In 2009, the New Brunswick provincial government provided a licence to search over a million hectares of land to Texas-based Southwestern Energy for the purposes of natural gas extraction. For years, tens of thousands of New Brunswickers signed petitions, wrote letters, demonstrated and sought legal recourse against the deal — and the threat of hydraulic fracturing it brought with it — but the province responded only with diminished regulations and increased police presence. In the spring of 2013, Elsipogtog First Nation, the largest Indigenous community in New Brunswick, became the focal point of this resistance. Emboldened to its potential to make political change, and accompanied by unexpected settler and Indigenous allies, Elsipogtog First Nation employed new tactics in the effort to expel Southwestern Energy. And after months of blockades, which resulted in the destruction of company property and numerous arrests, the protestors were finally successful in forcing the gas giant to leave the province. Written by journalist Miles Howe, who was embedded in the community from the beginning of the 2013 struggle, Debriefing Elsipogtog offers a riveting, firsthand, on-the-ground and behind-the-scenes account of this story. Through an examination of the political forces and motivations that led to one-seventh of New Brunswick being leased to the Texas-based company, the diminishment of regulatory oversight and a compromised Indigenous consultation process, Howe explores not only how people allied to build this movement but also how the state intervened to undermine resistance and willfully ignored inherent treaty rights and responsibilities. The success of this grassroots movement in turning back the fifth-largest natural gas extraction company in North America is truly a testament to the power people hold when they join together to oppose capitalist exploitation and environmental destruction.

Breaking Boundaries analyzes efforts made by communities and policy makers around the world to push beyond conventional approaches to environmental decision making to enhance public acceptance, sustainability, and the impact of those decisions in local contexts. The current political climate has generated uncertainty among citizens, industry interests, scientists, and other stakeholders, but by applying concepts from various perspectives of environmental communication and deliberative democracy, this book offers a series of lessons learned for both public officials and concerned citizens. The contributors offer a broader understanding of how individuals and groups can get involved effectively in environmental decisions through traditional formats as well as alternative approaches ranging from leadership capacity building to social media activity to civic technology.

Part of the series Key Concepts in Indigenous Studies, this book focuses on the concepts that recur in any discussion of nature, culture and society among the indigenous. This book, the second in a five-volume series, deals with the two key concepts of gender and rights of indigenous peoples from all continents of the world. With contributions from renowned scholars, activists and experts across the globe, it looks at issues of indigenous human rights, gender justice, repression, resistance, resurgence and government policies in Canada, Latin America, North America, Australia, India, Brazil, Southeast Asia and Africa. Bringing together academic insights and experiences from the ground, this unique book with its wide coverage will serve as a comprehensive guide for students, teachers and scholars of indigenous studies. It will be essential reading for those in gender studies, human rights and law, social and cultural anthropology, tribal studies, sociology and social exclusion studies, religion and theology, cultural studies, literary and postcolonial studies, Third World and Global South studies, as well as activists working with Indigenous communities.

Passionate and cogent, this could be the most important book of the year for Canadians We are complacent. We bask in the idea that Canada holds 20% of the worldÍs fresh water „ water crises face other countries, but not ours. We could not be more wrong. In Boiling Point, bestselling author and activist Maude Barlow lays bare the issues facing CanadaÍs water reserves, including long-outdated water laws, unmapped and unprotected groundwater reserves, agricultural pollution, industrial-waste dumping, boil-water advisories, and the effects of deforestation and climate change. This will be the defining issue of the coming decade, and most of us have no idea that it is on our very own doorstep. Barlow is one of the worldÍs foremost water activists and she has been on the front lines of the worldÍs water crises for the past 20 years. She has seen first-hand the scale of the water problems facing much of the world, but also many of the solutions that are being applied. In Boiling Point, she brings this wealth of experience and expertise home to craft a compelling blueprint for CanadaÍs water security.

The hidden crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada is both a national tragedy and a national shame. In this ground-breaking new volume, as part of their larger efforts to draw attention to the shockingly high rates of violence against our sisters, Jennifer Brant and D. Memee Lavell-Harvard have pulled together a variety of voices from the academic realms to the grassroots and front-lines to speak on what has been identified by both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations as a grave violation of the basic human rights of Aboriginal women and girls. Linking colonial practices with genocide, through their exploration of the current statistics, root causes and structural components of the issue, including conversations on policing, media and education, the contributing authors illustrate the resilience, strength, courage, and spirit of Indigenous women and girls as they struggle to survive in a society shaped by racism and sexism, patriarchy and misogyny. This book was created to honour our missing sisters, their families, their lives and their stories, with the hope that it will offer lessons to non-Indigenous allies and supporters so that we can all work together towards a nation that supports and promotes the safety and well-being of all First Nation, Métis and Inuit women and girls.

In the past decade Canadian history has become a hotly contested subject. Iconic figures, notably Sir John A Macdonald, are no longer unquestioned nation-builders. The narrative of two founding peoples has been set aside in favour of recognition of Indigenous nations whose lands were taken up by the incoming settlers. An authoritative and widely-respected Truth and Reconciliation Commission, together with an honoured Chief Justice of the Supreme Court have both described long-standing government policies and practices as “cultural genocide.” Historians have researched and published a wide range of new research documenting the many complex threads comprising the Canadian experience. As a leading historian of labour and social movements, Bryan Palmer has been a major contributor to this literature. In this first volume of a major new survey history of Canada, he offers a narrative which is based on the recent and often specialized research and writing of his historian colleagues. One major theme in this book is the colonial practices of the authorities as they pushed aside the original peoples of this country. While the methods varied, the result was opening up Canada’s rich resources for exploitation by the incoming European settlers. The second major theme is the role of capitalism in determining how those resources were exploited, and who would reap the enormous power and wealth that accrued. The first volume of this challenging and illuminating new survey history covers the period that concludes in the 1890s after the creation out of Britain’s northern colonies of the semi-autonomous federal Canadian state. Volume II, to be published in spring 2025, takes the narrative to the present.

Regional dynamics and federalism lie at the heart of Canadian politics. In Open Federalism Revisited, James Farney, Julie M. Simmons, and a diverse group of contributors examine the legacy of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in areas of public policy, political institutions, and cultural and economic development. This volume examines how these areas significantly affected the balance between shared rule and self-rule in Canada’s federation and how broader changes in the balance between the country’s regions affected institutional arrangements. Open Federalism Revisited engages with four questions: 1) Did the Harper government succeed in changing Canadian federalism in the way his initial promise of open federalism suggests he wanted to? 2) How big was the difference between the change Harper’s government envisioned and what it actually achieved? 3) Was the Harper government’s approach substantially different from that of previous governments? and 4) Given that Harper’s legacy is one of mostly incremental change, why was his ability to change the system so relatively minor? With attention to such topics as political culture, the role of political parties in regional integration, immigration policy, environmental policy, and health care, Open Federalism Revisited evaluates exactly how much changed under a prime minister who came into office with a clear desire to steer Canada back towards an older vision of federalism.