Colonial Extractions: Race and Canadian Mining in Contemporary Africa, by Paula Butler

Abstract

Reviewed by: Nathan Andrews, Queen's University, nathan.andrews@queensu.caThere is no dearth of books on Canadian foreign policy toward Africa. Some recent examples include David Black's and in the New Millennium (2015), Edward Akuffo's Canadian Foreign Policy in (2012), and Canada-Africa Relations, edited by the Centre for International Governance Innovation's president Rohinton Medhora and Yiagadeesen Samy (2013). However, missing from these discussions is an engagement with such sensitive topics as race and imperialism. With focus on particularly thriving sector of Canada's engagement with Africa, Butler's Colonial Extractions draws our attention to how race and culture inform both the negotiation and determination of who gets what, when, and how with regard to Africa's mineral resources.Butler creates disconcerting picture of as colonizer-state, contrary to the popular depictions as partner, friend, helper, or rescuer in mainstream discourses. Situating her discussion in the historical negotiations around the relationship between Indigenous and First Nations communities and the Canadian state, Butler employs both post-colonial and critical race theory to underscore the representation of Canada as not only 'white settler state' and 'racial state' but also as contemporary colonizer-nation (21-22). The objective is to link Canada's contemporary global mining involvements to the longer historical trajectory of European and Euro-American imperialism.The crux of the evidence that supports the author's claims is not provided until chapter 6, mid-way through the book. In the next three chapters, Butler examines narratives of Canadian mining professionals that view Canadians as just rock-jocks, doing good wherever are, quite sensitive people, and environmentally responsible. Combined, these discourses play a central role in the construction and maintenance of colonialist moral superiority and economic power, in the sense that [they do] not critically examine the historical and structural causes of poverty and economic inequality (202). Butler argues in the concluding chapter that these discourses, bolstered by new practices such as cross-sectoral public-private partnerships and corporate social responsibility activities, entrench exploitation in Africa's mining industry.Overall, the clear writing style makes the book accessible. The account is also both historically rich and culturally relevant. However, there are some concerns. First, the book strips of its agency by presenting an entirely gloomy picture of racialized engagements. Butler claims to write out of the recognition of her own guilt as phenotypically 'white' non-Indigenous author (5) who is implicated in the story of Canadian colonialism, and she uses we throughout the analysis. This priori disposition leads her to ignore both what is working and the internal factors contributing to the perpetuation of implicit and explicit forms of white supremacy and its implications for poverty/well-being. For instance, could elites in some African countries be involved in the continuities of imperialism and, if so, how might adjust claims about whom should hold responsible? This question basically points to the fact that Africa cannot be uncritically depicted as victim, especially given the plethora of factors and forces at work in the continent's socio-economic, cultural, and political milieu. …