Material Approaches to Restoring Indigenous Jurisdiction
Material Approaches to Restoring Indigenous Jurisdiction
By: Haidi Wu | On May 28, 2025, First Nations representatives, progressive MPPs, and environmental advocates gathered in front of Queen’s Park to protest Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act. As a new member of the Infrastructure Beyond Extractivism (IBE) team, I was there to support our collaborators from Neskantaga First Nation.
By: Dayna Nadine Scott | The remote Indigenous communities of Ontario’s boreal north have been hovering on the edge of a new extractive frontier for more than a decade. As often is the case when extractive capital moves onto new ground, the small, remote Anishinaabe and Anishini communities across the peatlands of Treaty No. 9 have been both dreading and inviting transformative changes to their lands, lifeways, and livelihoods.
By: Saima Desai | In the far north of what’s currently known as Ontario, in an area covered by Treaty No. 9, lies the Hudson Bay Lowlands, an area roughly the size of Germany speckled with ponds, lakes, and rivers. Over thousands of years, plants growing in the waterlogged earth would die, never fully decomposing and instead becoming part of a rich, spongy layer of peat. Local First Nations call it the “breathing lands,” referring to the immense amounts of carbon that the peatlands absorb from the air. Rare and threatened plants and animals call the lowlands home: caribou, wolverine, and lake sturgeon.
What is the Ring of Fire? Read More »
By: Isaac Thornley | While the anode is mostly made from graphite, the cathode comprises a range of minerals such as lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt. The cathode contains the greatest variety of minerals, is the most valuable part of the battery, and is a major determinant in the performance of the battery—including the energy storage capacity, duration of charge, and battery lifespan.
EV Batteries 101 and the Use of Nickel Read More »
By: Isaac Thornley | In 2023, the federal and Ontario governments pledged historic subsidies to automakers—up to $13.2 billion to Volkswagen, $15 billion to Stellantis—to build EV battery plants in Canada. While the subsidies show a commitment to secure a fully domestic supply chain for EV batteries, there remain significant gaps. These include a lack of mineral refining capacity in Canada, a lack of infrastructure in mineral-rich regions (such as the Ring of Fire), and, in particular, a lack of recognition of the jurisdiction of Indigenous peoples and their capacity to provide or withhold consent.
The Biggest Gap in Ontario’s EV Battery Supply Chain: Indigenous Jurisdiction Read More »
By: Saima Desai and Isaac Thornley | The Ontario government is positioning the province as the home of a continuous supply chain for EV batteries. Their hope is that by securing Indigenous consent for mining in the North and massively subsidizing battery factories in the South, the difficult and dirty middle links of the supply chain—like extraction, transportation, and refining—will become inevitable.
NEW REPORT: Greenwashing the Ring of Fire Read More »
By: Dayna Nadine Scott | In Canada, it has been dramatically demonstrated over and over again that when corporate interests thrust contested projects onto Indigenous homelands they must still contend with Indigenous governing authority.
Jurisdiction Back: Impact Assessment in the South of the North (Presentation) Read More »