“Stewards of Our Own Destiny”: How Tribal Nations Pursue Self-Determination Through Oil and Gas Development

Oil and gas extraction has occurred on Indigenous reservations in the United States for over a century. Today, reservations are sites of discussion regarding energy futures, including expansion of oil and gas industries, renewable energy, and critical minerals development. Existing literature analyses the historical trajectories of extractive development on reservations and the barriers and opportunities for future energy development. However, questions of how tribal nations navigate and rationalize decisions around energy development remain under-examined. Through public document analysis, I seek to understand how tribal leaders and institutions invoke historical experiences with extractive industries and visions for the future within discourse on oil and gas development. Central to my analysis is the Anishinaabe concept aanikoobijigan, through which I position tribal leaders simultaneously as descendants and ancestors, making decisions not on a linear timescale but alongside past and future generations. I argue that tribal leaders frame oil and gas development as a means to self-sufficiency and as an extension of their ancestors’ struggles for collective continuance in the face of colonization and marginalization. Leaders envision a form of sovereignty that exists within non-self-determining spaces, where they can generate revenue to support a future beyond the finite lifespan of oil and gas. In so doing, tribes refuse public discourse that portrays extraction as a trap and renewables as the sole path to sovereignty and justice. This work suggests scholars must move beyond acknowledgements that tribes have different understandings of just energy governance to consider how tribes mobilize these ideas, and what injustices might remain.