Respecting water: Indigenous water governance, ontologies, and the politics of kinship on the ground.

By Nicole Wilson, and Jody Inkster

Abstract:

Indigenous peoples often view water as a living entity or a relative, to which they have a sacred responsibility. Such a perspective frequently conflicts with settler societies’ view of water as a “resource” that can be owned, managed, and exploited. Although rarely articulated explicitly, water conflicts are rooted in ontological differences between Indigenous and settler views of water. Furthermore, the unequal water governance landscape created by settler colonialism has perpetuated the suppression of Indigenous ways of conceptualizing water. This paper thus examines the “political ontology” of water by drawing on insights from the fields of critical Indigenous studies, post-humanism, and water governance. Additionally, we engage a case study of four Yukon First Nations (Carcross/Tagish, Kluane, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, and White River First Nations) in the Canadian North to examine their water ontologies through the lens of a politics of kinship including ideas about “respecting water.” We also examine the assumptions of settler-colonial water governance in the territory, shaped by modern land claims and self-government agreements. We close by discussing the implications of Indigenous water ontologies for alternate modes of governing water.

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Linking community-based monitoring to water policy: perceptions of citizen scientists.

By Tyler Carlson, and Alice Cohen

Abstract:

This paper examines the relationships between Community-Based Water Monitoring (CBM) and government-led water initiatives. Drawing on a cross-Canada survey of over one hundred organizations, we explore the reasons why communities undertake CBM, the monitoring protocols they follow, and the extent to which CBM program members feel their findings are incorporated into formal (i.e., government-led) decision-making processes. Our results indicate that despite following standardized and credible monitoring protocols, fewer than half of CBM organizations report that their data is being used to inform water policy at any level of government. Moreover, respondents report higher rates of cooperation and data-sharing between CBM organizations themselves than between CBM organizations and their respective governments. These findings are significant, because many governments continue to express support for CBM. We explore the barriers between CBM data collection and government policy, and suggest that structural barriers include lack of multi-year funding, inconsistent protocols, and poor communication. More broadly, we argue that the distinction between formal and informal programming is unclear, and that addressing known CBM challenges will rely on a change in perception: CBM cannot simply be a less expensive alternative to government-driven data collection.

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Native Water Protection Flows Through Self-Determination: Understanding Tribal Water Quality Standards and “Treatment as a State.”

By Sibyl Diver

Abstract:

For Indigenous communities, protecting traditional lands and waters is of the utmost importance. In the U.S. context, scholars have documented an unfortunate neglect of water quality on tribal lands. Treatment as a State (TAS) provisions, adopted in the 1987 amendments to the Clean Water Act, and tribal Water Quality Standards (WQSs) programs are intended to address such problems. Importantly, tribal WQSs may be more stringent than neighboring state standards, and can be used to influence pollution levels coming from upstream, off‐reservation users. Tribes can also develop WQSs that support unique tribal values, including ceremonial and cultural uses of native waters. Yet scholarly debates question whether tribal environmental self‐determination strategies can fully succeed within dominant regulatory structures. Based on a synthesis of the published literature, this article examines tribal WQSs as a case of tribal environmental self‐determination. The author discusses how U.S. tribes pursue WQSs under TAS, program outcomes, and why so few tribes have established WQSs to date. Because most scholarship was found within the legal literature, the author focuses on the legal and political outcomes that arise from tribal WQSs, and analyzes specific opportunities and constraints for program participants. The author also considers how some tribes use WQSs as a “third space” strategy—simultaneously working inside and outside of dominant government structures to advance tribal sovereignty (Bruyneel 2007). Additional research is needed to understand the diversity of tribal environmental self‐determination strategies that occur through federal regulatory frameworks and under tribal law.

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Community-Based Monitoring as the practice of Indigenous governance: A case study of Indigenous-led water quality monitoring in the Yukon River Basin.

By Nicole Wilson, Edda Mutter, Jody Inkster, and Terre Satterfield

Abstract:

Indigenous peoples are increasingly developing Community-Based Monitoring programs to protect the waters and lands within their territories in response to multiple ecological and political stressors. Furthermore, CBM tends to focus on Indigenous peoples’ role as ‘knowledge holders.’ This paper explores CBM through a governance lens by understanding CBM as a strategy for the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and jurisdiction. Research findings revealed that CBM is understood as both a method for generating data useful for decision-making and an expression of governance itself, rooted in understandings of stewardship, kinship and responsibility. Our findings also suggest that data quality and credibility, trust and legitimacy and relevance to decision contexts are key to mobilizing CBM data in relevant decision-making processes. We provide three recommendations to improve linkages between CBM programs and Indigenous governance: Indigenous governments must take a leading role in CBM programs; networked capacity between Indigenous governments can be built using a bridging organization; and CBM programs should be closely coupled with Indigenous environmental governance strategies. All research herein is collaborative and is based on our engagement with the Indigenous Observation Network – an Indigenous-led community-based water quality monitoring network involving Yukon and BC First Nations as well as Alaska Native Tribes. It is considered the largest Indigenous water quality network in the world and is coordinated by the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council and the United States Geological Survey. Results are derived from interviews with twenty samplers and ten other stakeholders with attention to ways to better inform internal and external decision-making processes.

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Shifting the Framework of Canadian Water Governance through Indigenous Research Methods: Acknowledging the Past with an Eye on the Future.

By Rachel Arsenault, Sibyl Diver, Deborah McGregor, Aaron Witham, and Carrie Bourassa

Abstract:

First Nations communities in Canada are disproportionately affected by poor water quality. As one example, many communities have been living under boil water advisories for decades, but government interventions to date have had limited impact. This paper examines the importance of using Indigenous research methodologies to address current water issues affecting First Nations. The work is part of larger project applying decolonizing methodologies to Indigenous water governance. Because Indigenous epistemologies are a central component of Indigenous research methods, our analysis begins with presenting a theoretical framework for understanding Indigenous water relations. We then consider three cases of innovative Indigenous research initiatives that demonstrate how water research and policy initiatives can adopt a more Indigenous-centered approach in practice. Cases include (1) an Indigenous Community-Based Health Research Lab that follows a two-eyed seeing philosophy (Saskatchewan); (2) water policy research that uses collective knowledge sharing frameworks to facilitate respectful, non-extractive conversations among Elders and traditional knowledge holders (Ontario); and (3) a long-term community-based research initiative on decolonizing water that is practicing reciprocal learning methodologies (British Columbia, Alberta). By establishing new water governance frameworks informed by Indigenous research methods, the authors hope to promote innovative, adaptable solutions, rooted in Indigenous epistemologies.

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Standing Up for Inherent Rights: The Role of Indigenous-led Activism in Protecting Sacred Waters and Ways of Life.

By Emma Norman

Abstract:

Time and time again, Indigenous people throughout the world are faced with the need to reassert their way of life, and to “buck” political and social systems that continually marginalize their treaty rights. In this article, I explore the role of Indigenous activism at different scales— personal, tribal, and collective—to intervene in key moments to uphold treaty rights and protect Indigenous ways of life. In defending treaty rights, Indigenous peoples have become leaders in the social and environmental justice movement, particularly in relation to climate justice and fishing rights. The article recounts three ethnographies that illustrate how access to rights is wrapped up in geopolitics and the political economy. Highlighting these acts of resilience and leadership in the face of crisis is the central work of this article. The article concludes with a call to fundamentally rethink governance mechanisms and structures, to protect ecological and human health.

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Whose input counts? Evaluating the process and outcomes of public consultation through the BC Water Act Modernization.

By Ashlee Jollymore, Kiely McFarlane, and Leila Harris

Abstract:

Public consultation has become an increasingly common form of democratic engagement. While critics have challenged the potential for public consultation to democratize policy-making due to existing power structures, few studies have undertaken a systematic evaluation of the policy outcomes of consultation. This study combines qualitative and quantitative techniques to systematically analyze participants’ responses to policy proposals, and compare those responses with resulting policies. We utilized this approach to examine the large-scale public consultation process that informed the development of British Columbia’s new Water Sustainability Act (2014). Our analysis revealed: 1) barriers to effectual engagement, particularly for First Nations; 2) statistical differences in policy preferences between industry and non-industry groups; and 3) patterns in how these preferences align with policy outcomes, suggesting uneven participant influence on policy-making. This study highlights the importance of analyzing consultation outcomes alongside process design, and the need to assess consultation’s fairness and effectiveness by examining its outcomes for different participant groups.

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Multiple ontologies of water: Politics, conflict and implications for governance.

By Julian Yates, Leila Harris, and Nicole Wilson

Abstract:

We ask what it would mean to take seriously the possibility of multiple water ontologies, and what the implications of this would be for water governance in theory and practice. We contribute to a growing body of literature that is reformulating understanding of human–water relations and refocusing on the fundamental question of what water ‘is’. Interrogating the political–ontological ‘problem space’ of water governance, we explore a series of ontological disjunctures that persist. Rather than seeking to characterize any individual ontology, we focus on the limitations of silencing diverse ontologies, and on the potential of embracing ontological plurality in water governance. Exploring these ideas in relation to examples from the Canadian province of British Columbia, we develop the notion of ontological conjunctures, which is based on networked dialogue among multiple water ontologies and which points to forms of water governance that begin to embrace such a dialogue. We highlight water as siwlkw and the processual concept of En’owkin as examples of this approach, emphasizing the significance of cross-pollinating scholarship across debates on water and multiple ontologies.

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De-colonizing water. Dispossession, water insecurity, and Indigenous claims for resources, authority, and territory.

By Juan Pablo Higaldo, Rutgerd Boelens, and Jeroen Vos

Abstract:

Set against the background of struggles for territory, livelihood, and dignified existence in Latin America’s neoliberal conjuncture, this paper examines contemporary Andean Indigenous claims for water access and control rights based on historical arguments. In the case of the Acequia Tabacundo irrigation system in the north-Ecuadorian Highlands, the rights claims deployed in peasant-Indigenous struggles are cultural and social hybrids. They are rooted in Indigenous history, but also spawned by centuries of interaction with and defense against colonial and post-colonial frames imposed by the Spanish Empire, modern Ecuadorian State structures and influences of transnational capital. Through these conflicts over Indigenous water rights, authority, and identity, this article illustrates and examines the role of Indigenous accounts of their water histories, striving to reclaim, and govern their water territories in times of booming export-flower water extraction.

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Navigating the tensions in collaborative watershed governance: Water governance and Indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada

By Rosie Simms, Leila Harris, Nadia Joe, and Karen Bakker

Abstract:

First Nations in British Columbia (BC), Canada, have historically been—and largely continue to be—excluded from colonial governments’ decision-making and management frameworks for fresh water. However, in light of recent legal and legislative changes, and also changes in water governance and policy, there is growing emphasis in scholarship and among legal, policy and advocacy communities on shifting water governance away from a centralized single authority towards an approach that is watershed-based, collaborative, and involves First Nations as central to decisionmaking processes. Drawing on community-based research, interviews with First Nations natural resource staff and community members, and document review, the paper analyzes the tensions in collaborative water governance, by identifying First Nations’ concerns within the current water governance system and exploring how a move towards collaborative watershed governance may serve to either address, or further entrench, these concerns. This paper concludes with recommendations for collaborative water governance frameworks which are specifically focused on British Columbia, but which have relevance to broader debates over Indigenous water governance. Keywords: collaborative water governance, First Nations, British Columbia, watersheds

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