Refracting the State Through Human-Fish Relations: Fishing, Indigenous Legal Orders and Colonialism in North/Western Canada

• Main Author: Todd, Zoe
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2018
• Subjects: Arctic; Northwest Territories; Canada
• Online Access: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/30393

This piece explores how human-fish relations in a) Paulatuuq, NWT in arctic Canada and b) amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) in Treaty Six Territory act as a ‘micro-site’ where Indigenous peoples have negotiated, and continue to negotiate, concurrent and often contradictory ‘sameness and difference’ vis-à-vis the State and its ideologies about lands, waters and the more-than-human in order to assert and mobilize imperatives of reciprocity, care and tenderness towards fish as more-than-human beings. I put forth a theory of fish ‘refraction’ and dispersion, which is a process through which Indigenous peoples in Paulatuuq and amiskwaciwâskahikan bend and disperse state laws and norms through local relations to fish and waters. Exploring the ways that humans and fish alike work to navigate the complexities and paradoxes of colonialism in Alberta and the Northwest Territories in the past and present, I theorize a fishy and watery form of refraction of state laws, imperatives and colonial paradigms by Indigenous peoples in Canada. In a time of rapid fish decline across the country --which some argued is tied to the global realities of the Sixth Mass Extinction Event-- I argue for the urgency and necessity of centering human-fish relations, alongside other fleshy engagements, in contemporary and future political struggles.