice reinforce colonial relationalities under the guise of ‘support’?

This leaves Indigenous communities in a difficult situation, with few economic development options based on traditional knowledge, leaving them exposed to resource development demands that may conflict with their conservation goals. The proposed research will address this gap and build on previous work that has set the stage for a transformation of paradigms. For example, in her previous role as special representative to the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Governor General Mary Simon was one of the first to introduce the term conservation economy to Canadian policy discourse, calling for economic development built around Indigenous lifeways connected to conservation infrastructure, in her 2017 report titled, A New Shared Arctic Leadership Model. Taking this into consideration, the proposed research will investigate the question: how do northern Indigenous Peoples envision the relationship between economic development and environmental stewardship, and what dimensions of traditional land-based economic practice can be brought to bear as foundations for new conservation economies?