Life against States of Emergency
Revitalizing Treaty Relations from Attawapiskat
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For six weeks in 2012-13, Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence undertook a high-profile ceremonial fast to advocate for improved Canadian-Indigenous relations. Framed by the media as a hunger strike, her fast was both a call to action and a gesture of corporeal sovereignty.
Life against States of Emergency responds to the central question she asked the Canadian public to consider: What does it mean to be in a treaty relationship today? Arguing that treaties are critical and vital matters of environmental justice, Sarah Marie Wiebe offers a nuanced discussion of the political environment that caused treaty relations in Attawapiskat to break down amid a history of repeated state-of-emergency declarations.
This incisive work draws on community-engaged research, lived experiences, critical discourse analysis, ecofeminist and Indigenous studies scholarship, art, activism, and storytelling to advance a transformative, future-oriented approach to treaty relationships. By centring community voices, Life against States of Emergency cultivates a more deliberative, democratic dialogue.
About this Author
Sarah Marie Wiebe is an assistant professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, where she teaches in the Community Development program. She is an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawai?i, Manoa, a co-founder of the Feminist Environmental Research Network (FERN), and the author of Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada's Chemical Valley, which won the Charles Taylor Book Award in 2017. Her writing has been published in journals including Citizenship Studies, Engaged Scholar, New Political Science, Politics and Policy, and Studies in Social Justice.
Reviews
Life Against States of Emergency is ... refreshingly personable ... enlivened by Wiebe's dialogic approach to research and writing ... Wiebe makes a deep contribution to critical policy conversations on Indigenous resurgence and futurities in Canada, Indigenous/settler relations, and Treaty-making and remaking.
Wiebe - a settler scholar and writer-activist - is an immensely gifted storyteller ... Life Against States of Emergency has arrived at a crucial point for the field of environmental politics, reminding us to recenter relationships as foundational to meaningful engagement with the politics of planetary justice. In doing so, we can better imagine and create alternative ways of being in the world.
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