About the Project

The Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism (IBE) project is a SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant housed at York University. It is led by Dayna Nadine Scott (Osgoode/EUC, York University) and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (CIRCLE, University of Victoria), in partnership with the Yellowhead Institute, the Department of Geography and Planning at University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia.

The IBE project aims to develop an agenda for fundamentally re-making socio-technical systems for an anti-colonial and radically-just transition. It is about conceptualizing and building infrastructure that restores and revitalizes Indigenous territorial governing authority or “jurisdiction.”

 

Photograph of a power line among trees with a blue sky in the background

Restoring
Indigenous Jurisdiction

The ground-breaking 2019 Yellowhead Red Paper documents how Indigenous-led consent processes based on fulfilling responsibilities are already having the effect of restoring Indigenous jurisdiction and reclaiming Indigenous lands and waterways, foodways and lifeways. We propose to systematically document, support, expand and evaluate this work to determine which strategies and approaches have the most success.

How can remaking the material systems that sustain collective life enact Indigenous jurisdiction?

How can the “just transition” to sustainable economies be imagined and infrastructured to foreground Indigenous governance systems?

Project Overview

Three Thematic Clusters

View Expanded Project Description
01.

Foodways, Energy
& Waterways

This project cluster will contribute to a revitalization of Indigenous jurisdiction by documenting and evaluating experimental field projects for rebuilding Foodways, Energy and Water Systems. Examples:

  • Small farms, hoop houses, solar greenhouses
  • Irrigation systems that recover nutrients from wastewater
  • Solar microgrids
  • Materials economy infrastructure for hemp cultivation
  • Land-based skills infrastructure and workshops, such as centers for hide tanning, smokehouses, and processing areas for meat, berries, medicines, and fish
02.

Cables, Roads
& Rails

This cluster aims to study creative, locally designed, managed and controlled infrastructures that support connectivity and circulation between communities for the purposes of trade, travel and communications without presenting risks to the territories that sustain them. Examples:

  •  Indigenous mobility, communications and circulatory systems
  • Experimental field projects, community initiatives for connectivity and connection
  • Re-use and redesign of colonial infrastructures such as railway networks to support intentional re-industrialization, e.g. “solutionary rail”
  • Fibre optic pipelines for the circulation of Indgeinous ideas, images, and representations
03.

Land-Based Learning
& Knowledge Exchange

This cluster will develop new initiatives for land-based learning about Indigenous laws and practices for exercising jurisdiction, produce new knowledge about legal tactics and negotiating strategies for re-gaining jurisdiction over specific lands and processes of decision-making, and foster new and reinvigorated venues for knowledge exchange. Examples:

  • Indigenous law camps, land-based learning
  • Community partnerships that seek to reject colonial systems of governance in favour of “re-rooting” Indigenous governance systems
  • Legal and negotiating tactics for re- gaining jurisdiction over specific lands such as provincial parks
  • Initiatives to foster new and reinvigorated venues for knowledge exchange