Environmental Racism in Canada

By Alejandra Padros

Case Studies on ‘Chemical Valley’ (ON) and Fort Chipewyan (AB) Environmental racism is a strategy for colonialism often mobilized by states that simultaneously pursue the growth of their economy and the genocide of particular racialized populations. In this blog I unpack the logistics of extractive industry in Fort Chipewyan (AB) and ‘Chemical Valley’ (ON) to…

Canadian Public Policy and IRSSA: Colonialism or Reconciliation?

By Alejandra Padros

The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) (2006) was articulated as a state mechanism of redress to address Canada’s history of violence towards Indigenous peoples and to serve justice to the victims of residential schools (Whyte, 2018: 282). Yet, numerous scholars of law and political science have argued that this policy’s content and implementation reveal…

How the Canadian State and Liberal Feminism Often Fail to Support Racialized Feminisms

By Alejandra Padros

The ideas of liberation, agency and emancipation are culturally-constructed. Thus, the feminist principles institutionalized by any state are politically informed. Does the Canadian State merely protect feminist ideals that represent western values or does it also recognize other schemes that honour and allow for other possibilities of feminism? Do liberal feminists deter or encourage other…

Should Canada *Own* the Arctic? On Neoliberalism and Indigenous Sovereignty

By Alejandra Padros

Blog Summary   Inuit sovereignty is disempowered by the Canadian state as their sovereignty would threaten and compromise the state’s consolidation of the Arctic and its very profitable natural resources and waterways. Historically, Inuit self-determination and traditional economies have been overshadowed by the Government of Nunavut and the federal government and, in the wake of increasingly…

Violence Against Indigenous Women in Mexico and Canada: A Comparative Study

By Alejandra Padros

Mexico and Canada- two countries unified by their general history of settler-colonialism and violence towards Indigenous peoples- house an epidemic of violence towards Indigenous women that include “rape, forced disappearance, human trafficking, and murder” as frequent manifestations of violence (Marceau et al.). In both countries, these crimes often go on with impunity and without investigation…