We Still Live Here: First Nations, Alberta Oil Sands, and Surviving Globalism

ISBN: 978-1-926476-12-4
Price: $33.00
Binding: Paperback
Date: 2016
Rights: World
Pages: 266
Size: 6” x 9”

Table of Contents

Dedication and Acknowledgements
Table of Contents

Introduction
By: Michael Hankard, PhD & John E. Charlton, DMin

1. The Journey of the Two-Legged into Black Gold
By: Issac Murdoch

2. The Alberta Tar Sands – gwatanziwag wii-di-goshi-nowaad – manno – The Choices That We Make

By: Kevin FitzMaurice, PhD

3. “Take Care of ‘the Land’ and ‘the Land’ will Take Care of You:” Relationship-Building through an Introduction to Indigenous Holistic Thought

By: Jennifer S. Dockstator, PhD & Michael D. Thrasher, LLD

4. In the Way of Progress: First Nations, Oil Sands and Traditional Healers

By: Michael Hankard, PhD

5. Borderlines: Gender and Indigenous Resistance to the Tar Sands
By: Laura Hall

6. Reflecting on Indigenous Teachings: Ecological Perspectives, Oil Sands Development and the IdleNoMore Movement

Terry Wotherspoon, PhD & John G. Hansen, PhD

7. The Sacred, the Peopled Land, and Climate Change
By: Thomas Heyd, PhD

8. Walk Alongside Us: Tar Sands Development, First Nations Communities, and Consent
By: Clement Loo, PhD

9. Holistic Social Justice: Listening to Indigenous Voices and Telling Lessons of Our Traditions, Our Ancestors and Our Futures
By: Doreen E. Martinez, PhD

10. Alberta Oil Sands and Zimbabwean Mining and Commercial Farming: A Comparative Cross Cultural Perspective on their Impact on the Natural Environment and Indigenous People’s Spirituality
By: Collis G. Machoko, DPhil

About the Authors

Michael Hankard, PhD & John E. Charlton, DMin

 Michael Hankard, PhD is Abenaki/Métis, and Assistant Professor and Chair of the Indigenous Studies Department at the University of Sudbury.

 John E. Charlton, DMin is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and academic with significant experience working with First Nation individuals and knowledge systems.

We Still Live Here: First Nations, Alberta Oil Sands, and Surviving Globalism offers an insightful, challenging, and compelling read for anyone interested in Indigenous perspectives on the environmental threats posed by resource extraction. While the particular focus is on Oil Sands development, the issues raised have national and global implications. The authors emphasize the connections between human health and the environment, critique the capitalist and neo-liberal belief that natural resources are nothing but commodities, and point to Indigenous Knowledge as both a viable alternative perspective and an antidote to the ways of thinking which have generated the environmental problems we must now face. While Indigenous people living downstream from Oil Sands production who are connected to the land may be more aware than most of the environmental and health costs of such developments, this book offers a timely reminder to all of us: we all “still live here” on planet earth, and if we destroy the soil, water, plants, animals, and air which sustain us, we have nowhere else to go.

Rachel Haliburton, PhD

Associate Professor
Dept. of Philosophy
University of Sudbury

This book offers a timely addition to the dialogue of the nature and scope of finite resource developments, in this case, the development of the tar sands and our intertwined environments. Clearly, a change in perspective on our nurturing land and waters is needed. At first contact, the growth of market ideologies and social relations dictated by forces outside of Indigenous societies became the standard in Canada. The impacts of globalization and the accommodating of transnational interests should be the concern of all Canadians. What is unique about this book is the comprehensive consideration of key areas, usually, not considered as part of this discourse: what Indigenous peoples bring to the discussion based on long familiarity of the effects of catastrophic developments on the land; of hegemonic relational ratification processes; and of what these developments bring to peoples and communities. Most Indigenous knowledge(s) offer understanding of human beings needing the waters, the animals, the plants, and the earth for life. In this broad view, responsibilities and obligations exist for life to continue. In Canada, an epoch of change in our historical relationships stands before us, the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the ruling of the Human Rights Tribunal on Aboriginal Child Welfare, the inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and other planned legislative changes point the way to a future, we can all thrive in. This book offers an envisioning of how Indigenous knowledge(s) of the land contributes multilayered textures to this discussion that we as human beings on this earth must have about our collective future and our future ancestors.

Patricia D. McGuire, (Kishebabaykwe), PhD

Assistant Professor

School of Social Work

Carleton University