Extracting Reconciliation: Indigenous Lands, (In)human Wastes, and Colonial Reckoning

Extracting Reconciliation argues that reconciliation constitutes a critical contemporary mechanism through which colonialism is seeking to ensure continuing access to Indigenous lands and resources.

Making use of two historical case studies concerned with the intersection of resource extraction, Crown/Inuit relations, and waste legacies in Nunavut, Canada, the authors illuminate the mechanisms of colonial and neoliberal governance globally that promise reconciliation while delivering the status quo. Through Indigenous and non-Indigenous anticolonial and posthuman concepts and theories, the book engages with the inhuman politics of settler colonial extractivism and explores the socio-ethical social justice dimensions, political possibilities, and environmental implications of a much more challenging and accountable reckoning between (settler) colonialism and Indigenous land rights.

This book is of interest to students and scholars in gender studies, postcolonial studies, environmental studies, Indigenous studies, and politics.

Hillary Predko (MES Queen’s) is a researcher, writer, and artist based in Ontario. Her research explores issues around the materiality of waste, climate change, and social justice. Her Masters of Environmental Studies research explored the waste politics of resource extraction in Nunavut and earned Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funding.

Myra J. Hird (DPhil Oxford) is Professor, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Queen’s National Scholar in the School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University, Canada. Professor Hird is Director of the research project Waste Flow and has published 12 books and over 80 articles and book chapters on a diversity of topics relating to waste and science studies.