Research summary
Environmental dispossession is the process through which traditional access to the land and its resources is reduced—and it is critical that we foster conversations about it in Canada and internationally. As Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Geographies, Dr. Michelle Daigle aims to fuel these conversations.
Drawing on interviews, focus groups, archival and secondary analysis, and Indigenous methods of land- and water-based learning, Daigle is building theories of environmental dispossession. She and her research team are examining how Indigenous relational geographies are ruptured by the removal of large quantities of raw or natural materials in northern Canada. They are working to understand how resistance to environmental dispossession is activated through (re)building Indigenous connectedness between humans, land and non-human actors. They are also exploring how to overcome it by transcending the boundaries of reserve, treaty territory and geopolitical borders.