At this link: Two new critiques challenge NB Power’s proposed Isthmus gas plant |
Griffin’s polemic presents a number of features that should be examined. I describe it as a polemic because it has clear biases, is written with a political agenda, and does not look like it was peer-reviewed or published in a journal, making it questionable to refer to it as an “academic paper”.
“This historiography examines the dominant narratives that naturalize fossil fuel expansion as inevitable ‘progress’ versus counter-narratives from Mi’kmaq communities, Acadian descendants, and contemporary environmental activists who expose how energy infrastructure perpetuates colonial dispossession. Through the lens of Nixon’s slow violence…”
Personally, I haven’t encountered anyone, even in NB Power, who portrays the proposed gas generator as “inevitable ‘progress'”. It has, at most, been presented as an interim measure that will replace energy that is currently generated by coal that causes far more environmental damage.
Contrasting this non-existent argument with “counter-narratives from Mi’kmaq communities, Acadian descendants…” immediately introduces Griffin’s prejudices: she’s presenting a segment of the population as more virtuous, more in tune with nature, because of their ancestry. Such ideas about race and ancestry based virtues were rightly left on the scrap heap by most people generations ago. They persist in the racism and identity politics of some academics and activists.
It’s probably true that there are better alternatives than the proposed gas generator. But by turning a discussion of the pros and cons of an electrical generator into “slow violence”, Griffin is refusing to address the real issues of how much power is needed, how it can best be provided, and how environmental damage can be minimized, instead using rhetoric, branding the other side as “violent” for opposing her, to delegitimize the other side instead of rationally addressing their propositions.
Her racial/cultural biases appear again in
“Fort Beauséjour, Fort Lawrence, Fort Gaspereaux—memorialize military fortifications while the Mi’kmaq and Acadian peoples who lived, traded, and resisted on this land are relegated to background roles in someone else’s war”
ignoring Fort Beauséjour’s museum exhibit “Revealing Chignecto: The Stories Within” that was according to Parks Canada “the result of an extensive collaboration between the Agency, the Mi’kmawey Debert Cultural Centre of the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, in Nova Scotia, and Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn Inc. in New Brunswick” and setting the pattern for Griffin’s invention an idealized past where the Mi’kmaq and Acadians are peaceful, utopian peoples who “resist” oppression, while the British are evil. Her attraction to an invented, utopian, pre-industrial, non-technical past is visible in her description of the EUB:
“The EUB hearing process itself—with its technical language, legal formality, and presumption of expertise—privileges engineering assessments, economic modelling, and utility planning over community knowledge, lived experience, or Indigenous law”
which ignores what the EUB actually is, which is easily discovered on the EUB website:
“The New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board regulates aspects of electricity and natural gas utilities as well as motor carriers, to ensure that customers receive safe and reliable service at just and reasonable rates. In addition, the Board sets weekly retail prices for petroleum products sold within the province.”
The EUB is not an open forum for unending testimony from people who think their “lived experience” is more important than how electricity actually works, even while those people insist on having a reliable, cheap source of electricity. The EUB is not a forum for all of the world’s problems and debates about centuries of history. If it became that, it would be useless.
Griffin correctly points out that sea level rise caused by fossil fuels is coming, and that the proposed gas plant will contribute to that damage. But the way she expresses this:
“…ensuring climate breakdown accelerates precisely when Mi’kmaq, Acadian, and Caucasian communities on this low-lying isthmus face catastrophic sea-level rise”
again demonstrates her racial prejudices, using the term “Caucasian” which comes from long-discredited racial theories generations ago, and far more bizarrely she makes a distinction between “Caucasian” (white) and Acadian, as though Acadians are not white because she wants to regard them as more virtuous than those she brands with the racist term “settlers”. Her racial and cultural biases appear again in
“The Tantramar Marshes—created through centuries of Acadian dyke-building”
where she misrepresents the timeline and nature of the marshes, ignoring the fact that the marshes are not an artificial creation, but existed as salt marshes for thousands of years before the Acadians modified them.
The area was colonized by the Acadians in the 1670s. The expulsion of the Acadians was 1755. The Acadians were in the area for less than a century, not the “centuries of Acadian dyke-building” in Griffin’s imaginary history. She consequently ignores the fact that for a much longer time, Yorkshire immigrants and their descendants maintained, expanded, and developed the dyke and drainage systems of the marshes. Ignoring them is another indication of Griffin’s racial and cultural prejudices. These appear again with
“But procedural fairness cannot overcome structural injustice when the process itself presumes Crown authority over unceded territory. Mi’kmaq Nations are relegated to ‘stakeholder’ status in decisions about their own homeland”
demonstrating that Griffin’s agenda is to present non-indigenous presence in Canada as illegitimate, present Canada’s government and laws as illegitimate, and that nothing except total indigenous control over everything is acceptable to her. This is fundamentally hostile to a vision of Canada based on equality and democracy, advocating instead a vision of Canada in which legitimacy is tied to race and ancestry.
She misrepresents debate as violence again with
“Canada’s constitutional framework recognizes Indigenous rights in Section 35 while simultaneously asserting Crown sovereignty—a contradiction resolved through violence”
instead of recognizing that a pluralistic, multicultural, democratic nation involves discussion, negotiation, and compromise, as well as requiring the rule of law.
Griffin continues her biases with a reference to “settler colonialism’s ongoing structure”, again demonizing some in society as illegitimate because of their race or culture. When Griffin states that
“Counter-narratives emphasize Mi’kmaq agency and resistance. When Governor Edward Cornwallis refused to recognize Mi’kmaq sovereignty in 1749, dismissing Peace and Friendship treaty obligation…”
Her own “counter-narrative” re-enforces her racial/cultural mythology of good Mi’kmaq and Acadians vs bad British, ignoring things like ( From: https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1360937048903/1544619681681 ):
“In an effort to regularise trade and assure a stable peace, British Governor Dummer sought out the region’s Aboriginal peoples and on December 15th, 1725, the two groups negotiated a “Peace and Friendship” treaty. The 1725 Treaty of Boston included the Aboriginal peoples of Maine, New Hampshire, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Under the terms of the treaty, the Aboriginal signatories agreed to “forbear All Acts of Hostility, Injuries and discords towards all the Subjects of the Crown of Great Britain and not offer the least hurt, violence, or molestation of them or any of them in their persons or Estates.” With the treaty, Governor Dummer intended to prevent conflict between British settlers and local Aboriginal peoples by establishing trade relations with them and by acquiring their consent for British colonisation in the region.
The 1725 Treaty did not establish a long lasting and stable peace in the Atlantic region. French administrators at Louisbourg continued to offer presents to those Aboriginal peoples who agreed to attack British settlements. French missionaries also gave presents to those who opposed the British. The British and groups from the Mi’kmaq, the Maliseet, and the Passamaquoddy nations concluded peace and friendship treaties with each other on over half a dozen occasions between 1725 and 1779. Nonetheless, as the struggle for settlement lands continued throughout the continent, the French continued to turn to their Aboriginal allies for support. Hostilities in the region continued until Britain and France ended their conflict in North America at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1760.”
Griffin’s polemic presents her views of history, race, and who she believes has a right to be listened to, but they don’t make a useful contribution to deciding what kind of electrical generation New Brunswick needs, where it should go, how the environment can be protected, and who should be heard. Instead, she presents a distorted history to support a vision of Canada in which race and ancestry confer special privileges, and where resentment and ancestral grievance is used to disenfranchise and delegitimize another group in society because of their racial or cultural status as, in her term, “settlers”."
