Political Ecologies of Resource Extraction and Indigeneity in the Americas
Organizers: Dawn Hoogeveen (University of British Columbia) and Andrea Marston (UC Berkeley)
The purpose of these paper sessions is to explore the interactions between resource extraction and indigeneity in the Americas. The focus is on both the material impacts of resource extraction on indigenous people and the construction of indigenous identities in relation to extractive projects.
Recent work in political ecology has stressed the importance of engaging with the interpenetration of nature and capitalism at the global scale. Extractive industries - including mineral, oil, and gas/hydrocarbon extraction - are frequently associated with ecological and social damage, and have long been understood as in relation to capitalist production and colonial pursuits. Whether carried out by multinational corporations, state governments, or artisanal cooperatives, they are tightly bound to global political economic processes while necessarily interacting with local interests and, at times, encountering local resistance.
Where these projects take place on indigenous territory, indigenous people are often very involved in the ensuing conflicts and/or negotiations. While opposition comes from numerous sources, indigenous people are playing increasingly prominent roles in creating, strengthening, or providing a
raison d’ętre for these spaces of activism. “The Americas” are home to both the world’s largest mining companies and some of the most widespread anti-mining activism, and we welcome papers that explore the very politics of regional studies through examining the North South, First/Third, Developed/Undeveloped binary within the region known as the Americas.
Potential paper topics include (but are not limited to):
- Integration of indigeneity into extractivist projects - in either support of or opposition to
- Indigenous subjectivities in relation to extraction projects
- North/South solidarity movements regarding resource extraction
- Theoretical engagements with indigenous ontologies and political ecology
We welcome both grounded empirical analyses and theoretical arguments, though we encourage presenters to engage with both the ideas of: i) extractivist political ecologies (focusing on North/South relations or country-specific) and ii) indigenous subjectivities.
Please send abstracts to
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