Abstracts
Abstract
Indigenous communities in Canada are disproportionately affected by unsafe and insecure water systems. While inadequate federal funding and regulatory gaps have been identified as key barriers to the provision of safe drinking water on reserves, much less attention has been paid to the ways in which water quality risks are defined and managed by state actors, and the consequences of these rationalities and technologies of regulation for Indigenous peoples. Renewed ethnographic attention to infrastructure has called attention to the ways in which infrastructures are critical sites through which narratives, technological assemblages, ideologies, political rationalities, aesthetics, and sensory experiences are produced, encountered, and contested. Infrastructures and their administration are also deeply biopolitical projects that facilitate discipline and control. In this article, we show how water infrastructures are closely tied to ongoing colonial processes that serve to subjugate and, at times, blame Indigenous people for insecure water quality on reserves. In doing so, we interrogate the normative practices and techniques through which the Canadian state assesses water quality risks in Indigenous communities and the associated consequences for water governance.
Keywords:
- ontologies of water,
- Indigenous water governance,
- anthropology of infrastructure,
- First Nations drinking water,
- Indigenous-state relations in Canada
Résumé
Les communautés autochtones du Canada sont touchées de manière disproportionnée par des réseaux d’approvisionnement en eau insalubres et peu sûrs. Si l’insuffisance des financements fédéraux et les lacunes réglementaires ont été identifiées comme des obstacles majeurs à l’approvisionnement en eau potable dans les réserves, on s’est beaucoup moins intéressé à la manière dont les risques liés à la qualité de l’eau sont définis et gérés par les acteurs étatiques, ainsi qu’aux conséquences de ces rationalités et technologies de régulation pour les peuples autochtones. Un regain d’intérêt ethnographique pour les infrastructures a attiré l’attention sur le fait que celles-ci sont des lieux essentiels où se produisent, se rencontrent et s’affrontent des récits, des assemblages technologiques, des idéologies, des rationalités politiques, des esthétiques et des expériences sensorielles. Les infrastructures et leur administration sont également des projets profondément biopolitiques qui facilitent la discipline et le contrôle. Dans cet article, nous montrons comment les infrastructures hydrauliques sont étroitement liées aux processus coloniaux en cours qui servent à asservir et, parfois, à blâmer les peuples autochtones pour la qualité insatisfaisante de l’eau dans les réserves. Ce faisant, nous interrogeons les pratiques et techniques normatives par lesquelles l’État canadien évalue les risques liés à la qualité de l’eau dans les communautés autochtones et les conséquences qui en découlent pour la gouvernance de l’eau.
Mots-clés :
- ontologies de l’eau,
- gouvernance autochtone de l’eau,
- anthropologie des infrastructures,
- eau potable des Premières Nations,
- relations entre les Autochtones et l’État au Canada
Appendices
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