Between the commodity and the gift: the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the contested temporalities of Canadian and Witsuwit'en law

Abstract

This article examines the conflicting subjectivities and space-times of Indigenous and colonial law that underpin the recent shutdown of the Canadian economy as people barricaded railways and ports in solidarity with the Witsuwit'en hereditary chiefs’ blockade against the Coastal GasLink pipeline across their territory. The article argues that this conflict between Canadian and Witsuwit'en law reflects fundamental tensions between their respective foundations in relations of the commodity and the gift. Within settler capitalist society, the value of a commodity is constructed relationally through a political economy of exchange that aims to speed transactions to maximize profits. With an ongoing drive for time-space compression, there is continual pressure in settler capitalism to develop new infrastructure that can speed the circulation of commodities. In Witsuwit'en society, the gift presents a contrasting logic of place-time extension. Rather than focusing on closing transactions to increase profits, gift giving stretches reciprocal obligations into the past and future. Contrasting these distinct conceptions of the relationship between value and time, the article argues that the Witsuwit'en struggle with Coastal GasLink should be understood as conflict between colonial temporal enclosures and a radical promise to open futures different to those engendered by the colonial present.