Rebuilding Indigenous nations through constitutional development: a case study of the Métis in Canada

For the Métis Nation in Canada, self‐government remains the ‘essence of the struggle’ for which their political leader, Louis Riel, sacrificed his life in 1885. As one of Canada's founding peoples, the Métis have sought to reclaim their Indigenous right to self‐government by establishing democratic governance bodies, enhancing their economic capacity and pursuing state recognition of their rights. In addition to these efforts, the Métis have been developing a national constitution, which is anticipated to form the basis of a government to government relationship between the Métis Nation and the Canadian state. Through a case study of the Métis, this article explores the role of contemporary constitution‐building in rebuilding Indigenous nations from within and reclaiming self‐government in settler societies. We conclude that the Métis Nation's pursuit of these goals through constitutionalism will depend on its ability to build legitimacy internally amongst its citizens and externally with state decision‐makers.     

Political economy,demography and development in Australia's Northern Territory

The Canadian ‘staples thesis’ literature has documented both the risks (in the tradition of Harold Innis) and the opportunities (in the tradition of W. A. Macintosh) inherent in economies that are dependent on the export of minimally processed natural resources. The key risk is that of retarded long‐term growth as a result of a lack of diversification and over‐dependence on foreign capital and markets. This article argues that the demographic consequences of staples approaches to development also make it difficult to achieve diversification. It profiles Australia's Northern Territory as an example of a mining‐dependent (fiscal) economy that demonstrates a particular demographic profile consistent with what might be expected of a resource frontier. The article argues, however, that restrictive demographic characteristics persist (high sex ratios, high population mobility, disadvantaged position of indigenous people and remote dwellers) even though mining has become an insignificant direct employer (less than one percent of the workforce) and the services sector drives the labour market. This persistence can be linked to the Territory and federal government expectations of economic development patterns in the region and the frontier mythology created around the Northern Territory. Addressing the demographic imbalance is a critical step towards realizing ambitions for economic diversification.     

Refractions and recombinations of the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’: a personalized reflection on challenges by—and to—feminist urban geographies

This invited essay responds to requests by the Suzanne Mackenzie Memorial Lecture Nominating Committee and by the former Editor of this journal to take stock of and provide intellectual‐historical context for the major preoccupations that characterized feminist urban geography in its early years, by means of a personalized reflection in light of the author's own positioning in those debates and interventions. The thread running through the article is that of the relationship between the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’ in urban geography. The last section briefly considers new challenges that neoliberalism poses for critical feminist urban geographies.     

‘Travel in parallel with us for a while’: sensory geographies of autism

Drawing on autobiographies by authors with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), we consider how ASD authors use travel analogies and spatial metaphors to explore questions of difference in autistic sensory experience. ASD authors often appeal to the geographical imagination in an effort to communicate with ‘neuro‐typical’ others for whom autistic behaviour can seem so peculiar as to be almost alien. Blurring the boundaries between pathology and normality, ASD authors counter typically negative and/or dismissive assessments of deficiency, disability and deviance with explanations of reasonable difference in environmental response. This paper takes up the challenge of ASD authors to ‘travel in parallel’, circumventing biomedical ‘checkpoints’, if only temporarily, in order to better understand the construction and experience of autistic lifeworlds, wherein spatial and embodied coherence is challenged at every turn and ‘sensory mapping’ is a means of survival. Rather than viewing perceptual and processing challenges characteristic of ASDs as problems to be fixed, we suggest non‐autistic others might instead attempt to understand and appreciate sensory diversity in, and on, authors' own terms.     

Une histoire de résidus : à propos des facteurs généraux et locaux de croissance régionale au Canada,de 1971 à 2001

Starting from an econometric model of local employment growth, applied to Canada (1971–2001), residuals—relative to model predictions—are analyzed over time and over space, in turn allowing us to draw a distinction between general explanatory variables and factors of a more local, cyclical or accidental nature. The model's explanatory power grows over time, founded on variables such as urban size, market access and industrial structure, allowing us to conclude that local employment growth in Canada follows an increasingly geographically predictable pattern. However, an examination of the residuals reveals more localized processes. Growth volatility is most manifest in Alberta and British Columbia, home to the most erratic local economies. Emerging patterns are visible in the last period, most notably the underperformance of Northern Ontario and of non‐metropolitan communities between Windsor and Québec City, lying along the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence. The over‐performance—compared to model predictions — of small and mid‐sized towns in south‐eastern Québec can, on the other hand, be interpreted as a sign of truly local social processes, generally associated with a particularly dynamic local entrepreneurial class.     

Historical limits: narrowing possibilities in ‘Ontario's most historic town’

Place branding in heritage tourism development is presented as a strategy that opens up new possibilities for attracting investors and visitors by distilling, capturing and shaping what is distinctive about a place. This representational fix is an efficient marketing device in the sense that it represents places through widely intelligible symbols. Branding is also a limiting activity that locks places in time and class relations. While place branding has always had this dual effect, we argue that it has particularly insidious and limiting consequences for local development under current conditions of roll‐out neoliberalism. Beginning in the 1960s, several prominent residents and outsiders initiated efforts to transform the Town of Cobalt, Ontario, into a mining heritage tourism destination. In 2001, the town entered and won a contest to be named Ontario's Most Historic Town. The following year it persuaded Parks Canada to designate it as a national historic site. These two events provided renewed external validation for the efforts to brand Cobalt as a heritage site and began a new cycle of mining heritage tourism development. However, instead of breaking the dependency relationships that characterize resource regions, the current round of place branding has acted to circumscribe the range of possible economic development options.     

Building intersectoral partnerships as place‐based strategy for immigrant and refugee (re)settlement: The Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership

This paper examines the role of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership in the Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada's national capital following the federal government's 2015–2016 resettlement plan. Based on the findings of qualitative data collection—including semi‐structured interviews with representatives from community organizations, settlement agencies, and the City of Ottawa—two main arguments are advanced. First, while the current literature tends to portray the Canadian settlement sector as a passive victim in the face of neoliberal restructuring and austerity measures, this paper offers a more nuanced perspective by reflecting on the sector's ability to exert agency by developing initiatives and devising strategies that are rooted in the local context. Second, the case of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership sheds light on the significance of intersectoral networks and partnerships that extend beyond the settlement sector to build a sound approach for welcoming refugees and newcomers more generally. These findings serve to demonstrate the potential of partnerships as a place‐based settlement model that is responsive to context‐specific needs and enhances local community strengths, thus providing important lessons that can inform future immigrant and refugee (re)settlement and integration in other Canadian cities and regions.     

The social representation and reality of BSE's impact in North Central Alberta

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as ‘Mad Cow’ disease, was discovered in the late 1980s in Britain; in 1996, scientists announced a ‘probable’ link between eating BSE‐contaminated meat and a new form of Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease, a fatal human brain disease. Britain's beef industry was devastated, beef consumption dropped, export markets closed and a mass cull of older cattle was implemented. This article uses social representation theory to analyze how Canada's 2003 BSE outbreak was portrayed to Canadians in major newspapers and compares this representation with BSE's impact in two rural Alberta counties. The day Canada's BSE case was reported, the United States closed its border to Canadian cattle and beef. The event was represented as ‘devastating’ to Canada's cattle and beef industries and rural areas in general, a view that went largely unchallenged and was critical to gaining government support for the affected industries. Little evidence of economic devastation was found in the heart of Alberta's cow‐calf producing area; producers adapted to their changing economic circumstances and acquired other sources of income. But there is little doubt that the financial uncertainty associated with BSE added to stress levels among farm families.     

Québec et la géographie sociale en questions

Questioning Québec through social geography In the early 1960s, two revolutions were underway: the quiet revolution in Québec and the quantitative revolution in geography. Apparently unrelated, these episodes of change probably shared common underlying values associated with modernity. Since then, the transformations experienced in Québec have been interpreted in a multitude of ways, including geographical considerations. Research careers, mine included, have been shaped by this undertaking. All along, I have found that social geography, with the capacity it has to reinvent itself, has helped making sense of this turbulent environment. In the 1970s, exploring the structural dynamics of Canada's social space helped in figuring out the place occupied by Québec in this ensemble. Then, analyzing the historical relationships between cosmopolitan Montréal and provincial Québec City suggested that the oxymoron ‘quiet revolution’ stood for a central process in the cultural dynamics of Québec's social space, where new ideas arriving through Montréal are sifted and institutionalized by the state in Québec City. Nevertheless, Québec City is also capable of initiating progressive urban movements, as illustrated by the odyssey of the Rassemblement populaire de Québec, documented through participant observation. Such urban movements may affect the urban fabric but, as intense and creative social networks, they may affect even more their interacting members, as it seems to have been the case with regard to rapidly evolving gender relations during the last decades. All in all, after more than four decades, I keep the conviction that a practice of social geography that is open to various theories and methods is capable of producing liberating knowledge.     

From nation to population: the racialisation of ‘Métis’ in the Canadian census†

ABSTRACT. Between 1996 and 2001 the ‘Métis population’ of Canada skyrocketed from 204,000 to 292,000, an astonishing and demographically improbable increase of 43 per cent. Most puzzling about this ‘increase’ is not so much the unpersuasive explanations offered by statisticians and others but, more fundamentally, the underlying assumption that such a thing as a ‘Métis population’ exists at all. In contrast, I argue that such an idea constitutes an artifact of Canada's racial/colonial episteme in which ‘the Métis’– formerly an indigenous nation invaded and displaced in the Canadian nation‐state's westward expansion – have been reduced in public and administrative discourse to include any indigenous individual who identifies as Métis: reduced, in other words, to (part of) a race. The paper argues further that the authority of the Canadian census as a privileged forum of contemporary meaning‐making in Canadian society is such that the lack of explicit Census categories to distinguish Métis Nation allegiance further naturalises a racialised construction of Métis at the expense of an indigenously national one.     

Fringe explosions: risk and vulnerability in Canada's new in‐between urban landscape

This article argues that a new landscape of urbanization takes shape in Canadian cities. In‐between the old downtowns and the new suburbs of urban Canada, a hitherto underexposed and under‐researched mix of residential, commercial, industrial, educational, agricultural and ecologically protected areas and land uses has become the home and workplace, and increasingly also the playspace of most people in Canada. The article examines this new landscape through the lens of the specific risks and vulnerabilities experienced by its inhabitants and users. Using a propane gas explosion in Toronto in the summer of 2008 as an example, we demonstrate that the ‘in‐between city’ is a space of great complexity, which has grown haphazardly and in a contradictory fashion, where, in contrast to the archetype of inner city and suburb, no clear spatial imaginary has been guiding urban development. This leads to always uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous proximities between various and competing uses and social practices. This is nowhere as clear as it is in the splintered urban infrastructures that service this landscape or use the in‐between city's space to service other adjacent or distant purposes.     

Wissenschaftsstädte – Zur Bedeutung des Topos der ‘kreativen Stadt’ für die Wissensproduktion

Science Cities: What the Concept of the Creative City Means for Knowledge Production. – The article aims to show that the relationship of science and the city has changed since the 1970s in the context of the knowledgeable society. While cities have principally been regarded as the typical space of science, of new ideas and innovation for centuries, since the 1960s and 1970s universities, research institutes as well as industrial research institutes have relocated to the periphery of cities. There, however, these sites of knowledge have been organized in an ‘urban mode’. That means that the concept of the city as a place of science and innovation has determined the architectural, spatial, and social organization of these sites on the periphery of cities. Certain features of the city have been copied, such as social infrastructures, places of communication, restaurants, cafes etc., while others have been left out – housing, cinema, theatre etc. An ‘urban mode of knowledge production’ in the sense of a very stylized model of the city has become a tool to enhance the production of scientific and technological knowledge. – The article exemplifies this by focusing on a case study, namely of the so‐called ‘Science City’ of the Siemens Company in Munich‐Neuperlach.     

Third Wave Evangelism and the Politics of the Global in Papua New Guinea: Spiritual Warfare and the Recreation of Place in Telefolmin

Third Wave pentecostalist theology envisages a global struggle against satanic forces as ‘spiritual warfare.’ Here I examine an instance of spiritual warfare that targeted the village of Telefolip as part of a national campaign. Embracing evangelical doctrines of the dependence of ‘physical development’ on ‘spiritual development,’ villagers burned ancestral relics and purport to have found ‘uranium gas’ on the site of a former spirit house. This discovery is held to be full of promise for the future: as a valuable (if imaginary) resource in Israel's struggles, uranium gas offers villagers wealth and a means of asserting local centrality in global terms. I conclude by arguing that an understanding of the conjunction of spiritual warfare's aims with villagers' hopes for a place in the world beyond the village is crucial to analyzing the dynamics of pentecostalist world‐breaking and world‐making.     

Inter‐Indigenous development aid: markets,corporations, and biases

The Canadian government and the Meadow Lake Tribal Council sponsored a forest extraction corporation in eastern Nicaragua that restructured 16 Miskitu and Mayangna villages and transformed local human‐environment interactions. The Central American aid project demonstrated paternalistic and interventionist tendencies and exposed biases in inter‐Indigenous aid that rendered it inseparable from conventional aid. This case encourages reflection on social and ecological impacts from the marketing of collective resources, the creation of Indigenous development corporations, and the decision‐making criteria and processes driving foreign aid. The case study demonstrates how foreign aid programs targeting Indigenous Peoples may actually thwart the self‐determination that they set out to encourage. Aid agencies and business partners, who had limited knowledge of local cultures and institutions, created externally defined rules that instigated resource conflicts and undermined the authority of customary leaders without resolving poverty or uneven development.     

Mapping international flows of electronic waste

In this paper, we map the international trade in electronic waste (e‐waste). We quantify the directions and magnitude of this trade at the global scale and examine the utility of the pollution haven hypothesis for explaining the observed trade patterns. Our results demonstrate four key findings: the international trade in e‐waste is a more complex story than being one about ‘rich’ countries dumping waste in ‘poor’ countries; the trade in e‐waste is highly regionalized, with intra‐regional trade accounting for most of the total trade flows; the pollution haven hypothesis is an important, but partial, explanation of observed trade patterns; and there is a need to conceptualize the trade and traffic of e‐waste as open ended and contingent processes facilitated by situated practices of wasting and valuing that rely on geographic difference and mobility for the exchanges between the domains of waste and value to occur.     

Variabilité et fréquence des cycles de gel‐dégel dans la région de Québec, 1977–2006

Freeze‐thaw cycles are most common at the beginning or near the end of the winter season. These cycles have various effects on the ecosystems of Eastern Canada, affecting both biotic and abiotic components of temperate cold environments. Using air temperature minima and maxima from four meteorological stations close to Québec City, we determined the frequency of daily freeze‐thaw cycles for the last 30 years. The results show no significant increase in the number of freeze‐thaw cycles despite a small increase in air temperature. Polynomial curves describing the relationship between mean air temperatures and the number of freeze‐thaw cycles were calculated. Based on these equations and anticipating a climate change scenario, we projected future freeze‐thaw cycles. Assuming a 5 °C increase in mean air temperatures by 2100, we estimated that the number of days with a freeze‐thaw cycle could increase by approximately 20 days per winter. The increase in the number of such cycles will be concentrated during the coldest months of the winter (January and February).     

An exploration of Hul’qumi’num Coast Salish peoples’ attitudes towards the establishment of no‐take zones within marine protected areas in the Salish Sea,Canada

The Canadian Government has committed to establishing a national network of Marine Protected Areas. Progress in the Salish Sea (Strait of Georgia) of British Columbia has been slow. Opposition by First Nations is a factor as these protected areas have the potential to impact on Aboriginal rights. This case study with the Hul’qumi’num First Nations examines their approaches to marine conservation and their perspectives on “no‐take zones” as a component of marine conservation. The study used a variety of community engagement procedures including relationship building, hiring of a Hul’qumi’num research assistant, conducting individual interviews, focus groups, and field surveys. Interviews were conducted with 41 participants contacted because of their knowledge and interest in marine resource use. The views reported provide a rich understanding of Hul’qumi’num attitudes, but cannot be generalised to the whole population. There was widespread support for efforts to involve local First Nations communities in the development of management plans for marine resources, and also for recognition of First Nation reliance on marine resources for food, social, and ceremonial needs and for economic development opportunities. The establishment of permanent no‐take zones was met with both opposition and support. The most highly endorsed statement about no‐take zones is one of principle—that they are a violation of Aboriginal rights. However, there was also strong agreement that permanent no‐take zones would help reduce over‐fishing. The National Marine Conservation Area program is in its infancy and it remains to be seen how the “strictly protected” zone of the legislation will be interpreted in relationship to Aboriginal harvesting practices. However it is clear that successful conservation will only occur with Aboriginal consent in many areas and there needs to be greater investment in understanding Aboriginal perspectives on marine conservation.     

Syrian refugee resettlement: A case study of local response in Hamilton,Ontario

This paper examines the response by local government and stakeholders to the arrival and resettlement of Syrian newcomers in Hamilton, Ontario in 2015 and 2016—the first major wave of refugee arrivals since two significant changes in Hamilton's settlement organizational landscape. The creation of a local immigration partnership called the Hamilton Immigration Partnership Council (HIPC) is an example of place‐based policymaking within local immigration and settlement in Canada. Place‐based approaches emerged to bypass top‐down policy ineffectiveness, and the shift to empower civic participation in the local decision‐making process is seen as one solution to public policy innovations. Examination of HIPC's role in this context is thus critical to understand the challenges and learnings encountered in one place‐based setting. Our findings suggest that the lack of power (in terms of information, communication, resources, and funding) led to a missed opportunity for HIPC to lead a significant resettlement initiative. HIPC's inability to bring together key partners across the sector prior to and during the event is symptomatic of systemic barriers the Council had faced, including competing interpretations of HIPC and its role by its members. This study suggests the effectiveness of place‐based policy is not without its nuances, and iterative challenges and learnings.     

Conflict in Water Use in Victoria,Australia: Bolte's Divide

In 1964, the Premier of Victoria, Australia, Henry Bolte, announced that, in order to protect irrigation interests in the north of the state, he would prevent Melbourne from developing new water resources from the north of Victoria's Great Divide. Neither the water resource needs of Melbourne, the need for irrigation development nor the changing economic structure of the state provides a satisfactory explanation for this decision. Instead, Bolte's policy appears simply to have provided a means of improving the parliamentary position of the Victorian Liberal government. Bolte's principle has never been formally revoked and continues to influence water resource planning in the state. In order to make the most appropriate use of Victoria's limited natural resources, it is imperative that ‘Bolte's divide’ should not continue to influence future resource development and allocation.