Contesting colonial beachheads: Settler colonial (in)security professionals and Indigenous peoples’ energy infrastructure

Abstract

In April 2020, the British Columbia Utilities Commission released the Final Report of its Indigenous Utilities Regulation Inquiry. The Inquiry was tasked with determining the regulatory environment for Indigenous utility providers across the Canadian province. We analyse the Inquiry as a colonial encounter between Indigenous nations and the settler state, arguing that technical bodies like the Commission represent a sort of security professional working to depoliticize the reproduction of settler sovereignty, highlighting the operations of non-traditional security professionals in settler colonial contexts. Through the Inquiry, security comes through providing certainty for existing energy infrastructure and institutions as ‘colonial beachheads’, legitimizing the settler colonial political-economic order. However, the Inquiry also demonstrates that such processes offer opportunities for Indigenous nations to contest that order. Indeed, Indigenous nations used the Inquiry to both contest the legitimization of settler sovereignty and accumulation, and press for the capacity to build their own infrastructure and institutions, thereby enacting their decision-making authority. We explore this tension in the context of the contemporary reconciliation discourse, finding the Inquiry’s final recommendations represent an attempt to reify settler sovereignty, while also deepening settler insecurity through the possibilities opened for greater Indigenous self-determination.