{"pk":54318,"title":"Infrastructural (Dis)Entitlement: Tactics of Dispossession on the Critical Minerals Frontier","subtitle":null,"abstract":"In Ontario’s far north, settler state authorities and extractive firms are engaged in coordinated tactics to gain ground amid a polarization in the positions of Indigenous leadership. Alongside a surging resistance, we also witness a resigned acceptance of critical minerals mining by some First Nations. Drawing on years of community-engaged research, I detail here the contemporary tactics of “infrastructural (dis)entitlement:” in this dynamic, infrastructural needs are both denied and fulfilled to differential effect. Infrastructural \ndisentitlement\n is passive; it is not necessarily deliberate, nor is it politically or institutionally organized. But infrastructural \nentitlement\n is strategic and aggressive: Indigenous prosperity and inclusion are key elements of the contemporary liberal justification for critical minerals extraction. From this, a pattern emerges of places toward which resources are flowing and places out of which they are draining. The chronic lack of community-focused infrastructure in some remote First Nations—characterized as a form of “letting die”—creates an attritional force that undermines the communities’ capacity to defend their homelands, to the advantage of the settler state and extractive firms.","language":"en","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Critical minerals"},{"word":"Indigenous dispossession"},{"word":"extractivism"},{"word":"infrastructural (dis)entitlement"}],"section":"Articles","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0m10m2r6","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Dayna","middle_name":"Nadine","last_name":"Scott","name_suffix":"","institution":"","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2025-01-31T02:03:51+05:30","date_accepted":"2025-01-31T02:03:51+05:30","date_published":"2025-01-31T13:30:00+05:30","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/lawandpoliticaleconomy/article/54318/galley/41034/download/"}]}