Tłı̨chǫ women and the environmental assessment of the NICO Project proposed by Fortune Minerals Limited

• Main Author: Kuntz, Janelle
• Other Authors: Matwychuk, Margo Lyn
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Gender; Critical gender analysis; Traditional knowledge; Environmental assessment; Tłı̨chǫ; Traditional knowledge and use study; Public hearings; Indigenous women; Northwest Territories; Ethnography; Agency; TUS; Regulatory; Mackenzie Valley
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/7514

This thesis reviews the participation of Tłı̨chǫ women in the environmental assessment (EA) of the NICO project proposed by Fortune Minerals Limited. Undertaken in 2012 in the Northwest Territories, this particular EA saw a precedential engagement between traditional knowledge and western science. Although this EA did not take a gendered approach, Tłı̨chǫ women’s stories and participation in the EA supported the Tłı̨chǫ Government’s interests throughout the review process and in the final mitigation measures. Predominate scholarship does not typically cast Indigenous women as participants in or beneficiaries of EAs and resource extraction projects. Results from this thesis support more recent scholarship that urges for an ethnographic and contextual analysis of each scenario. Ethnographic methods helped me to reveal the culturally specific, diverse and complex ways Tłı̨chǫ women participated and shared their stories in the Fortune Minerals EA. Tłı̨chǫ women’s stories, I found, were important and relevant to the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board’s assessment of the potential social and ecological impacts of the NICO project. I conclude that this EA is exemplary of Indigenous women’s agency within a regulatory process and offer suggestions for how to incorporate a gender-based analysis into future EA processes. Graduate 0733 0326 [e-mail]