Canada has long supported its corporate extraction abroad. Yet it is also true that the same processes of extraction—whereby companies first identify certain resources and then go about taking them—bear striking similarities to events also occurring within Canada. We are thus fortunate that David P. Thomas and Veldon Coburn’s edited collection, Capitalism & Dispossession: Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad, analyzes both domestic and international capitalist dispossession. In this important book, Thomas, Coburn, and 13 contributors offer meticulous evidence of the ways that Canadian companies, through their search for profit, have destroyed Indigenous, rural, and remote territories, both at home and overseas. Significantly, this collection also shows that despite such profiteering, many people have stood up to and resisted these companies’ efforts.
In the Introduction, Thomas and Coburn argue that it is important to consider the histories of capitalist dispossession in Indigenous territories in North America and in international spaces of colonization and decolonization side by side. So doing, we can better see how the quest for profit has guided Canadian policy toward “development” all around the globe. We can also see that, contra to those who assume that the “primitive accumulation” phase of capitalism is now over, capitalist dispossession is still occurring (p. 5). It is especially occurring with alarming rapidity in rural and Indigenous territories, and thus often far away from the metropolitan eye.
Ten case studies follow the Introduction. There are five that look at dispossession in Indigenous territories in northern North America and five that explore dispossession overseas. The cases that examine dispossession in North America cover mining (two chapters), land use planning, natural gas storage, and forestry and mercury dumping (one chapter each). The five that look at dispossession overseas cover mining (four chapters) and banking (one chapter). Distinctions among these industries are not generally commented upon, but it is worth noting here that the forms of dispossession they engender do vary. Whereas mining and forestry are extractive of labor, lives, and resources, banking is extractive of labor, lives, and capital. That said, it is also true that the wastes produced by mining, forestry, and natural gas also create dispossession. Thus, capitalist dispossession is multi-dimensional: it is extractive, commodifying, and polluting. And, in all cases, it devastates the targeted communities and territories.
The discussion begins with Rebecca Hall’s chapter on fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) oil and mining operations in Nunavat, the Northwest Territories, Alberta, and British Columbia. Through research on sites currently owned by Agnico-Eagle Mines, Arctic Canadian, and Rio Tinto, Hall demonstrates that FIFO operations both rely on and exacerbate gender and colonial violence. Aedan Alderson examines Canadian land use planning theory and practice, showing that these traditions largely ignore Indigenous sovereignty. Dawn Hoogeveen and Russell Myers Ross recount the Tsilhqot’in Nation’s work, including in the courts, to defend their lands from open-pit copper-gold mining by Taseko Mines in Tsilhqot’in Nation territory. Ingrid Waldron relates how Indigenous land defenders, including the Grassroots Grandmothers and the Sipekne’katik First Nation, are fighting the Alton Gas storage project in Nova Scotia. Finally, Veldon Coburn offers an historical overview of the lumber industry in Ojibwe territory in Treaty 3 and provides a detailed look at the devastating case of mercury dumping into the Wabigoon River between 1962 and 1970. He also looks at Canada’s extensive support for such harms.
Chapters covering international topics are equally substantive. The contribution by Sakura Saunders reveals how the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold is supported by political and corporate elites in Canada, who in turn work hard to dispel criticism of the company’s human rights abuses in Tanzania and Papua New Guinea. Next, Caren Weisbart, Jennifer Moore, and Charlotte Connolly address how Canadian diplomats in Guatemala have ignored human rights abuses by Canadian mining companies, choosing instead to urge “dialogue” among those involved. In her study of Canadian mining (specifically by Inco) in Indonesia, Tracy Glynn discusses a photo-voice project wherein women from the Karonsi’e Dongi and Sorowako communities document social and ecological devastations wrought by Canadian mines. W. R. Nadège Compaoré and Tongnoma Zongo look at International African Mining Gold Corporation’s (IAMGOLD) mining operations in Burkina Faso, showing how this Toronto company has displaced both artisanal miners and entire communities. Finally, David P. Thomas and Tyler Shipley recount how Canada’s major banks, including Scotiabank, have profited from activities in the Caribbean and Latin America, even while they have also mostly declined to contribute to these regions’ economies.
Capitalism & Dispossession is a welcome addition to Canadian scholarship, indicating that the Canadian state has long promoted industrial development in Indigenous, rural, and remote territories. As part of this promotion, it has protected Agnico-Eagle Mines, Arctic Canadian, Rio Tinto, Taseko Mines, Alton Gas, Dryden Paper Company, Reed Paper, Great Lakes Forest Products, Barrick Gold, Tahoe Resources, Inco Ltd., IAMGOLD, Scotiabank, and other companies from culpability for heinous abuses committed by their own companies, their employees, and their contracted agents. In addition to documenting precisely how such dispossessions have taken place, this book is also important for providing a detailed overview of Canadian capitalist activity in the rural, remote, and often colonized areas where much extraction and dumping occurs. In this way it has synthesized much of the previously published work in these areas; it has also added much more.
Showing that Canadian capitalist dispossession looks largely the same whether operating inside or outside of Canada’s borders, Capitalism & Dispossession dissolves the nationalist boundaries that tend to section off scholarship on capitalism into separate areas (capitalist development in North America versus, for example, capitalist development in Latin America or capitalist development in Africa). Bringing together studies that document the extent of dispossession currently taking place, this book demonstrates that the era of colonial extraction is far from over. By examining dispossession in colonized and formerly colonized territories all around the globe, the authors reveal the importance of attending to capitalism’s movement across borders. In these and other ways, they provide a model of scholarship in contemporary capitalism studies.
Professor Belisle is the author of Retail Nation (2011) and Purchasing Power (2020). She is currently writing a book about Canadian sugar capitalism in colonial Fiji.
