Symposium on Anti-colonial Mine Reclamation, Restoration and Land Guardianship in Northern Canada and Australia

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Piper, Elizabeth F.L.

• SSHRC CG awarded 2023: Mine legacies are scattered across Canadian and Australian landscapes in the form of million-to-billion dollar public liabilities, land contamination and degradation, social disruption, and alienation of Indigenous people from their traditional lands. In the northern territories of what is now known as Canada and Australia, communities are already grappling with the cumulative impacts of both abandoned and contemporary mines. Pressure to develop new projects is increasing without addressing ongoing social and ecological harm. Ecological restoration is often characterized as a technical, scientific practice and marginalizes the social and political dimensions. Our team will assert how restoration is inextricably intertwined with issues of social and environmental justice through a two-hour symposium consisting of six presentations from representatives of Indigenous Nations, restoration practitioners and graduate students on Indigenous-led, anti-colonial mine reclamation. The symposium will showcase various strategies that northern Canadian and Australian Indigenous Nations are using to confront the colonial structures of mineral development and create opportunities for cultural resurgence through restoration. In addition to our team's symposium, all participants will attend presentations and workshops and meet with Indigenous Land Guardian programs based in Darwin to exchange Land Guardian stories and strategies as they relate to mining, land restoration and cultural resurgence. These opportunities will provide invaluable training and networking opportunities for young researchers, scientists and Indigenous Guardians working in northern communities.

• Date created

  2023-04-25

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Connection Grant
  • CG
  • SSHRC
  • Mine
  • Reclamation
  • Ecological
  • Restoration
  • Colonialism
  • Decolonization
  • Indigenous-led
  • Northern Canada
  • Northern Australia
  • Ecology
  • Anti-Colonial
  • Land
  • Guardianship
  • Resource
  • Management
  • Natural
  • Geography
  • Northern Development
  • Indigenous Peoples
  • Environment
  • Sustainability
  • Extraction
  • Northern Canada
  • Oceania
  • Canada
  • Australia
  • Yukon
  • Northwest Territories

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-y5cg-j008

• License

  ©️Piper, Elizabeth F.L. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2026.