Author ORCID Identifier
Dayna Nadine Scott: 0000-0003-3992-8642
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
Source Publication
Scott, D. N. (2025). Infrastructural (Dis)Entitlement: Tactics of Dispossession on the Critical Minerals Frontier. Journal of Law and Political Economy, 5(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/LP65164812 Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0m10m2r6
Keywords
extractivism; critical minerals; just transition; Indigenous resistance; settler colonialism; free-entry mining; dispossession; Indigenous dispossession; infrastructural (dis)entitlement
Abstract
In Ontario’s far north, settler state authorities and extractive firms are engaged in coordinated tactics to gain ground amid a polarization in the positions of Indigenous leadership. Alongside a surging resistance, we also witness a resigned acceptance of critical minerals mining by some First Nations. Drawing on years of community engaged research, I detail here the contemporary tactics of “infrastructural (dis)entitlement:” in this dynamic, infrastructural needs are both denied and fulfilled to differential effect. Infrastructural disentitlement is passive; it is not necessarily deliberate, nor is it politically or institutionally organized. But infrastructural entitlement is strategic and aggressive: Indigenous prosperity and inclusion are key elements of the contemporary liberal justification for critical minerals extraction. From this, a pattern emerges of places toward which resources are flowing and places out of which they are draining. The chronic lack of community-focused infrastructure in some remote First Nations—characterized as a form of “letting die”—creates an attritional force that undermines the communities’ capacity to defend their homelands, to the advantage of the settler state and extractive firms.
Repository Citation
Scott, Dayna Nadine, "Infrastructural (Dis)Entitlement: Tactics of Dispossession on the Critical Minerals Frontier" (2024). Articles & Book Chapters. 3155.
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/scholarly_works/3155
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Included in
Environmental Law Commons, Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Law and Society Commons, Natural Resources Law Commons, Oil, Gas, and Mineral Law Commons
Comments
"Copyright 2025 by the author(s). This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"