Knowledge(s) and Power in the Stop Line 3 Movement: From Colonial Logics to Epistemic Justice

Abstract

The conflicts between Indigenous-led anti-pipeline resistance and fossil fuel corporations are clear case studies for epistemic injustice. In these conflicts, Indigenous analyses of proposed pipeline projects and their consequences are marginalised within state-based regulatory processes, resulting in the endorsement of land sacrifice for corporate benefit. Epistemic injustice has historically served to legitimate the dispossession of Indigenous land, but water protectors seek to interrupt this pattern. Through a textual analysis of documents published by the Stop Line 3 movement, I demonstrate that water protectors identify epistemic injustice as a motivating issue in their struggle, and employ direct action as a method to circumvent institutional silencing. This paper supports the view that anti-pipeline blockades are a point of rupture in epistemic norms, wherein water protectors experiment with methods through which suppressed knowledge(s) may push back against “abyssal” epistemologies in a move towards epistemic justice.