Land, wind, and power in M’Chigeeng First Nation: Perceptions of Indigenous-owned community energy in the Canadian context of low-carbon transition and reconciliation
Abstract
The unique histories of Indigenous communities are routinely overlooked in the social acceptance and energy transition literatures, but attention is warranted in settler countries like Canada seeking to improve relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens. Parallel to this journey called reconciliation, Canada embarked on an energy transition with Indigenous communities taking a leading role. Prompted by the example of M’Chigeeng First Nation, sole owner, and operator of two 2 MW-wind turbines selling energy in Ontario since 2012, this thesis weaves qualitative and quantitative methods through three intersecting studies to investigate how the 2400-member community perceives their turbines. Studies 1 and 2 are a case study and result from five years of research partnership with M’Chigeeng First Nation. Study 1 unpacks 32 interviews to show that the support for the turbines contrasts with concerns about communication deficit yet is tempered by the pride resulting from owning the turbines. A survey built from interview findings, Study 2 (n=161), confirms that most members on and off-reserve share a positive attitude towards the turbines yet are dissatisfied with past and current levels of project communication, including about benefits. Study 2 also signals the importance of human-to-human and human-to-land relationships for members. Looking beyond M’Chigeeng, Study 3 shows that discourses connecting energy transition and reconciliation between 2007 and 2018 mainly originated from non-Indigenous voices, often miscasting key Indigenous concerns for autonomy. In addition to practical contributions to M’Chigeeng First Nation in the form of a report and an animated video summarizing the findings, this work enriches the Eurocentric literatures on social acceptance and energy transition with insights from Indigenous political ecology and attention to iii restorative justice. I argue that failure to attend to colonial legacies in this energy transition bears the risk of reproducing the socio-economic inequalities of the fossil fuel era in a different arrangement of carbon molecules