Mobilizing theory - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 25

2 Mobilizing theory

“Environmental degradation and social injustice are two sides of the same coin”
—Agarwal, 1982

In this topic, I suggest that much is to be gained by analyzing how political and
legal regimes of resource management are operationalized on the ground and how
these regimes impact historically connected communities in different ways.
Unpacking the tensions between the fixity of modern political borders, the fluidity
of natural resources (and pollution inputs), and the socio-political implications of
governing within these systems (such as “counting” and “dividing” ecosystems)
provides more nuance to the practicalities of governing resources in a b/ordered
landscape.
For Indigenous communities, the nation-state framework rarely coincides with
the traditional territory of their ancestry (Barman, 1999; Harmon, 2000; Simpson,
2000, 2007; Carlson, 2001; McManus, 2005; Miller, 2006) . 1 The fragmentation
of communities due to the application of the nation-state system has ongoing con-
sequences and power geometries and these consequences are both complex and
reflexive (Clayton, 2000; Gregory, 2004; Raibmon, 2005; Harris and Hazen,
2006; Kennedy, 2007; Harris and Millerd, 2010; White et al. , 2012). The
articulations between mobility, territoriality, and power are central to this under-
standing (Gregory, 2004; Steinberg, 2009). In addition, the narratives of contact
continue to shape contemporary discourse and framings of colonial settlement and
the re-fashioning of native space (in the Pacific coastal region of North America,
see Boxberger, 1989; Clayton, 2000, Harris and Millerd, 2010). These narratives
continue to influence access to and protection of water sources.
The issues surrounding the cases in this topic are complicated by extraterritorial
pollution inputs, compromised ecosystem health, the policies of respective
governments responding differently to the pollution inputs, as well as the framing
of issues as “countable” (as in Chapter 5) or “manageable” (as in Chapter 6 and
Chapter 9) .
Thus, this topic focuses both on the historical and contemporary impacts of
“colonial bounding” for Indigenous communities, as well as the counter-narratives
that are contributing to decolonization, self-determination, self-governance, and