The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada

The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada by Angele Alook, Emily Eaton, David Gray-Donald, Joël Laforest, Crystal Lameman, and Bronwen Tucker is both an imagining of a utopic, fossil-fuel-free world and a spirited call to action. Written in plain language and aimed at a wide audience, the book examines contemporary so-called Canada through an indigenous-centered,1 decolonial lens and frames the current climate crisis that we are in as one of relationship failure. The authors state: "We believe it is important for a just transition discussions to be accessible to all audiences because, fundamentally, what we're talking about in this book is repairing relationships. Repairing relationships with each other and with the land" (13). Key to repairing this relationship is putting indigenous rights and sovereignty at the center of any proposal or policy, instead of appearing as an add-on or afterthought. As the authors lead us through their plan for a just energy transition, they assert that any change, any movement, and any economic strategy that does not assert indigenous rights is not only "greening theft," it is also doomed to fail (7).The book is organized into two parts. The first part consists of the introduction and the first two chapters, where the authors outline broken promises and political and private decisions that have led to the current climate crisis in so-called Canada. The second half then outlines indigenous-informed solutions and possible paths forward, with the most concrete and "winnable" strategies in the last two chapters (153). The End of This World is a collaborative piece, written in one voice, while the individual authors' voices can be heard through various examples and anecdotes given throughout the book.In the first half of the volume, they lay out the rise and reliance on fossil fuels, the ongoing empowerment of the industry, and the swaths of broken promises the Canadian government has made since public concern for climate has been on the rise. The authors focus on two dynamics that they believe are the worst contributors to this crisis in so-called Canada: "the violation of indigenous people's inherent rights and sovereignty, and the fossil fuel economy that relies on this violation" (11). This is done by tracing the sordid history of indigenous-settler relations through official documents such as the Indian Act and the residential school system, which systematically destroyed traditional indigenous relationships with each other and the land and replaced them with patriarchal capitalist colonial hierarchies. The authors argue that this destruction, along with the forced removal of indigenous people from their lands, effectively brought about an apocalypse, the aftereffects of which indigenous people across all of so-called Canada are still dealing with. This is an incredibly effective rhetorical strategy, pulling on the popular cultural imagination of the apocalypse and reframing the settlers' view of this world as an indigenous dystopia.The authors then lay out how the official policies and privatization of the industry by the Canadian state laid the groundwork for weakening resistance against fossil fuel projects on traditional indigenous territories, and for stripping the lands of resources and further alienating all people from their relationships with the land. They point out that when indigenous mobilization was finally recognized in the 1970s and 1980s, a swell of popular support from unions, labor activists, and environmentalists pushed back against rampant development and extraction. However, instead of strict regulation and limitation, the authors make it clear how the government and industry simply switched from climate denialism to "climate delayism," using terms like "sustainable development," "net zero goals," and "carbon neutrality" to push responsibility to the future and make no real changes, all while actually increasing development and projects in the industry.The greatest strength of this section is how the authors clearly lay out otherwise confusing and obfuscated laws and decisions and make it clear how these overlapping systems continue to create and support what the authors call the current capitalist "Wiindigo economy" or "death economy," which is compounded by the rising individualistic drive of neoliberalism. Again and again, the authors map out how the Canadian economy is built on decades of broken promises leading to a very real loss of trust. Instead of heeding indigenous warnings, the government tied up environmental protection efforts for years in court cases and only increased privatization and deregulation of the fossil fuel industry. However, the book is able to communicate the seriousness of the situation without sliding into despair or nihilism, stressing instead how relationships were broken by people, and so can be repaired by them as well.Where this section falters, though, is in its lack of details of indigenous governance. Speaking as a settler scholar, I found while reading that it would be helpful for the authors to elaborate on how indigenous nations collaborate and come to decisions, with specific examples. What would it look like for government policy concerning the environment to be put in the hands of indigenous nations? There is a necessity for a speculative exercise here that could produce concrete examples for readers to imagine. In the same way that corporations and settler governments ask citizens to believe that they will do better for the environment in the future, the authors do the same with indigenous governance and control. No doubt the authors have a very good idea about how these systems operate, but not spelling that out leaves the readers guessing.In the second half of the book, chapters 4 to 7, the authors take a much more hopeful view. Beginning with broad concepts and looking "at big changes, often at the level of policy or public investments, that could transform society towards a decolonial just transition" (68), and then moving into straightforward and tangible means of change, the book explores how the centering of indigenous laws and understandings of relationships can bring us back from a seemingly inevitable climate collapse. To bring the country back from a Wiindigo or death economy, the authors argue that Canadian society needs to put "living in the laws of miyo-ohpikinâwasowin (raising children in a good way), miyo-wîcihtowin (good relations and unity), sihtoskâtowin (pulling together for survival), and manâcihtâwin (respect and reciprocity with the land)" at the heart of working toward a habitable country and planet (154). The authors draw on these concepts as they take the reader through a transformation of regulation, housing, transportation, dual governance, economy transition, and political change. Throughout all this, they provide real, tangible ways in which the reader can get involved and start this transformation in their own lives.If there was one critique of this final section, it would be small, and again political. In chapter 6, the authors discuss ways of changing the political weather in so-called Canada. They discuss how the New Democratic Party (NDP), the Green Party of Canada, or even a new party if the extant ones are too attached to the capitalist understanding of governance, may be the way forward in using politics to repair our relationships in the climate crisis. However, throughout this discussion, no mention is made of our current first-past-the-post (FPTP), winner-take-all political system, and how in its current form, it all but disallows anything beyond a two-party system. This is because in FPTP, the current voting system in so-called Canada, voters cast a vote for a single candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins the election; the candidate does not need to have garnered the majority of the votes. This problem is further compounded by electoral districts, which favor large urban centers and do not properly reflect geographically spread-out voters. Transforming our political system to one of proportional representation is a crucial step in allowing smaller parties, like the NDP and the Greens, or new parties based in rural or northern areas, to gain meaningful representation. In a system of proportional representation, minority and independent candidates have a much better chance of being elected because parties gain seats in direct proportion to the number of votes they receive. Proportional representation also sets a much lower electoral threshold for gaining seats and allows parties to aggregate diffused support. Due to this, it has been shown to facilitate the development of new parties, allow expressive and instrumental voters to show their support, and reduce the odds that a vote for a minor party is wasted. Voters focussed on indigenous and environmental issues, therefore, would see a direct representation of their political choices in parliament.The necessity of exploring and combatting our current climate crisis through an indigenous, de-colonial lens cannot be overstated. The End of This World is a nuanced and thorough exploration, and as often as it felt as though it was overreaching, impossible and even risible, in just as many places I felt inspired to start something, join something, and I allowed myself to imagine the world the authors were describing. Perhaps the book feels unrealistic in our current neoliberal capitalist system, but that is according to the reality that is dictated by that very system, which is invested in disallowing any alternative to it. The authors ask their readers to "listen deeply to each other and . . . to read the book with an open heart and mind" (13) and in doing so, I was able to imagine another possible reality. This reality is one in which, with lots of hard work and collaboration, along with indigenous leadership and guidance, we can begin healing and repairing the relationships with each other and with the land, whose neglect has brought us to the brink of climate collapse here in so-called Canada.