Growing (with) Muskeg: Oil Sands Reclamation and Healing in Northern Alberta

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara L. Joly
Keyword(s):  
Oil Sands ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Land Reclamation ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Ecological Functions ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Boreal Peatlands ◽  
Disturbed Land ◽  
Northern Alberta

Scientists working for oil companies in the Athabasca region are developing methods by which to reclaim muskeg (boreal peatlands) on land disturbed by oil sands extraction. The Alberta government requires companies to reclaim disturbed land by achieving equivalent capability of the landscape to support an end land use. Indigenous community members instead define reclamation as establishing not only quantifiable ecological functions, but also relationships to their traditional territories. Tensions emerge as Indigenous concerns are often subsumed within bureaucratic discourses that favour scientific classification and quantification of land uses in reclaimed areas. Divergent responses to muskeg in reclamation activities are informed in part by these competing emphases on quantifiable landscapes as opposed to those that are relational and growing. This article traces this multiplicity through the examination of government and scientific literature and ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous communities in northern Alberta. Muskeg is used as an analytical tool to explore competing conceptions of land reclamation. Mistranslation of polysemantic terms like muskeg occur on an ontological level, and settler colonial relations and power imbalances between competing languages and knowledge systems proliferate in reclamation activities.

Megaloads and Mobilization

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Corrie Grosse
Keyword(s):  
Oil Sands ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Nez Perce ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Canadian Province ◽  
Creation Story ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Heavy Crude ◽  
Ways Of Life

From 2011 to 2014 fossil fuel corporations trucked tar sands processing machinery along rural Idaho highways. The machinery was bound for the world's largest deposits of tar or oil sands, a heavy crude oil substance called bitumen, located in the western Canadian province of Alberta. These loads of machinery, what became known as megaloads, encountered much resistance. Throughout Idaho and the surrounding region, a network organized opposition. Neighbors, grassroots organizations, nonprofits, and the Nez Perce and other tribes all collaborated. They held information sessions, protested, waged legal battles, monitored the loads, and blockaded highways. What oil companies hoped would be a cost-effective solution for transporting their megaloads became a David versus Goliath, Coyote versus the Monster—to reference the Nez Perce creation story—struggle to protect rural and indigenous ways of life and sovereignty, and the planet.

Coal mining-disturbed land reclamation laws

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
T. V. Galanina ◽  
M. I. Baumgarten ◽  
T. G. Koroleva
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Land Reclamation ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Soil Disturbance ◽  
Open Pit ◽  
Open Pit Mining ◽  
Disturbed Land ◽  
Critical Problems ◽  
Production Output

Large-scale mining disturbs wide areas of land. The development program for the mining industry, with an expected considerable increase in production output, aggravates the problem with even vaster territories exposed to the adverse anthropogenic impact. Recovery of mining-induced ecosystems in the mineral-extracting regions becomes the top priority objective. There are many restoration mechanisms, and they should be used in integration and be highly technologically intensive as the environmental impact is many-sided. This involves pollution of water, generation of much waste and soil disturbance which is the most typical of open pit mining. Scale disturbance of land, withdrawal of farming land, land pollution and littering are critical problems to the solved in the first place. One of the way outs is highquality reclamation. This article reviews the effective rules and regulations on reclamation. The mechanism is proposed for the legal control of disturbed land reclamation on a regional and federal level. Highly technologically intensive recovery of mining-induced landscape will be backed up by the natural environment restoration strategy proposed in the Disturbed Land Reclamation Concept.

scholarly journals Facilitating Sustainable Disaster Risk Reduction in Indigenous Communities: Reviving Indigenous Worldviews, Knowledge and Practices through Two-Way Partnering

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 855
Author(s):  
Tahir Ali ◽  
Petra Topaz Buergelt ◽  
Douglas Paton ◽  
James Arnold Smith ◽  
Elaine Lawurrpa Maypilama ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Community Members

The Sendai Framework of Action 2015–2030 calls for holistic Indigenous disaster risk reduction (DRR) research. Responding to this call, we synergized a holistic philosophical framework (comprising ecological systems theory, symbolic interactionism, and intersectionality) and social constructionist grounded theory and ethnography within a critical Indigenous research paradigm as a methodology for exploring how diverse individual and contextual factors influence DRR in a remote Indigenous community called Galiwinku, in the Northern Territory of Australia. Working together, Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers collected stories in local languages using conversations and yarning circles with 20 community members, as well as participant observations. The stories were interpreted and analysed using social constructivist grounded theory analysis techniques. The findings were dialogued with over 50 community members. The findings deeply resonated with the community members, validating the trustworthiness and relevance of the findings. The grounded theory that emerged identified two themes. First, local Indigenous knowledge and practices strengthen Indigenous people and reduce the risks posed by natural hazards. More specifically, deep reciprocal relationships with country and ecological knowledge, strong kinship relations, Elder’s wisdom and authority, women and men sharing power, and faith in a supreme power/God and Indigenous-led community organizations enable DRR. Second, colonizing practices weaken Indigenous people and increase the risks from natural hazards. Therefore, colonization, the imposition of Western culture, the government application of top-down approaches, infiltration in Indigenous governance systems, the use of fly-in/fly-out workers, scarcity of employment, restrictions on technical and higher education opportunities, and overcrowded housing that is culturally and climatically unsuitable undermine the DRR capability. Based on the findings, we propose a Community-Based DRR theory which proposes that facilitating sustainable Indigenous DRR in Australian Indigenous communities requires Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners to genuinely work together in two-directional and complementary ways.

scholarly journals "Ceremonies of Renewal"

Museum Worlds ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Peers
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Indigenous Groups

Access to heritage objects in museum collections can play an important role in healing from colonial trauma for indigenous groups by facilitating strengthened connections to heritage, to ancestors, to kin and community members in the present, and to identity. This article analyzes how touch and other forms of sensory engagement with five historic Blackfoot shirts enabled Blackfoot people to address historical traumas and to engage in ‘ceremonies of renewal’, in which knowledge, relationships, and identity are strengthened and made the basis of well-being in the present. The project, which was a museum loan and exhibition with handling sessions before the shirts were placed on displays, implies the obligation of museums to provide culturally relevant forms of access to heritage objects for indigenous communities.

Addition of Tubifex accelerates dewatering of oil sands tailings

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (12) ◽  
pp. 1025-1033 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaojuan Yang ◽  
Miguel de Lucas Pardo ◽  
Maria Ibanez ◽  
Lijun Deng ◽  
Luca Sittoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Oil Sands ◽  
Land Reclamation ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Anionic Polymer ◽  
Fine Tailings ◽  
Fluid Fine Tailings ◽  
Oil Sands Tailings ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Solids Content

Accelerating dewatering of fluid fine tailings (FFT) to facilitate land reclamation is a major challenge to the oil sands industry in Canada. A new method was tested, addition of Tubifex to FFT. Tubifex is an indigenous earthworm in Canada. The survival rate tests showed that Tubifex can survive in oil sands tailings and penetrate to 42 cm depth (maximum depth tested). Columns (5 L of FFT) were set-up with tailings alone, Tubifex treated tailings and polymer-Tubifex treated tailings. Test results showed that (a) the final mud–water interface of tailings alone was 26% higher than that of Tubifex treated tailings; (b) solids content of Tubifex treated tailings was 21% more than that of tailings alone; (c) Tubifex was capable to accelerate the dewatering process of both cationic and anionic polymer treated tailings; (d) anionic polymer was superior in facilitating long-term dewatering and its coupled effects with Tubifex were better than the cationic polymer.

scholarly journals Impact of ICT usage on indigenous peoples’ quality of life: Evidence from an Asian developing country

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Mahfuz Ashraf ◽  
Helena Grunfeld ◽  
Ali Quazi
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Information Communication Technologies ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Five Freedoms

Indigenous communities across the world have been suffering disadvantages in several domains, e.g. erosion of land rights, language and other cultural aspects, while at the same time being discriminated against when prepared to integrate into the dominant cultures. It has been argued in the literature that information communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential of contributing to addressing some of these disadvantages – both in terms of rebuilding what has been eroded and facilitating integration into non-Indigenous societies. In trying to understand how ICTs can be useful for these processes, it is important to do so from a conceptual framework that encompasses the multi-dimensionality of the issues faced by Indigenous communities. The conceptual frameworks frequently used in the ICT literature tend to focus on adoption, use and diffusion of technologies rather than how the use of ICTs affects the livelihoods of the users, which is the focus of this paper. The conceptual framework is informed by the capability approach (CA), in particular by the five freedoms identified in the seminal work of Amartya Sen (2001), “Development as Freedom” (DaF). Data were collected from a purposive sample in an Indigenous community in Bangladesh, using a qualitative method to map how ICTs had affected the lives of these community members The findings suggest that the participants perceived that ICTs had made positive contributions, particularly the benefits they gained from learning how to use computers in the domains that are relevant from the perspective of the five freedoms espoused in DaF. The findings reported in this paper are useful for policy formulation in Bangladesh. As the study is contextualised in a transitional economy setting and can therefore not be generalised, but we believe that the conceptual framework has much to offer future research designed to understand how ICTs can improve the livelihoods of Indigenous individuals and communities.

scholarly journals Using Traditional Methods for Collaborative Fieldwork in a Uranium Food Chain Study on Diné Lands in the US Southwest

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6886
Author(s):  
Christine Samuel-Nakamura
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Food Chain ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Tea Plants ◽  
Recruitment And Selection

Collaborative research between scientists and local community members is often required to collect needed study samples and inform the overall study. This is particularly true in Indigenous communities where local knowledge and practices are integral to data collection, analysis, and dissemination. This study reports on a traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) collaborative methodological approach utilized for data collection in this unique community. In collaboration with Diné (Navajo) tribal harvesters and leaders in northwestern New Mexico, participants were recruited utilizing chain-referral recruitment and selection from a preexisting cohort. The research examined the extent of metal(loid) contamination in the primary food chain in a uranium (U) mining impacted area. Key food chain items (sheep, squash, herbal tea plants), water, and livestock forage samples were collected and determined for metal(loid)s (cesium, cadmium, molybdenum, lead, thorium, U, vanadium, arsenic, and selenium). This paper reports on the five-step process employed that involved local Diné food harvesters incorporating indigenous TEK and practices with Western science-based knowledge and practices. The five steps of harvest-based monitoring are: (1) identify goal and research questions, (2) design the study according to Diné and scientific protocols, (3) determine respective collaborative roles during fieldwork, (4) implement the fieldwork, and (5) analyze and disseminate the findings. Collaborative work supported constructs of respectfulness, trust, kinship, enhanced communication, and provided better understanding of contamination by researchers, community members, and leaders. The study allowed for the collection of baseline data and realistic reassessment goal recommendations for the future.

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