Colonial Continuities in Closure: Indigenous Mine Labour and the Canadian state

Abstract

The benefits of employment in resource extraction figure prominently in state rationales for resource extraction. However, in Canada, the site of study, while the worker is a key figure in rationales for extraction, this same worker disappears in state attention to extractive/mine closure. The paper's focus on Indigenous mining labour is driven by a community–university research partnership with Dene communities in the Northwest Territories facing forthcoming closure of diamond mines on their land. Approaching mine closure as a juncture that can both reproduce or resist the settler extractive economy, we argue that the Canadian state responses to the labour implications of mine closure, and its lack of coherence, express the settler-colonial tension between the reproduction of the (Canadian) settler state and its requisite labour force, and the social reproduction of Indigenous communities.