Resilient Settler Colonialism: “Responsible Resource Development,” “Flow-Through” Financing, and the Risk Management of Indigenous Sovereignty in Canada

Abstract

This essay interrogates aspects of the recent reconfiguration of Canadian environmental resource governance in relation to Indigenous sovereignty, rights, and struggles for self-determination in the context of mining and mineral exploration. I am especially interested in the targeting of expressions of Indigenous sovereignty as threats to the “resilience” of the national economy and attempts to “manage” Indigenous sovereignty and rights through mechanisms of resource governance. I focus primarily on a set of changes made to “flow-through share” financing arrangements that allow mining firms to raise capital on the basis of tax credits for expenditures incurred in relation to engaging Indigenous rights in the mineral exploration process. I suggest that flow-through financing is a method for “risk managing” exposure to the threat of Indigenous sovereignty in the interests of mining capital and the state that produces effects of crown sovereignty. In closing, the essay considers relationships between the neoliberalization of Canadian environmental governance and settler colonialism.