Jurisdiction Back: Impact Assessment in the South of the North
Key information
- Date
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- Virtual Event
About this event
Dr Dayna Nadine Scott, Associate Professor, York University (Toronto)
In Canada, it has been dramatically demonstrated over and again that when corporate interests thrust contested projects onto Indigenous homelands - even when those projects have passed through settler impact assessment processes and received government approvals – they must still contend with Indigenous governing authority. The concept of “Jurisdiction Back” is being put forward by a collective of Indigenous and settler scholars and activists who draw on the #LandBack movement to offer a profound transformation in legal, economic, and material relations. We insist that movement towards a decolonial constitutional order can begin today with settler governments systematically restoring jurisdiction to Indigenous governing authorities. One area ripe for exploration is impact assessment.
In this presentation I will explain the state of play for Indigenous-led impact assessment in Canada, and offer the example of the Regional Assessment for the Ring of Fire, a mineral frontier in Ontario’s remote northern boreal forest. Regional Assessment is a mechanism enabled by new federal impact assessment legislation purporting to implement ‘next-generation’ techniques, but its imposition is being actively refused by some of the Anishinaabe and Anishini communities whose homelands are threatened. I propose some criteria through which we may judge the extent to which Indigenous-led impact assessment has the potential to advance the movement for Jurisdiction Back.
Biography
Dayna Scott is the York Research Chair in Environmental Law & Justice in the Green Economy. She is a Co-Director of the Environmental Justice and Sustainability Clinic at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. She is leading, with Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, a major team grant proposal in the area of indigenous jurisdiction and infrastructure.
This event will take place from 5:00 to 6:30 pm BST (UTC+1) on Zoom
Event Recording
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