Canadian Indigenous Female Leadership and Political Agency on Climate Change

Abstract

The Canadian federal election of 2015 was a watershed moment for women’s political agency, indigenous activism and climate justice in Canada. Since 1990, skyrocketing fossil fuel extraction, especially in the Alberta tar sands, had generated escalating environmental crises on First Nations territories. Extreme weather events due to climate change were impacting communities across the country, with particular implications for women’s caring and other unpaid work. Ten years of attacks on women’s organizations and priorities by the conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper had angered female voters. In response, indigenous and settler women’s organizing on climate and environmental justice, fossil fuel extraction and voting rights was an important factor in Harper’s October 2015 defeat. Justin Trudeau, elected on promises to address climate change, indigenous rights and gender equity, now faces the challenge of delivering on both distributive and procedural climate justice. This story of extraction, climate change, weather, unequal impacts, gender and political agency in a fossil fuel-producing country in the Global North has implications for gender and climate justice globally. Canada contains within its borders many examples of environmental racism stemming from fossil fuel extraction and climate change, paralleling global injustices. The politics of addressing these inequities is key to a successfully managed energy transition away from fossil fuels. In the Canadian case at least, women’s leadership – especially indigenous women’s leadership – is emerging as crucial.