Dartmouth Events

Please join us for the George Link Jr. Environmental Awareness Lecture!  This is the third lecture in the series focused on Indigenous Environmental Studies and Science.

Andrew Curley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Geography

“What is a Resource Curse? Energy, Development, and sovereignty in Native North America”

Indigenous homelands sit on highly coveted resources in the United States and Canada. Tribes maintain large land bases that overlap with the geography of energy extraction and production. Through colonization and economic underdevelopment, tribal governments participate in mineral extraction and energy development, from coal, oil, uranium to hydropower and natural gas. Energy and extractive economies have become the basis of development for many tribal economies, creating what economists and political scientists describe as a “resource curse.” However, the uneven and underperforming economies of tribes linked to extractive industries are directly tied to broader processes of colonial control and social change, from lack of jobs, to environmental damage, to the tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women. The cost of extraction is far greater than economic underdevelopment – it is a perpetuation of colonial conditions. By comparing tribal nations across the western United States and Canada, this presentation asks, what is a resource curse for tribes and how might we rethink the impact of energy and development in and around indigenous lands?

http://wahgraphy.web.unc.edu/research-areas/

Sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program and the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy and Society.

Free and open to the public.