This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the journal
Local Environment on 19 Nov 2018, available online:
https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2018.1536698

Blocking Pipelines, Unsettling Environmental Justice: From
Rights of Nature to Responsibility to Territory
Leah Temper1,2,*
  1
   Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec,
  Canada
  2
      ICTA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain
  *
   leah.temper@gmail.com


Part of the Special Issue on Environmental Justice & Epistemic Violence


Abstract:


Indigenous peoples are among the most affected by environmental injustices globally,
however environmental justice theory has not yet meaningfully addressed decolonization
and the resistance of indigenous communities against extractivism in the settler-colonial
context. This paper suggests that informing environmental justice through decolonial
analysis and decolonizing practices can help transcend the Western ontological roots of
environmental justice theories and inform a more radical and emancipatory
environmental justice.

The Unist'ot'en Resistance and Action Camp blocking pipelines in northwestern British
Colombia, Canada, their “Reimagined Free Prior and Informed Consent protocol” and the
Delgamuukw case are described to discuss limitations of the state and legal framework
for accommodating a decolonial and transformative environmental justice. A decolonial
analysis informed by these two moments of Wet’sewet’ten history suggest limits and
adaptations to the trivalent EJ framework based on recognition, participation and
distribution. It is argued that a decolonizing and transformative approach to
environmental justice must be based on self-governing authority, relational ontologies of
nature and epistemic justice and the unsettling of power through the assertion of
responsibility and care through direct action.

This discussion is placed in the context of the expansion of the concept of ecological
rights, for example through the enshrining of the “Rights of Nature” in the constitutions
of countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador, to highlight the inherent tensions in the
translation of indigenous cosmo-visions into legal systems based on universalist values.
    1. Introduction


The Wet’suwet’en First Nation territory spans for over 22,000 km in NorthWest British
Columbia, Canada, and lies directly in the path of several proposed gas and oil pipelines.
Since 2010, the Unist'ot'en clan, members of the Wet'suwet'en Nation, have been
reoccupying and re-establishing themselves on their ancestral lands in opposition to these
projects. They have set up a camp on the GPS coordinates of the pipeline route as a way
to impede the construction of any pipelines from crossing their territory, which they term
as “occupied and un-ceded” as the tribe has never signed a treaty with the Government of
Canada.


This resistance is part of a long history of struggles for territorial self-determination. In
1984, the Wet'suwet'en, together with the Gitksan, went to Court to assert their
sovereignty, legal jurisdiction and aboriginal rights over the 58,000 square kilometres of
their combined territory in British Colombia. The case eventually made it to the Supreme
Court of Canada (Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 1997) and was a landmark in several
respects. It established that the Tribe’s territorial sovereignty, pending proof of a
surrender, by treaty, is a legitimate and outstanding constitutional question that still
remains to be resolved by the Court. It was also significant as the first case that admitted
oral histories as principal evidence.


These two moments must be seen within a greater narrative of indigenous resurgence and
affirmation in Canada that indigenous scholars such as Taiake (2005), Coulthard (2014)
and Simpson (2011) have elaborated on and which engage with social theories of justice.
In particular they attack the “politics of recognition” and reconciliation as a remedy for
colonial injustices and call for radical alternatives to colonial structures as pathways
towards decolonization. This paper aims to bring this literature into conversation with
that on environmental justice, employing the struggle of the Wet'suwet'ten tribe for self-
determination and the transformative significance of the Unist'ot'en camp resistance as an
informative case to probe some of the limits of EJ and social justice theory for a
decolonial environmental justice. Through an analysis of the historical and current

                                                                                                2
struggle of the Wet’suwet’en it examines what happens when Western law clashes with
indigenous law and cosmo visions in the courtroom, and in the territory and asks, what if
environmental justice was to take decolonization seriously? In doing so, it aims to
advance both multidimensional theories of justice and the environmental justice
literature.


The potentialities and the limits to decolonizing environmental justice will be explored in
this article through five moves. Following this first introductory section, the second
section discusses methods and positionality, the third section reviews the literature on EJ
and indigenous peoples and engages with Nancy Fraser's trivalent theory of justice and
her distinction between affirmative and transformative remedies in conversation with
other social justice theorists (Young 2011) and gives some background on the
Wet’sewet’en and indigenous territorial perspectives. The fourth section introduces the
two case studies, initially examining the deployment of spatial tactics, direct action and
performance in the Unist'ot'en camp as an example that transcends a state-centered and
rights-based approach and secondly, the legal battle for recognition of territorial authority
through the Delgamuukw court case as a means to trace the limits and potential of
Western legal and political institutions to meeting indigenous demands.


In the discussion, I propose three dimensions that can inform a decolonizing
environmental justice. I suggest that beyond distribution, participation and recognition,
EJ must consider relational ontologies of nature, self-governing authority, and epistemic
justice. The ideas developed contribute to the thorny questions of overlapping
sovereignties, as well as broader questions over how relationships, ontologies and world-
views on nature can inform an ongoing transformation towards ecological and
environmental justice.


    2. Methods and Positionality
This work is part of a long history of scholar-activism around environmental justice
issues, which includes the production of social justice documentary films, the creation of
an online global atlas documenting resistance struggles globally and other journalistic

                                                                                             3
and academic work within a praxis that attempts to combines engaged scholarship and
activism. As an expatriate settler-Canadian, this project also represented a re-encounter
for me with my own role as a settler and a renewed engagement with indigenous
solidarity work in Canada after many years living abroad, and thus entailed a process of
“unsettling” myself within a space of solidarity described by Tuck and Yang (2012) as
"an uneasy, reserved and unsettled matter that neither reconciles present grievances nor
forecloses future conflict."


Field work at the camp was carried out in the summer of 2014 while filming a social
justice documentary film as a support and testimony for the camp. Five in-depth
interviews were conducted with camp members and indigenous and settler activists at the
camp. The resulting 20-minute film, Corridors of Resistance1, entailed minimal
mediation so as to let the community speak for themselves. It has been circulated, used at
solidarity events and translated to Spanish. Publications, documents and declarations
from the camp were analysed, as well as documents and legal articles on the
Delgamuukw case and this material and the interviews were later coded and analyzed for
key themes and concepts – including territory, justice, rights, and nature.


Protocols followed included the reclaimed free prior and informed consent protocol
designed by the Unist'ot'en as described in section four. This entailed an iterative process
of questioning intentions, contributions and methods, repeated several times, first by
email, upon arrival at the camp, and again during the process of drafting and reworking
the text. The work has been further informed by work on the decolonization of
methodologies (Smith 2013) and by guidelines for “political rigour” and radical
reflexivity being developed by a collective of scholars within the auspices of a large
international project on trans-disciplinary research. Drafts of this article were shared and
discussed with the camp members who provided critiques and feedback that were
integrated into the text. This led to further questions from the camp and a process of
reflexivity on the use of the work, intentions behind it, the perceived audience and how it


1
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDR1l_Xw7ts


                                                                                               4
would benefit their struggle. Beyond benefit to the camp, it is hoped that the
documentation of this transformative praxis will serves to inform and inspire other
struggles and that this paper and accompanying video and materials can contribute to
networking and sharing knowledge between marginalized communities engaged in
similar battles for environmental and social justice.



   3. Literature Review


This work aims to disturb EJ literature by bringing it into conversation with
epistemologies of the south, indigenous theorists and critical and indigenous legal
studies. Scholarship on environmental justice has expanded from its initial US roots and
emphasis on the spatial distribution of toxics, to increasingly recognize multiple
spatialities and dimensions of environmental justice (Walker 2009, Holifield, Porter and
Walker 2009, Newell 2005).The literature has also expanded geographically and
thematically to examine a range of issues and justice claims within trans-national and
intergenerational perspectives (Sikor and Newell 2014; Chatterton, Featherstone and
Routledge 2013; Schlosberg 2013). However, we may explore whether environmental
justice theories are able to respond to the subordination of Indigenous normativities and
whether they are compatible with a decolonizing politics of justice.


This is important because Indigenous communities are at the forefront of struggles
against land dispossession and environmental degradation globally. For example, in the
Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (www.ejatlas.org) which documents 2500 cases of
ecological conflicts, indigenous populations are present in 40% of cases (Temper et al
2018). An emerging body of literature in EJ research grapples with the unique political
and cultural dynamics of indigenous communities (Warner 2015. Whyte 2016, Westra
2012; Vermeylen and Walker 2011) addressing issues such as collective claims to
sovereignty; the need for new understandings of communal health and spiritual well-
being related to the loss of sacred and cultural resources (Ranco et. Al 2011); and the
need for a community-based, capabilities-centered conception of environmental justice
(Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010).

                                                                                            5
Scholars from a Latin American perspective have put forward the need for a decolonial
environmental justice, often focusing on the need for inter-cultural communication
(Rodriguez and Inturias 2018, Escobar), ontological politics (Blaser 2013, Escobar 2012)
and the decolonization of knowledge and social relations. However, environmental
justice literature in the Global North has engaged less with the colonial and epistemic
roots of injustices, with some exceptions (Arn and Keeling 2009; Whyte 2016). Whyte
(2016:192) for example, describes indigenous environmental injustice as occurring
“when one society robs another society of the institutional and ecological conditions
required for members of another society to experience the world in ways
that motivate their engagement in the operation of systems of responsibilities.” He
suggests that such an indigenous conception of EJ serves to suggest very different
solutions for remedying environmental injustices but does not clearly lay out what these
are. This paper contributes to moving beyond colonial constructs in proposing remedies
for environmental justice as experienced by indigenous communities.


This paper thus explores the opportunities and limitations of environmental justice
theories for transformative politics and decolonizing practice in the settler-colonial
context. To do so we engage with the trivalent framework of justice (distribution,
recognition and participation) first developed by Fraser (1995) and extended to EJ by
Schlosberg (2007), which has become canonical in the literature. It provides a useful
framework for examining how these dimensions address or fail to address the demands
put forward by a decolonizing environmental justice perspective and what dimensions
need to be included or adapted to lead to transformative change.


3.1 Beyond Distribution, Recognition and Participation


Fraser (1995) initially put forward a bivalent theory of justice, pointing out that claims
for recognition of cultural difference and group identity was supplanting class interest
and calls for socio-economic redistribution as the chief medium of political mobilisation.
She argued that cultural domination and material inequality should be seen as analytically

                                                                                             6
distinct yet imbricated paradigms of injustice, with a dialectical relationship between
them. Later, Fraser (2008) acknowledged the inadequacy of the binary
recognition/distribution paradigm and added a third pillar -- “representation”, arguing
that representation-related injustices driven by “political voice-lessness,” were becoming
increasingly important in struggles for justice and democracy in a globalizing world and
represent, through participation, the field of action upon which the other claims play out
on.


In Fraser’s view, the three types of injustices may be resolved in one of two ways:
affirmatively or transformatively. Transformative remedies are associated with
“correcting inequitable outcomes precisely by restructuring the underlying generative
framework” (Fraser 2005:73), while affirmative remedies try to reduce inequalities
without challenging the underlying social relations.


For example, affirmative redistributive remedies correct income inequality by
transferring material resources to the maligned groups, for example through the social
welfare state. However, these remedies tend to leave intact the conditions, such as the
capitalist mode of production, that were responsible for generating income inequality in
the first place. In contrast, transformative redistributive remedies are aimed at eradicating
the origins of economic injustice and eliminating the root causes of economic inequality.
They would include the transformation of basic economic structures and reorganization
of the division of labour (Fraser, 1995).


In terms of ecological distribution (Martinez-Alier et al 2010), an EJ which aims for
“equal rights and exposure to risk and pollution” such as the perspective advocated by the
Environmental Protection Agency in the US is affirmative because it fails to explicitly
demand a radical improvement in everyone’s treatment and to address the social,
political, economic, and cultural forces that produce environmental pollution (Pellow
2009). In contrast, the 17 principles of Environmental Justice declared by the First
National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit which demands, among
other things, “the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes, and

                                                                                             7
radioactive materials, and that all past and current producers be held strictly accountable
to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production,”
(www.ejnet.org) represents a transformative remedy.


Recognition is concerned with who is given respect and who is and is not valued, as well
as questions such as “Who has standing? On what concerns? What are the legitimation
processes by which social and symbolic meaning are attributed to these questions? What
constitutes power, and what are the contexts with respect to those with power and those
without?” (Agyeman et al. 2010; 8). Scholars have often highlighted the importance of
the recognition paradigm as a way to understand the cultural impacts of indigenous
environmental injustices (McGregor in Agyeman et al. 2010, Figueroa 2005, Porto and
Pacheco 2009). However, recognition as an EJ issue is complicated as there are a range
of claims regarding what should be recognized (Young 2011) as well as the contested
meaning of recognition itself in practice, and the need for subjective experience therefore
in defining it (Kompridis 2007).


Recognition can refer to the need for the injustice or form of violence itself to be
recognized as such, by both those who experience it, as well as by others (Young 2011).
Claims for recognition have also been made for territorial sovereignty, for ecological
integrity (Pimentel et al 2000, Neimanis et al 2012) and “the recognition that all aspects
of Creation are interrelated” (McGregor 2010: 36). While some argue for the need to
extend recognition and participation to nature itself (Schlosberg 2007), it has not been
clearly delineated how this would operate in practice and how liberal conceptions of
justice can be transcended to incorporate such broader understandings of recognition.


       A major gap in EJ literature on recognition concerns dominant conceptions of
knowledge. This points to the absence of shared understandings of the grammar of
justice, (the what, who and how) and acts as a fundamental impediment to
operationalizing justice. This has been referred to as “epistemic justice” – which entails
making visible and politically relevant ways of knowing that have been marginalized as a
result of the imposition of a dominant knowledge system over others” (Widenhorn 2014;

                                                                                              8
380).


Epistemic justice thus goes beyond procedural justice or participation as it entails
defining the concepts and problems themselves and reminds us that knowledge itself is
not neutral or objective but connected to power and must be seen through a historically
distinct analysis to be understood. For example, liberal notions of justice and the legal
system, are founded on “universal access” to rights grounded in a western knowledge
system based on “objective” knowledge. However, these rights are linked to a specific
understanding of the `good life’, freedom and happiness, and can close off other
understandings and related emancipatory possibilities.


        The epistemic and ontological violence perpetrated against non-occidental
cultures operates such that even where the physical control of territories has ended, the
cultural logic of colonialism still operates, and silences other ways of doing, being and
knowing (Mignolo 2007; Escobar 2016; Maldonado-Torres 2007). Santos et al. (2007)
call this the ‘coloniality of knowledge’: the hegemonic conception of modern scientific
knowledge. Epistemic justice thus takes two main forms: testimonial and hermeneutical
(Fricker 2007). Testimonial injustice occurs when a hearer discounts the credibility of a
person’s testimony on account of their social identity. Hermeneutical injustice arises
when society lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of a speaker’s experience,
because that speaker has been marginalised in meaning-making activities. As Vermeylen
(2013) highlights, stories and narrative are dialectic processes, imparted in a context of a
transforming relationship between the elicitor and the narrator, the success of which will
depend on the hearer’s capacity and willingness to understand and respond to the validity
claims raised.


As regards recognition, Fraser (1995) associates affirmative remedies with “mainstream
multi-culturalism[...]which aims to redress disrespect while leaving intact both the
contents of those identities and the group differentiations that underlie them”. In contrast
she associates transformative remedies with deconstruction and redressing disrespect by
transforming the underlying cultural-valuational structure. For example, she uses the

                                                                                               9
example of “queer politics” to explain how by destabilising existing group identities and
differentiations, such as the homo/hetero binary, such remedies not only raise the self-
esteem of members of currently disrespected groups, they change everyone’s sense of
self.


Finally, for Fraser, the normative foundation of justice is participation equality.
According to this norm, justice requires a social arrangement that permit all (adult)
members of society to interact with one another as peers (Fraser 2003, p.36). Fraser
advocates for “a politics aimed at overcoming subordination by establishing the mis-
recognized party as a full member of society, capable of participating on a par with the
rest.” This entails representation so as to overcome barriers to political participation.


Potentially more relevant to indigenous peoples claiming sovereignty is what Fraser
refers to “misframing”, or meta-political injustice which result due to issues with the
(geographical) scales which delimit the bounds of justice and to “the division of political
space into bounded polities” that are drawn in such a way as to wrongly deny some
people the chance to participate at all in its authorized contests over justice” (Fraser
2008:408). Yet her focus here remains on the global poor and those who are stateless.
She does not address specifically the case of those who oppression is tied to the existence
of the state itself.


This brief review, by bringing EJ into conversation with indigenous scholarship and
perspectives on nature and territory, suggests the need to revise several widely held tenets
within environmental justice theories and test their adequacy for settler-colonial contexts.
The first is that the rights paradigm (and the legal arena) is the appropriate mechanism for
seeking remedy for environmental justice (Gonzales 2013). Another is the assumption
that a politics of recognition (directed towards the state) is a necessary and sometimes
sufficient pre-condition to participatory and distributive environmental injustice (Turner
2006; Whyte 2011). Third is the universalist assumptions that inform political philosophy
on environmental justice.



                                                                                            10
The following sections presents the ontologies of nature and territory of the Wet´sewet´en
and their engagements with the state and the legal regime to inform the discussion on
how EJ can more meaningfully address these issues.


3.2 Background – Visions of territory and governance of the Wet’sewet’en


The Wet’sewet’en are an Athapaskan culture related to inland Carrier groups, and the
name Wet’sewet’en (Witsuwit’en) means “the people of the lower drainage” referring to
their occupation on the tributaries of the Skeena River in the Bulkley Morice Watershed
(Mills 1994, 37). The Wet’suwet’en people are governed by two primary systems: a
hereditary system (represented by the Office of the Wet’suwet’en) composed of 5 clans:
Gilseyhu (Big Frog), Laksilyu (Small Frog), Gitdumden (Wolf/Bear), Laksamshu
(Fireweed) and Tsayu (Beaver clan). As well as a band-level system which consists of six
bands (Moricetown Band, Burns Lake Band, Hagwilget Village Council, Nee Thai Buhn
Band, Skin Tyee Nation, and Wet’suwet’en First Nation). The Unist’ot’en are members
of the Gilseyhu (Big Frog Clan) and Moricetown band.2


The Wet’suwet’en are a matrilineal society whereby clans are further divided into kin-
based groups known as Yikhs, often referred to as house groups, which function
autonomously and have jurisdiction over their house territory. For the Wet’suwet’en, this
jurisdiction is considered a responsibility rather than a right, with the hereditary chiefs
entrusted with stewarding and caretaking the territory to ensure it will continue to
produce game, fish, berries, and medicines to support the subsistence, trade, and
customary needs of house members (Mills 1994; Mills and Overstall 1996). The



2 The council system was set up with the Indian act of 1876 to govern the reserves. The Unist’ot’en clan repudiates their authority,
and while Delgamuukw affirms the traditional system of hereditary chiefs as those who can take decisions over the Wet’suwet’en
territories, energy companies often negotiate with band councils even though they don’t have the power to consent to development
projects beyond the reserves. For example, Chevron has formed The First Nations Limited Partnership (http://bcfnlp.ca/ ) with band
councils as the basis for an agreement on PTP. On Jan. 23, 2015, the Moricetown band became the 16th band along the pipeline route
to sign on to the partnership. Touted as a “$500 million + commercial partnership by and for First Nations”, the 16 bands will share 32
million Canadian dollars (U.S. $24.6 million) once construction begins, as well as $CA 10 million ($7.7 million) per year while the
pipeline is operating. Meanwhile on August 6, 2015, all five Unist’ot’en chiefs, along with four other Wet’suwet’en chiefs, signed
the Unist’ot’en Declaration declaring that the land was unceded and that their consent was needed for any project on their territory.




                                                                                                                                    11
responsibilities of the chief to manage and harvest resources are validated through the
feast system, the central governance institution of the Wet’suwet’en (Mills 1994). “It is in
the feast that people are given their titles, their robes and their crests and the authority
over the territory associated with those titles.”


Similar to many First Nations in British Colombia, the Wet’suwet’en have never signed a
treaty with Canada and this means their territory remains unceded. In the Royal
Proclamation of 1763, King George III declared that title to Indian territory was not to be
considered extinguished or transferred merely by conquest or occupation but only
through voluntary cession. This Proclamation retains the status of constitutional law in
Canada and means that the land title question for First Nations in B.C remains to be
settled.


However, the territorial question brings to the fore the profound difference in vision
between indigenous territorial relations and state forms of property (Thom 2014).
Indigenous notions of territoriality unsettle the concept of territory in geography, which
has recently been a focus of analysis (Painter 2010) and has been conceptualized as a
“political technology” for the occupation and control of space and exercise of state power
(Elden 2013). Such a conception does not account for the diversity of indigenous
relationships between people and place. The disruption of indigenous relationships to
land and the “epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence” continually re-asserted
through colonization as land is remade into property (Tuck and Wang 2012, 5) is the
cornerstone of the ongoing processes and structure of settler-colonialism.


Conversely, decolonization entails the reclamation of such relationships and the actual
repatriation/unsettling of land. As Simpson (2014) asserts for the Mohawk “Their own
object was and is territory in a material sense, their land—but also ideas, the past, the
present, the future, their membership within the polity itself.” Similarly, political
ecologists in Latin America describe how the “territorial question” is being debated and
inscribed in a tense political process as the confrontation of power strategies for the



                                                                                               12
appropriation of nature3 (Porto-Gonçalves, 2004). They point to how cultural rights
guide these processes of re-territorialization, leading to new material and symbolic forms
of appropriation of nature and new meanings that stem from the local cosmogonies and
socio-economic practices. Under this light, the territory is redefined as the summa of
nature/culture power relations. Such contrasting ontological understandings of territory
raise considerable challenges on how territorial jurisdiction with the state can be
negotiated, without abstracting and articulating indigenous perspectives in a way that
erases them, as we shall address in the next section.


     4. The politics of indigenous pipeline resistance


4.1 The Unist'ot'en “checkpoint”

“We will not remove our Gateway (not a blockade). A gateway into understanding truth
and meaningful decolonization.”
- Unist’ot’en Camp


The first confrontation of the Unist’ot’en Clan with the Pacific Trails Pipeline (PTP)
natural gas pipeline dates from November 2011 when camp members escorted drillers
and other PTP employees off their territories. Hereditary Chief Toghestiy again evicted
surveyors from their territory on 20 November 2012, by presenting them with an eagle
feather, the first and only traditional notice of trespass. The surveyors were ordered to
leave the territory and the road entering into the territory was been closed to all industry
activities.


On 27 November 2012, solidarity protests for the camp and against fracking were held in
13 cities, from California to Toronto and across British Colombia, and representatives of
the Wet’suwet’en delivered eviction notices to Apache Oil and Enbridge stating that the
companies “are not permitted onto unceded lands of the Wet’suwet’en; are not permitted


3 This is perhaps best expressed in the words of the seringeuros of Brazil, quoted
                                                                                 bv Porto-Goncalves:“nosotros no
queremos tierra, nosotros queremos territorio”. We don’t want the land – we want the territory.


                                                                                                                   13
to place their greed ahead of Indigenous self-determination; are not permitted to destroy
and exploit the lands; are not permitted to disregard the safety and health of
communities;[and] are not permitted to disregard [our] Law!” Freda Huson,
spokeswoman for the clan, had written a letter “To the illegitimate colonial governments
of Canada and British Columbia, and to all parties involved in the proposed PTP project
that stated “This letter is to issue a warning of trespass to those companies associated
with the PTP industrial extraction project and against any affiliates and contractors
infringing upon traditional Wet’suwet’en territory...any further incursion into their
territory [will be interpreted]as an act of aggression against their sovereignty and that
violators will be held accountable.”


Following this, the first cabin of the camp, home of Freda Huson, a member of the
Unist’ot’en house of the Gilseyhu, (Big Frog) clan, and her husband Toghestiy, of the
nearby Likhts’amisyu (Fireweed) clan, was built directly on the GPS coordinates of the
proposed route of the Pacific Trails Pipeline (PTP), which they refer to as “the trailblazer
of the prospective energy corridor”.


The struggle of the Unist'ot'en must be seen in a broader context of politics of resistance
against pipeline projects in Canada and in British Colombia led by First Nations (Scott
2013, McCreary and Milligan 2014). The Unist'ot'en are one node in a networked
resistance movement opposing these pipelines, petro-infrastructure and “fossil
capitalism” in Canada composed of environmental organizations, affected citizens and
First Nations (Scott 2013). These struggles, fought on many fronts, including in the
courts, through legislative means, in the streets and on the land, are claiming victories.
The most recent being the cancellation of the Enbridge pipeline after the courts ruled that
the government failed in upholding its constitutional duty to consult First Nations who
would be affected by the pipeline.


Considerable geo-political stakes and multi-billion dollar investments are at play here, as
pipeline infrastructure is key to Canadian Government and industry plans to unlock the
vast energy resources in the Alberta tar sands and the fracking fields in North Eastern

                                                                                             14
British Columbia (BC) and deliver them to global markets through ports in Kitimat and
Prince Rupert on BC’s West coast. This is part of plans on the part of the province of BC
to become a major exporter of shale gas from Hydraulic Fracturing fields in the Horn
area of British Colombia through a liquified natural gas (LNG) economic strategy
estimated to be worth some US $78 billion. On the line are billions of dollars and 19
LNG projects, including five natural gas pipelines, and three LNG facilities planned to be
in operation by 2020. These projects make up what has been termed a planned ‘energy
corridor’, designed ultimately to unlock the tar sands and allow them to be marketed
globally without first passing through the US (McCreary and Milligan 2014).


While the Enbridge oil pipeline has generated heated opposition from many of the 50
indigenous territories whose lands it would cross, opposition to “natural” gas pipelines
has generally been more muted. This may be partly because their concerns regarding the
distribution of risk has been assuaged as many communities are told that in case of a spill
the gas would simply evaporate. In contrast, the position of the Unist'ot'en camp is
counter to a NIMBY approach that transcends concerns for distributive impacts on their
territory alone (Neville and Weinthall 2016). According to them, their resistance is in
solidarity with communities in the North-East of the province where the extraction would
take place, coastal communities impacted by export terminals, as well as communities
from the tar sands, as well as other marginalized communities impacted by climate
change. Further, they see the defense of territory within a broader process of healing the
trauma of colonization for indigenous peoples within Canada and within a broader global
perspective, as described further in section 5. This positioning and their complete
opposition to all pipelines - existing, proposed or approved to expand - means the camp
has wide support, and has become a symbol against extractivism (Acosta 2013).


The camp’s presence seems to have contributed to several significant victories in terms of
discouraging investment with up to 5 of 7 proposed pipeline projects being canceled or
on hold as of October 2017. The PTP project was initially shared by EOG Resources,
Encana Corp., and majority owner Apache corp. of Houston, Texas. In 2013, EOG and
Encana sold their shares in the project to Chevron Canada, a subsidiary of Chevron

                                                                                           15
Corporation, which moved into a 50% ownership position along with Apache. In 2014,
Apache also pulled out and PTP is currently on hold as Chevron does not have a new
partner and the project does not have Asian buyers lined up. This recent withdrawal of
Apache was heralded as their victory on the Unist’ot’en website, feting that all of the
original investors (Encana, EOG and now Apache) have now bailed on the project.
Several competing projects are still in the “pipeline” and trying to gain access to the
territory– foremost among these is Coastal Gaslink, a 650km natural gas pipeline that
TransCanada is building connected to the CA$12 billion "LNG Canada" terminal in
Kitimat, in parntnership with Shell, PetroChina, Korea Gas and Mitsubishi.


4.2 Reimagined Free Prior and Informed Consent


The checkpoint in the Unist'ot'en camp is controlled via a wooden bridge bridge across
the Wedzin Kwah (Morice River), 66 kilometers up a logging road from Houston, British
Columbia. This river serves as a border between Canada and the traditional territory of
the Unist’ot’en. The blockade is marked by a large, painted-plywood sign that reads
“STOP. No access without prior consent”.


To cross the bridge and enter the camp, every person who enters must go through a
“Reimagined Free Prior and Informed Consent (RFPIC)” protocol that has been
established by the Unist'ot'en camp collective. According to the Unistot'en website “In
ancient times and even today… in community resistance building gatherings, there exists
Protocols where visiting peoples have shown who they are in relation to asking
permission to enter the Traditional Lands from the Traditional Chiefs and Matriarchs of
the hosting lands.” (Unist’ot’en ND)


The protocol entails five questions that are sent to visitors when they give advance notice
of their arrival.


1. Who are you?

2. Where are you from?

                                                                                          16
3. What is your purpose in coming here?

4. Do you work for Industry or Government that is destroying our lands.

5. How will your visit benefit the Unist’ot’en people?

According to the camp members, the RFPIC should be seen as an act of reclamation of
the FPIC process that has been “taken... strangle hold by the Corporations, NGO’s,
Governments and other Colonial Bodies” (Unist’ot’en ND). This is because FPIC is
increasingly used as a mechanism to facilitate and legitimate development projects
“where the ‘C’ in FPIC is increasingly redefined as ‘consultation’, precisely because the
principle of consent, if taken seriously, does imply the right to say ‘no’ and the power to
veto.” (Franco 2014) Counter to this appropriation, the Unist'ot'en claim that it is not a
new process but based on Traditional Laws that were asserted via protocols like this on
the lands for thousands of years.

        The Wet’suwet’en also had to present themselves as such when
        travelling to neighbouring peoples’ lands to conduct trade,
        protocols, build and maintain peace, assist with allies’ battles,
        and attain resources or trade work. Visiting nations would be
        required to dance their stories to show to the host nations that
        they truly are who they say they are (as the dance would have
        been seen through historical trade relations). (Unist’ot’en ND)


In this way, the RFPIC is a living breathing (re)assertion of the Traditional Laws of the
Wet’suwet’en. According to their website (Unist’ot’en ND); “Free Prior and Informed
Consent is not gone, lost or eroded. It has been asleep. The knowledge of conducting
them is still active. It must be asserted by the Indigenous Peoples’ of these lands. It is not
a mere document at the UN office awaiting to be implemented by statism. It is living
breathing protocols that must be asserted by peoples who live off the land, connecting to
the spirit of the ancestors and upholding Natural Laws.”


The RFPIC protocol is part of a long history of occupation through physical means,
through the use of checkpoints and controls, which has been a feature of cultural norms

                                                                                             17
and values for First Nations in Canada for a long time (Borrows 2005). The checkpoint or
blockade is a spatial tactic of direct action resistance, that is both instrumental as well as
symbolic. Instrumentally, “The blockade is … used to regulate movement where
movement itself is in dispute. Blockade is frequently seen as a means of physically
halting “the massive and unsustainable out-movement of capital and commodities from
traditional territories” (Blomley 1996, 14). Blockades are particularly effective in this
regard in Canada (Wilkes et al 2010) due to the particular geography of colonization in
Canada, whereby its low-density population and rugged terrain mean that pockets of
unprocessed resources such as timber or metals are hauled out long distances over few
transport connections (Blomley 1996). First Nations territories maintain privileged
access to these arteries of economic flows and exercise incredible leverage to put at risk
the “critical infrastructure” that transports natural resources and manufactured goods
from mines, oil fields, hydro-electric facilities and factories to international markets
(Pasternak 2013). The assertion of territorial control that disrupt capitalist extractivist
activities should also be seen as a struggle against the extractivist model itself.


Blomley (p.14) argues, that blocking the flow of resources is what invests the blockade
with its tremendous strategic power and that the blockade also holds a symbolic effect “to
the extent that it marks out two spaces... (mapping) out a boundary and, in so doing,
distinguishes an "Indian" space from a "Euro-Canadian" space.” This demarcation is an
act of defiance, yet beyond the disruption of the flows of capitalism and the denial of the
movement of resources out of the territory, the blockade can (temporarily in most cases
but in some cases for extended periods) create a space for the control and practice of
indigenous economic and political authority in the face of the cultural and economic
dislocation forced upon them. In the case of the Unist'ot'en it has enabled the creation of a
'safe haven' (Anguelovski 2013) where they may enact their shared aspirations and
identity, and assert their sovereignty over their lands.


The process of RFPIC as enacted in the camp should also be considered what Kennedy
(2002), a legal scholar critical of rights-based approaches, has described as the disruption
of the oppressive exercise of legal power through engaging in a series of small scale, ad

                                                                                              18
hoc transgressive performances, in an attempt to subvert or dismantle existing social
structures (Kennedy 2002). This form of “tactical guerrilla warfare” at the same time
opens pathways to indigenous affirmation and “self-recognition”. It forecloses the
continual expansion of state authority to designate specifically bounded forms of
Indigeneity, opening up new “indigenous ways of becoming”.


Moreover, the assertion of unilateral sovereignty that the RFPIC entails redraws the
frames of representation – in this case shifting the “who” in the case of who is the
sovereign who is granting recognition/access to the territory. By establishing consensual
relations on their own terms, the RFPIC stakes out a space for political sovereignty
defined by their own legal interpretations and authority. This process of assertion of
sovereignty thus offers a more transformative remedy to the marginalization of
indigenous peoples and perspectives than the participatory parity offered by Fraser. We
return to this in the discussion.


Finally, the RFPIC questions the ontology of what consent is and posits it as a process
that each community must construct. In this way, they address the procedural questions
of justice - what consent is and what it means and the need for the community itself to
define consent.


            4.3 Delgamuukw and the Legal approach


We are not interested in asserting aboriginal rights. We are here to discuss territory and
authority. When this case ends and the package has been unwrapped, it will have to be
our ownership and our jurisdiction under our law that is on the table.


– Delgam Uukw


The resistance of the Unist'ot'en needs to be seen within a long history of creative
resistance of the Wet'suwet'en against colonialism. Along with the Gitxsan First Nation
they blockaded logging in their traditional territory in the late 1980s, an action which

                                                                                           19
culminated in the groundbreaking Delgamuukw court case whereby in 1984, the Gitksan-
Wet'suwet'en went to Court to assert their sovereignty, legal jurisdiction and aboriginal
rights over some 58,000 square kilometres of their territory in British Colombia (Borrows
1999).


In Delgamuukw, the Gitxsan and Wetsuwet’en demanded recognition of their
unextinguished jurisdiction over the land. This claim was based on the fact that they had
never signed any land treaties with the governments of Canada and therefore that they
had never ceded title to their traditional territories as per the Royal Proclamation of
17634. In the absence of a ratified treaty and having never been conquered in war, the
Gitxsan and Wetsuwet’en thus retained title and jurisdiction over their land, according to
Canadian law.

Begun in 1984, the case first went before the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1987
(Delgamuukw: SCBC), where it was dismissed by Chief Justice Allan McEachern in
1991. The ruling was then appealed in the British Columbia Court of Appeal
(Delgamuukw: BCCA) and eventually went to the Supreme Court of Canada
(Delgamuukw: SCR). The final decision was handed down by Supreme Court Chief
Justice Antonio Lamer in 1997 and is considered a landmark ruling for Indigenous land
claims. Despite its very qualified affirmation and diverging views on what was
accomplished (Borrows 1999, Pasternak 2014, Napoleon 2005), it established that the
Tribe’s territorial sovereignty, pending proof of surrender, by treaty, is a legitimate and
outstanding constitutional question that still remains to be resolved by the court.

Perhaps the most significant outcome of the case was that after initial objections, the
Gitksan and Wet'suwet'en were able to use their oral histories as principal evidence in the
case. In order to demonstrate their “long-time use, occupation, possession and
administration” of the contested land, they relied on “tremendous quantities of intensely
detailed evidence of their languages, genealogies, customs and oral histories,” which



4 The force and legitimacy of the Royal Proclamation had just recently been re-affirmed by its incorporation into section 35 the
Canadian constitution in 1982.




                                                                                                                                   20
demonstrated their deep and enduring social, cultural and historical connections to their
territory (Daly 2007; Vermeylen 2013).

In the case of the Wet’suwet’en, the oral history is transmitted through the “Kungax”, a
spiritual song or dance or performance where the “recital[s] of the most important laws,
history, traditions and traditional territory of a House...is repeated, performed and
authenticated at important feasts.” In the case of the Gitksan, it is through the adaawk. It
was in the feast hall where for millennia they would tell and retell their stories, pass on
important histories, songs, crests, lands, ranks, and properties from one generation to the
next, and identify their territories to remind themselves of the sacred connection that they
have with their lands. (Napoleon 2013, Borrows 1999)


Richard Overstall (2004) explains how in the case of the Gitsxan, these histories serve as
an embedded law that evolved as the result of people observing the consequences of their
behaviour over time. Behaviour that was disrespectful of spirits, animals, and the others,
and the consequences of it were recorded in adaawk, especially if the behaviour alters a
lineage’s relationship with its territory. The adaawk thus served as legal precedents to
inform later conduct.


The plaintiffs argued that understanding the Gitxsan and Wetsuwet’en argument for
jurisdiction requires an understanding of their cultures’ views of the world through these
oral histories. While property does exist in Gitxsan and Wetsuwet’en culture, it is
expressed in terms that may be lost in translation for an observer not intimate with the
territory. These histories lay out a series of relationships with the territory, rather that one
of simple ownership as understood by Western property rights. Aboriginal property rights
concern use, not exploitation or extraction (Mills 2010). As she explains: “The
Witsuwit’en believe that people may kill the animals as long as they treat them with
respect. If they do not, the animals will not reincarnate or allow people to take them
(Mills; 1994; 157).” Laws laid down in the Kungax and the Adaawk also record when
houses can pick berries, fish, among others. (Morden 2015)


By creating a space within the court-room where indigenous narratives were able to gain

                                                                                              21
equal legitimacy to settler narratives, through the use of their traditional spellings, regalia
and songs, the Delgamuukw trial served to deconstruct the courtroom in a performative
way, recreating and redraw the boundaries of the colonial system that is the court-room
(Napoleon 2013, Borrows 1999). In this way, the Delgamuukw trial served as a
transformative vehicle for cultural politics and opened up a space for decolonizing
practices (Mills 1994). At the same time, it also revealed some of the limitations of the
formal justice system as regards the recognition of indigenous sovereignty as well as the
recognition of a relational ontology with nature as the next section argues.


5. Discussion - Unsettling environmental justice


This paper aims to contribute to a disturbance of Western ontologies and epistemologies
of Environmental Justice with the aim of charting more emancipatory futures. While the
theories of EJ proposed by Schlosberg and Fraser have made tremendous contributions
towards a more pluralist understanding of justice; such frameworks in their attempt to be
inclusive and universal can also lead to foreclosing other understandings of what justice
is, who the subjects of justice should be and how it should be delivered.


A decolonial analysis informed by the two moments of Wet’sewet’ten history explored
here suggest limits and adaptations to the trivalent framework based on recognition,
participation and distribution. I propose three pillars of a de-colonial environmental
justice. I argue that rather than simply participation, justice must include self-governing
authority; that rather than distribution (of nature), environmental justice calls for breaking
down the dualism between humans and nature, and beyond recognition, what is needed is
epistemic justice and self-affirmation. I question the capacity of the state and legal
framework for accommodating such a decolonial and transformative environmental
justice and instead propose that direct action, and assertion of responsibility and care may
serve as more effective tools of resistance.


These insights are not only relevant for an environmental justice that takes decolonization
and the claims of indigenous peoples seriously but can also contribute towards a more

                                                                                             22
radical and potentially emancipatory environmental justice that can inform struggles, help
hone tools of resistance and transformatively rethink human-nature relationships.


5.1 Beyond Participation --- Self-governing authority


The standard narrative in EJ is that justice requires fair and meaningful participation by
those affected. For Fraser (2008) this entails the need for “participatory parity” – which
entails inclusion of all “subjects of justice” understood as those jointly subjected to a
structure of governance, which sets the ground rules that govern their interaction. (Fraser
2008; 65).


Participatory parity therefore primarily concerns itself with how to build inclusion within
existing governance structures. Fraser’s theory contains important elements of reflexive
openness which allows discussion around who the subjects of justice are in each context.
However the framework is still rooted in Western thought and experience and is designed
to deal primarily with claims of exclusion - those where the denial of participation is the
main complaint. It is a less appropriate fit for the settler-colonial context, whereby the
problem is precisely that indigenous peoples have to address their claims within a
sovereignty they do not recognize. Rather than participation, what they are seeking is
political and social exemption. They are not seeking participation but recognition of their
sovereignty and their self-governing authority. Westra (1999) thus differentiates between
black communities in the US who demanded an end to segregation as a result of being
forcibly excluded from society – to be treated as equals – and aboriginal peoples in
Canada who have been forcibly included and assimilated into society through
discriminatory laws. In this case, she argues, granting rights is not only insufficient, but
simply wrong.


The limits to participatory parity are well demonstrated by the Delgamuukw case where
the state framework was unable to provide a mechanism for resolving the demand for
indigenous self-determination. As Coulthard (2014: 36) argues, the settler state does not
constitute a legitimate framework within which indigenous peoples may be more justly

                                                                                               23
included. Instead, the Delgamuukw case brought into question the court’s very authority.
Borrows (1999) refers to this as “Sovereignty's Alchemy”, asking “What alchemy
transmutes the basis of Aboriginal possession into the golden bedrock of Crown title?”
(p. 558), referring to the fact that the underlying injustice is the assumption of the
sovereign power as the foundation of the legal order itself (Muldoon 2015). As
Coulthard (2014; 36) argues; participation within the Canadian legal system leaves intact
two primary features of colonial domination that indigenous assertions of nationhood call
into question: the legitimacy of the settler state's claim to sovereignty over their territories
and the normative status of the state-form as an appropriate mode of governance on the
other.


Instead of participation and inclusion, justice for occupied and indigenous peoples calls
for interrogating the mapping of political space and inclusion within the frame of the
territorial state itself. The terms of participation, and the subjects of justice are mis-
framed. This implies the need to decolonize law and to deconstruct the state’s grounds to
inaugurate law on lands acquired through colonial settlement (Pasternak 2014). It also
calls for decolonizing participatory parity, which entails reframing and questioning the
authority of the state itself as the governance framework and looking beyond standard
liberal frames of justice to acknowledge that the existing international system of nation-
states cannot meet indigenous demands for self-determination, and that a commitment to
justice for indigenous peoples may entail calling those state-systems into question
(Young 2000). Because the state is often the key actor pushing extractive projects,
decentering the state and envisioning governance beyond its confines is an important
contribution from indigenous thought that can productively unsettle EJ.


5.2 Beyond Distribution --- Destabilization of the human / nature dualism

Environmental justice from the outset was concerned with the distribution of
environmental resources and burdens. This perspective relies on a conception of nature as
a passive object that can be more justly and equitatively distributed among human
populations through different property rights, allocations, etc. Such a perspective on
distribution is incompatible with indigenous conceptions of nature and on human-

                                                                                             24
ecological relationships that call into question the view of the environment as a
commodity that can be owned or traded.



The Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan cosmology views humans as being fundamentally
interconnected with their ecology. The plaintiffs, Gisday Wa and Delgam Uukw, describe
in their opening address a view that understands the world to be a differentiated unity, of
which humans are only one part. There is no strict human/ nature dualism in this view
(Wa and Uukw 1992). They wrote: “The Western world-view sees the essential and
primary interactions as being those between human beings. To the Gitksan and
Wet’suwet’en, human beings are part of an interacting continuum, which includes
animals and spirits. Animals and fish are viewed as members of societies, which have
intelligence and power, and can influence the course of events in terms of their
interrelationship with human beings.”



This relational perspective on nature sees human and non-human living beings as well as
inanimate objects, within a matrix of relations, “backward and forward in time, laterally
in the present” (Kneen 2015, 33). A relational ontology, summed up by the indigenous
prayer phrase “All my relations” restores agency and subjectivity to nature. In indigenous
legal tradition it is often expressed as “natural law”: laws that are in keeping with the
laws of the natural world (Westra 2012). According to natural law, relationships with
nature are what define one’s responsibilities to them. Thus instead of distribution of
nature, the emphasis is on the mutual relations based on reciprocity and care.


Such an understanding of nature is extremely difficult to integrate into Western legal
institutions for delivering environmental justice. The natural law of indigenous legal
tradition, as well as Western law, are both based on a worldview and an understanding of
how humans are (e.g., individual, competitive, communal, etc.) and how they relate to the
larger world, as well as to non-human life forms (Napoleon 2013). The testimony of
Delga Uukw and Nisgay Wa Uukw in the Delgamuukw case aimed to unsettle the
Western idea of ownership and jurisdiction over land and resources (Bryan 2000) and


                                                                                            25
demanded a destabilizing of the nature/culture binary that Western law is built on. This
destabilization fits closely to the deconstructive cultural politics as described by Fraser
(1995). It contributed to transforming the underlying cultural-valuational structure by
destabilising identities and our own understanding of what it means to be human.


However, the court was not able to “recognize nature and the Other” in the relational
perspective that the plaintiffs asked because the legal liberal tradition is unable to
recognize indigenous relationship to land and nature other than through its own
conceptions. This point is underlined by indigenous legal scholar Val Napoleon (2005)
who explains that “The Court was not able to hear or accept the adaawk as presented – a
legal and political institution rather than a simple cultural artefact or chronological
history record. The forms of expression, symbolism, and inter-connections between the
worlds of spirits, humans, and animals proved to be beyond the grasp of the trial judge”.


For indigenous peoples in the settler colonial context, transformative redistributive
remedies would go even further to confront the material conditions that they face within
colonialism and would challenge western notions of property and distribution altogether.
are forced to argue in courts that it is “their” land. What they cannot question within this
system is the presumed relationship between peoples and land. That is, should land be a
commodity to be controlled and owned by peoples?”


5.3 Epistemic Justice


Epistemic justice entails overcoming barriers for alternative forms of being and seeing
the world to be recognized as valid and valuable knowledge and includes the even greater
challenge of translating this into real policy and practice and social justice.


For example, relational ontologies and a destabilization and reconceptualization of the
nature-culture binary (Plumwood 2004) are increasingly finding a place in initiatives to
imbue Mother Nature with rights such as in the Bolivian and Ecuadorean constitutions.
Yet there remain considerable challenges in theory, policy and law to dissolving this

                                                                                              26
“ontological divide”5 and numerous tensions emerge in the translation of indigenous
ethics of care into legal and policy frameworks, as several authors have documented in
the case of rights of nature (Arsel 2012; Fish 2013).


The integration of indigenous philosophies into hegemonic institutions can often lead to
distortion, erasure and co-optation, a new form of epistemic extractivism and violence.
For example, Widenhorn (2014) examined the mobilization of diverse actors of the
concept of Buen Vivir, finding that the political act of translation served to transform
“buen vivir into an object of knowledge detached from the knowledge holder.” Through
this, “the inherently relational character of Andean cosmovision was lost… whereas
modern rationality was reaffirmed.” She points to the gap between concept and reality
and the tension between the need to make marginalized knowledges politically relevant,
and the danger of erasing, co-opting and distorting these knowledge systems through the
very act of doing so.


On the other hand, Valladares and Boelens (2017) explore the rights of nature discourse
as an “epistemic pact” that can serve as a tool for re-politicizing the environmental debate
by challenging the dominant mono-cultural, functionalist and extractivist notion of
nature, defined by capitalism and science.” They suggest that the political radicalism
implied by this act of intercultural translation can lead to the creation of new alliances for
territorial defense.


This leads to the question of how the recognition and participation of nature that some
scholars (Nussbaum 1997, Schlosberg 2007) have been claiming for can be done in an
epistemically just way? Can public policy “translate” concepts such as rights of nature,
indigenous self-determination, responsibility, into real justice? What are the limitations
for these claims as tools of resistance and how can epistemic justice be enacted by those
claiming it?



5
           See O’Neill (2006) for a discussion on The question of “who speaks for nature” for a discussion of the political
implications of representing nature’s interests as well as Castree’s (2003) discussion on moving towards a politics of politics of
socionatural hybridity.

                                                                                                                                     27
These questions would require more space to treat in depth, yet the case study suggests
that moving towards epistemic justice requires on one hand, the opening up of concepts
of nature and meaningful intercultural communication. The challenge for transformative
epistemic justice here is not in translating indigenous concepts into terms comprehensible
to liberal legal traditions but rather further developing through education, intercultural
communication and listening, the interpretative “hermeneutical” resources to make sense
of indigenous experience and perspectives. From here may emerge the possibility to
transcend colonial and liberal constructs and open other worlds and other relationships
with land, territory and nature.


The Unist´ot´en enactment of epistemic justice rests on questioning the knowledge
structures through which decisions are made themselves; and creating and asserting their
own processes and practices relying on their own knowledge, language and ways of
seeing and being the world. This includes both politics of refusal (Simpson 2014) as well
as healing and sharing to transform the capacity of others to hear. Most importantly
beyond discourse it involves action and lived practice.




5.4 Beyond Recognition: Rights v. Geographies of responsibility


These are not resources – these are life-forms that we have access to. Our laws are our
responsibilities. The way we harvest salmon is our living law.
- Unist'ot'en Camp


The Unist’ot’en checkpoint demonstrates a very different approach to the politics of
recognition. Instead of appealing outwards, its aim is to create a space for what Coulthard
(2015) refers to as “self-recognition” and indigenous re-affirmation. In this newly
reclaimed space, the Unist’ot’en camp members have been able to assert their own legal
understandings, and to live their concept of justice through practice, through enactment
and through antagonistic politics that disrupt the economic and social logic and
production of settler colonial power.

                                                                                             28
The Unist’ot’en camp members reject a rights-based discourse that can only be accorded
to them by what they perceive as an occupying power, and actively assert their
responsibilities to the territory and their ancestral and natural law. According to the camp
members, as warriors, they hold a sacred responsibility for all life in their territories. This
is based on the concept of stewardship, whereby the warriors are managing the land
because of their dependency on it, because of its intrinsic value as well as on behalf of the
unborn future generations. Rather than speak about “rights” to fish they refuse to let their
responsibility to the river to be diminished.



This assertion of responsibility through active presence is premised on self-actualization,
direct action and the resurgence of cultural practices through antagonistic politics.
Environmental justice has always been about resistance, about continual repolitization of
the environment, of redefining and expanding the concept of nature, and about
reconnecting to place and territory. The space created by resistance camps such as the
Unist’ot’en camp becomes a fervent space for transforming the collective imaginary and
the hermeneutical capacity of the many visitors.


6. Conclusion


This paper has drawn from the Delgamuukw case and the Unist´ot´en camp to challenge
hegemonic theories of environmental justice and propose ones that can be mobilized for
decolonization practices. Through examination of the Delgamuukw case, the possibilities
and limits to recognition through the mechanisms of the state, as previously laid out by
indigenous scholars (Muldoon 2005, Borrows 1999, Coulthard 2014) were outlined. In
this paper a proposal for a decolonizing Environmental Justice in the settler-colonial
context was put forward, based on the pillars of self-governing authority, the undoing of
the ontology of land as property, and epistemic justice.


"You may justly ask, as a white settler on stolen land, who are you to write about this? Or


                                                                                            29
to return to the fifth question of the protocol - how will my visit and this work benefit the
Unist’ot’en? As a non-indigenous researcher, can this work contribute to actual and
meaningful decolonization?


The honest and somewhat uncomfortable answer is perhaps not much or not directly.
Beyond the theoretical, this paper argues for the need for direct action and endeavors to
prompt readers to take action. Camp members say that the camp is not a blockade, but
instead a gateway to understanding truth and meaningful decolonization. This work aims
to reflect my own journey through this gateway and my personal transformation, and the
continuing unlearning and undoing of my own settler-colonial mentality. At the
Unist´ot´en camp, I became more conscious of my own accountability as a settler and
cognizant of concrete actions I could take in solidarity and support of the political goal of
decolonization. On the Wedzin Kwa with the Unist´ot´en and their supporters,
decolonization moved from the theoretical to a lived reality that appeared possible to
achieve and actionable in the present. My aim is to contribute to building this imaginary.
Decolonization calls for an abolition of property relations as we know them and a
renewal of our relationship with nature. It would be uncomfortable and unsettling, but it
is imperative. The question now is how to listen and how to learn from indigenous
struggles such as the Unist´ot´en to assert our own responsibility as indigenous and non-
indigenous allies to make it happen.


References


Acosta, A.2013. ‘Extractivism and Neoextractivism: Two sides of the same curse’, in
       Lang, M. and Mokrani, D. (eds.) Beyond Development: Alternative visions from
       Latin America, pp.      61–86, Quito: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, and
       Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.
Agyeman, J., Cole, P. Haluza-DeLay, R., O’Riley, P. 2010. Speaking for Ourselves:
       Environmental Justice in Canada. UBC Press.
Anguelovski, I. 2013. “From Environmental Trauma to Safe Haven: Place Attachment
       and Place Remaking in Three Marginalized Neighborhoods of Barcelona, Boston,

                                                                                            30
       and Havana.” City & Community 12 (3): 211–37. doi:10.1111/cico.12026.
Arsel, M., 2012. Between ‘Marx and markets’? The state, the ‘left turn’and nature in
       Ecuador. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 103(2), pp.150-163.
Blomley, N. 1996. “‘Shut the Province Down’: First Nations Blockades in British
       Columbia, 1984-1995.” BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, no. 111:
       5–35.
Borrows, J., 2005. Crown and Aboriginal occupations of land: A history & comparison.
       Ipperwash Inquiry.
Borrows, J. 1999. “Sovereignty’s Alchemy: An Analysis of Delgamuukw v. British
       Columbia.” Osgoode Hall LJ 37: 537.
Borrows, J. 2001. ‘Listening for Change: the Courts and Oral Tradition’ 39/1 Osgoode
       Hall Law Journal 1 (2001).
Bryan, B. 2000. “Property as Ontology: On Aboriginal and English Understandings of
       Ownership.” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 13: 3.
Castree, N. 2003. Environmental issues: relational ontologies and hybrid politics.
       Progress in Human Geography: an international review of geographical work in
       the social sciences and humanities, 27 (2), 203-211.
Chatterton, P. Featherstone, D. and Routledge, P. 2013. “Articulating Climate Justice in
       Copenhagen: Antagonism, the Commons, and Solidarity.” Antipode 45 (3): 602–
       20. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01025.x.
Coulthard, G. S. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of
       Recognition. University of Minnesota Press.
       http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt9qh3cv.
Daly, R. 2007. Our Box Was Full: An Ethnography for the Delgamuukw Plaintiffs. UBC
       Press.
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, (1997) 3 S.C.R. 1010
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1993), 104 D.L.R. (4th) 470 at 608 (B.C. C.A.),
       Lambert J.A.
Delgamuukv v. British Columbia (1991), 79 D.L.R. (4th) 185 at 278 (B.C. S.C.),
       McEachern C.J.
Escobar, A., 2012. Notes on the Ontology of Design. In Sawyer Seminar, Indigenous

                                                                                       31
       Cosmopolitics: Dialogues about the Reconstitution of Worlds, organized by
       Marisol de La Cadena and Mario Blaser, October (Vol. 30).
Escobar, A., 2011. Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third
       World. Princeton University Press.
Figueroa, R.M. 2005. “Bivalent Environmental Justice and the Culture of Poverty.”
       Rutgers JL & Pub. Pol’y 1: 27–43.
Fish, L., 2013. Homogenizing community, homogenizing nature: An analysis of
       conflicting rights in the rights of nature debate. Stanford Undergraduate Research
       Journal, 12, pp.6-11.
Franco, J. 2014. Reclaiming Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in the Context of
       Global Land Grabs. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.
       http://landjustice4wa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/reclaiming_fpic_0.pdf.
Fraser, N. 1995. “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in A’post-
       Socialist’age.” New Left Review, 68–68.
———. 2008. “Abnormal Justice.” Critical Inquiry 34 (3): 393–422.
———. 2010. “Who Counts? Dilemmas of Justice in a Postwestphalian World.”
       Antipode 41 (January): 281–97. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00726.x.
Fraser, N. and A. Honeth. 2003. Redistribution or Recognition: A Philosophical
       Exchange. London: Verso.
Fricker, M., 2007. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford
       University Press.Walker, G. 2009. “Beyond Distribution and Proximity:
       Exploring the Multiple Spatialities of Environmental Justice.” Antipode 41 (4):
       614–36.
Holifield, R., Porter, M. and Walker, G. 2009. “Introduction Spaces of Environmental
       Justice: Frameworks for Critical Engagement.” Antipode 41 (4): 591–612.
Keeling, A. and Sandlos, J., 2009. Environmental justice goes underground? Historical
       notes from Canada's northern mining frontier. Environmental Justice, 2(3),
       pp.117-125.
Kennedy, D. 2002. “The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies.” Left Legalism/left
       Critique 178: 216.
Kneen, B. 2015. “Disconnecting the Dots: Boundaries and Rights.” Accessed May 26.

                                                                                         32
       http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/colloqpapers/02kneen.pdf.
Kompridis, N., 2007. Struggling over the Meaning of Recognition: A Matter of Identity,
       Justice, or Freedom? European Journal of Political Theory, 6(3), pp.277-289.

Maldonado-Torres, N., 2007. On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the
      development of a concept. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), pp.240-270.
McCreary, T.A., and Milligan, R.A. 2014. “Pipelines, Permits, and Protests: Carrier
       Sekani Encounters with the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project.” Cultural
       Geographies 21 (1): 115–29.
Mignolo D. 2007. “DELINKING The Rhetoric of Modernity the Logic of Coloniality and
       the Grammar of de-Coloniality in Special Issue: Globalization and the De-
       Colonial Option.” Cultural Studies 21 (2/3): 449–514.
Mills, A.C. 2010. “Understanding the Conundrum of Rebirth Experience of the Beaver,
       Gitxsan, and Witsuwit’en.” Anthropology and Humanism 35 (2): 172–91.
       doi:10.1111/j.1548-1409.2010.01065.x.
Mills, A.C., 1994. Eagle down is our law: Witsuwit'en law, feasts, and land claims. UBC
       Press.
Morden, M. 2015. “Right and Resistance: Norms, Interests and Indigenous Direct Action
       in Canada.” Ethnopolitics 14 (3): 256–76. doi:10.1080/17449057.2014.949444.
Muldoon, P. 2008. “The Sovereign Exceptions: Colonization and the Foundation of
       Society.” Social & Legal Studies 17 (1): 59–74. doi:10.1177/0964663907086456.
Muldoon, P. 2005. “Thinking Responsibility Differently: Reconciliation and the Tragedy
       of Colonisation.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 26 (3): 237–54.
       doi:10.1080/07256860500153518.
Napoleon, V. 2005. “Delgamuukw : A Legal Straightjacket for Oral Histories?”
       Canadian Journal of Law and Society 20 (2): 123–55. doi:10.1353/jls.2006.0025.

———. 2013. “Thinking About Indigenous Legal Orders.” In Dialogues on Human
      Rights and Legal Pluralism, edited by René Provost and Colleen Sheppard, 229–
      45. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice 17. Springer
      Netherlands. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-4710-4_11.
Neimanis, A., Castleden, H. and Rainham, D. 2012. “Examining the Place of Ecological
       Integrity in Environmental Justice: A Systematic Review.” Local Environment 17

                                                                                      33
       (3): 349–67. doi:10.1080/13549839.2012.665863.
Newell, P. 2005. “Race, Class and the Global Politics of Environmental Inequality.”
       Global Environmental Politics 5 (3): 70–94.
Neville, K.J. and Weinthal, E., 2016. Scaling up site disputes: strategies to redefine
       ‘local’ in the fight against fracking. Environmental Politics, 25(4), pp.569-592.
Nussbaum, M.C. 1997. “Capabilities and Human Rights.” Fordham L. Rev. 66: 273.
O’Neill, J. 2006. Who speaks for nature? in J. Haila and C. Dyke (eds), How Nature
       Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition. Durham NC: Duke
                University Press, pp. 261–78.
Overstall, R. 2004. “Encountering the Spirit in the Land: ‘Property’ in a Kinship-based
       Legal Order” in John McLaren, ed., Despotic Dominion: Property Rights in
       British Settler Societies. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Pasternak, S. 2014. “Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism: Where Do Laws Meet?”
       Canadian Journal of Law and Society 29 (2): 145–61.
Pellow, D. N. 2009. “‘We Didn’t Get the First 500 Years Right, So Let’s Work on the
       Next 500 Years’: A Call for Transformative Analysis and Action.” Environmental
       Justice 2 (1): 3–6. doi:10.1089/env.2008.0549.
Pimentel, D., Westra, L. and Noss, R.F. eds. 2000. Ecological Integrity: Integrating
       Environment, Conservation, and Health. 2nd edition. Washington, D.C: Island
       Press.
Plumwood, V. 2004. Gender, eco-feminism and the environment.Controversies in
       environmental sociology, 43.
Porto, M. F., and Pacheco, T. 2009. “Conflitos E Injustiça Ambiental Em Saúde No
       Brasil.” Tempus Actas de Saúde Coletiva 3 (4): 26–37.

Ranco, D.J., O’Neill, C.A., Donatuto J. andHarper B.L. 2011. Environmental Justice,
      American Indians and the Cultural Dilemma: Developing Environmental
      Management for Tribal Health and Well-being. Environ. Justice, 4:221–230.

Rodríguez, I. and Inturias, M.L., 2018. Conflict transformation in indigenous peoples’
      territories: doing environmental justice with a ‘decolonial turn’. Development
      Studies Research, 5(1), pp.90-105.
Schlosberg, D. 2007. Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements and Nature.

                                                                                           34
       Oxford New York: Oxford University Press.
Schlosberg, D., and D. Carruthers. 2010. “Indigenous Struggles, Environmental Justice,
       and Community Capabilities.” Global Environmental Politics 10 (4): 12–35.
       doi:10.1162/GLEP_a_00029.
Schlosberg, D. 2013. “Theorising Environmental Justice: The Expanding Sphere of a
       Discourse.” Environmental Politics 22 (1): 37–55.
Schlosberg. 2004. “Reconceiving Environmental Justice: Global Movements and
       Political Theories.” Environmental Politics 13 (3): 517–40.
Scott, D. N. 2013. “The Networked Infrastructure of Fossil Capitalism: Implications of
       the New Pipeline Debates for Environmental Justice in Canada.” Revue Générale
       de Droit. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2271320.
Simpson, A., 2014. Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of settler states.
       Duke University Press.
Simpson, L., 2011. Dancing on our turtle's back: Stories of Nishnaabeg re-creation,
       resurgence and a new emergence. Arbeiter Ring Pub.
Sikor, T., and Newell, P. 2014. “Globalizing Environmental Justice?” Geoforum 54
       (July): 151–57. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.04.009.
“Statement by Laura Holland, Wet’suwet’en Nation at the Vancouver Rally in Support of
       the Unist’ot’en | Vancouver Media Co-Op.” 2015. Accessed June 6.
       http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/statement-laura-holland-wetuweten-nation-
       vancouver/14735.
Smith, A. 2011. Against the Law: Indigenous Feminism and the Nation-State. In Glen
       Coulthard, Jacqueline Lasky, Adam Lewis, and Vanessa Watts (Eds.). Affinities:
       A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action 5(1). Special Issue on
       Anarch@Indigenism, 56-69.
Smith, L.T., 2013. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed
       Books Ltd.
Tallbear, K. 2011 "Why Interspecies Thinking Needs Indigenous Standpoints."
       Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website.
       https://culanth.org/fieldsights/260-why-interspecies-thinking-needs-indigenous-
       standpoints.

                                                                                         35
Temper, L. 2017. ‘Globalizing environmental justice Radical and transformative
       movements past and present’, in Handbook of Environmental Justice, Ryan
       Holifield, Jay Chakraborty and Gordon Walker. Routledge. In Press.
Temper, L., del Bene, D. and Martinez-Alier, J., 2015. Mapping the frontiers and front
       lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas. Journal of Political
       Ecology, 22, pp.255-278.
Thom, B. 2014. Reframing Indigenous Territories: Private Property, Human Rights and
       Overlapping Claims. American Indian Culture and Research Journal: 2014, Vol.
       38, No. 4, pp. 3-28.
Tuck, E. and Yang, K.W., 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization:
       Indigeneity, education & society, 1(1).
Turner, D.A., 2006. This is not a peace pipe: Towards a critical indigenous philosophy.
       University of Toronto Press.
Unist’ot’en ND. https://unistotencamp.wordpress.com/free-prior-and-informed-consent-
protocol/
Urkidi, L., and Walter, M. 2011. “Dimensions of Environmental Justice in Anti-Gold
       Mining Movements in Latin America.” Geoforum 42 (6): 683–95.
       doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.06.003.
Valladares, C. and Boelens, R., 2017. Extractivism and the rights of nature:
       governmentality,‘convenient communities’ and epistemic pacts in
       Ecuador. Environmental Politics, pp.1-20.
Vermeylen, S. 2013. ‘The Nagoya Protocol and Customary Law: The Paradox of
       Narratives in the Law’, Law, Environment and Development Journal. 9/3.
Vermeylen, S. and Walker, G., 2011. Environmental justice, values, and biological
       diversity: The San and the Hoddia benefit-sharing agreement. Environmental
       inequalities beyond borders: local perspectives on global injustices. MIT Press,
       Cambridge, Mass, pp.105-128.
Wa, G., and Delgam. U. 1992. The Spirit in the Land: Statements of the Gitksan and
       Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, 1987-
       1990. Reflections.

Warner, E.A.K., 2015. Working to Protect the Seventh Generation: Indigenous Peoples

                                                                                          36
      as Agents of Change. Santa Clara J. Int'l L., 13, p.273.
Westra, L. 2012. Environmental Justice and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
       International and Domestic Legal Perspectives. Earthscan.
Whyte, K.P. 2016. “Indigenous Experience, Environmental Justice and Settler
       Colonialism.” SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2770058. Rochester, NY: Social Science
       Research Network. http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2770058.

Whyte, K.P., 2011. The recognition dimensions of environmental justice in Indian
      Country. Environmental justice, 4(4), pp.199-205.
Wilkes, R, Corrigall-Brown, C. and Myers, D.J. 2010. “Packaging Protest: Media
       Coverage of Indigenous People’s Collective Action.” Canadian Review of
       Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 47 (4): 327–57.
Young, I.M., 2011. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press.
Young, I.M., 2000. Hybrid democracy: Iroquois federalism and the postcolonial
       project. Political theory and the rights of indigenous peoples, pp.237-58




                                                                                         37