Oil is Thicker Than Justice: Environmental Violence in Lubicon Lake and the Alberta Tar Sands

Event Details

• Friday, August 26, 2022
  10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  remote

The Frost Centre is pleased to announce the following upcoming MA in Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies Thesis Defence:

Student: Annie MacKillican
Title: Oil is Thicker Than Justice: Environmental Violence in Lubicon Lake and the Alberta Tar Sands
Date: Friday August 26, 2022 at 10 am EST

Examining Committee: Janet Miron (Supervisor), Lianne Leddy (External Examiner – Wilfrid Laurier University), Dawn Lavell-Harvard
Chair: Stephanie Rutherford

Please contact frostcentre@trentu.ca for connection details.

ABSTRACT

This thesis provides a comprehensive overview of the extractive industry operating out of the Alberta tar sands region to determine how environmental violence is enacted against Indigenous women, girls, and queer or Two-Spirit peoples in the Lubicon Lake Cree Nation and beyond. Through an analysis of existing literature in the field, a case study on the Lubicon Lake Nation and a policy analysis of the Calls for Justice from the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, this thesis draws links between industrialization, capitalism, the heteropatriarchy, and colonialism. Finally, this thesis offers a pathway to resurgence, through the subversion of colonial gender and sexual norms, and collective action to reclaim Indigenous territory as an alternative to state-sponsored solutions and policies.

KEYWORDS:

Lubicon Lake, tar sands, environmental violence, extractivism, Northern Alberta, National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, violence against Indigenous women, colonial heteropatriarchy, Indigenous resurgence, Land Back

Contact Info

Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies