“The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut
After nearly eight years of formal environmental review, in July 2016, the Canadian federal government rejected the French multinational AREVA’s proposal to construct a uranium mine 80 kilometers west of Qamani’tuaq/Baker Lake, a small inland and mainly Inuit hamlet in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut...
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ftqueensuniv:oai:https://qspace.library.queensu.ca:1974/25449 2024-06-02T08:03:51+00:00 “The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut Metuzals, Jessica Environmental Studies Hird, Myra J. van Wyck, Peter C. 2018-10-30T20:10:10Z application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/1974/25449 eng eng Canadian theses http://hdl.handle.net/1974/25449 CC0 1.0 Universal Queen's University's Thesis/Dissertation Non-Exclusive License for Deposit to QSpace and Library and Archives Canada ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University Copying and Preserving Your Thesis This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Resource development conflict Uncertainty Indigenous peoples Environmental assessment thesis 2018 ftqueensuniv 2024-05-06T10:47:33Z After nearly eight years of formal environmental review, in July 2016, the Canadian federal government rejected the French multinational AREVA’s proposal to construct a uranium mine 80 kilometers west of Qamani’tuaq/Baker Lake, a small inland and mainly Inuit hamlet in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. The decision not to grant a license for resource development was based on a technical uncertainty, that is, AREVA was not able to provide a start-date for the mining project due to the depressed uranium market. Yet, as this thesis will demonstrate, this controversy underlies a far more complex and ongoing negotiation with uncertainty. In order to explore diverging engagements with uncertainty, this thesis develops the concept of sites of uncertainty, which are spaces —physical, temporal, emotional, material, discursive and so on—that are occupied by a “state of not knowing” (Cameron, 2015: 34). Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Baker Lake in November and December of 2016, this thesis will identify key sites of uncertainty where AREVA, government officials, Inuit organizations, and community residents constructed, negotiated, expressed, transformed, experienced, and responded to uncertainty. The analysis of these sites reveals diverse, dynamic, and conflicting conceptualizations of self-sufficiency, well-being, and ultimately identity, which, this thesis argues, led to muddy responses to AREVA’s proposal as well as imagined futures of Baker Lake. Moreover, this thesis explains how local residents’ calls for improvements in education are reflective of an intermeshing of Inuit and western epistemologies. While Inuit ways of knowing and being have persisted, flourished, and creatively adapted to contemporary resource development controversies, they do so largely by conforming to western norms and knowledge systems. M.E.S. Thesis Baker Lake inuit Kivalliq Nunavut Queen's University, Ontario: QSpace Nunavut Areva ENVELOPE(11.936,11.936,65.607,65.607) |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Queen's University, Ontario: QSpace |
op_collection_id |
ftqueensuniv |
language |
English |
topic |
Resource development conflict Uncertainty Indigenous peoples Environmental assessment |
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Resource development conflict Uncertainty Indigenous peoples Environmental assessment Metuzals, Jessica “The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut |
topic_facet |
Resource development conflict Uncertainty Indigenous peoples Environmental assessment |
description |
After nearly eight years of formal environmental review, in July 2016, the Canadian federal government rejected the French multinational AREVA’s proposal to construct a uranium mine 80 kilometers west of Qamani’tuaq/Baker Lake, a small inland and mainly Inuit hamlet in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut. The decision not to grant a license for resource development was based on a technical uncertainty, that is, AREVA was not able to provide a start-date for the mining project due to the depressed uranium market. Yet, as this thesis will demonstrate, this controversy underlies a far more complex and ongoing negotiation with uncertainty. In order to explore diverging engagements with uncertainty, this thesis develops the concept of sites of uncertainty, which are spaces —physical, temporal, emotional, material, discursive and so on—that are occupied by a “state of not knowing” (Cameron, 2015: 34). Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Baker Lake in November and December of 2016, this thesis will identify key sites of uncertainty where AREVA, government officials, Inuit organizations, and community residents constructed, negotiated, expressed, transformed, experienced, and responded to uncertainty. The analysis of these sites reveals diverse, dynamic, and conflicting conceptualizations of self-sufficiency, well-being, and ultimately identity, which, this thesis argues, led to muddy responses to AREVA’s proposal as well as imagined futures of Baker Lake. Moreover, this thesis explains how local residents’ calls for improvements in education are reflective of an intermeshing of Inuit and western epistemologies. While Inuit ways of knowing and being have persisted, flourished, and creatively adapted to contemporary resource development controversies, they do so largely by conforming to western norms and knowledge systems. M.E.S. |
author2 |
Environmental Studies Hird, Myra J. van Wyck, Peter C. |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Metuzals, Jessica |
author_facet |
Metuzals, Jessica |
author_sort |
Metuzals, Jessica |
title |
“The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut |
title_short |
“The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut |
title_full |
“The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut |
title_fullStr |
“The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut |
title_full_unstemmed |
“The Disease that Knowledge Must Cure”? Sites of Uncertainty and Imagined Futures of Baker Lake, Nunavut |
title_sort |
“the disease that knowledge must cure”? sites of uncertainty and imagined futures of baker lake, nunavut |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/1974/25449 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(11.936,11.936,65.607,65.607) |
geographic |
Nunavut Areva |
geographic_facet |
Nunavut Areva |
genre |
Baker Lake inuit Kivalliq Nunavut |
genre_facet |
Baker Lake inuit Kivalliq Nunavut |
op_relation |
Canadian theses http://hdl.handle.net/1974/25449 |
op_rights |
CC0 1.0 Universal Queen's University's Thesis/Dissertation Non-Exclusive License for Deposit to QSpace and Library and Archives Canada ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University Copying and Preserving Your Thesis This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ |
_version_ |
1800748462226014208 |