At The Edge Of Canada: Indigenous Research
May 8, 2017
For the first show of the Summer Season, our guest is Dr. Sarah Wiebe, CIHR Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. We discuss Dr. Wiebe’s new book from UBC Press — Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley. –Everyday Exposure– is an incredibly important and intelligent book about the political assemblages and layers of biopower that are at work to allow for resource extraction companies to build polluting factories and plants so close to cities and reserves, specifically in Chemical Valley which is within the municipality of Sarnia and directly beside Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Dr. Wiebe ‘s work is descriptive rather than prescriptive in its theoretical approach, investigating political theories of governmentality, settler colonialism, civic/provincial/federal/international biopolitics, and the contradictory and delicate relationship between Indigenous health and sovereignty and provincial policy on resource-based economic development. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in how Chemical Valley can exist in Canada in 2017.