constructing in/security in the arctic: polar politics, indigenous … · 2016. 7. 12. · ii...
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Constructing In/Security in the Arctic: Polar Politics, Indigenous Peoples, and Environmental
Change in Canada and Norway
by
Wilfrid William John Greaves
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Political Science University of Toronto
© Copyright by Wilfrid William John Greaves 2016
ii
Constructing In/Security in the Arctic: Polar Politics, Indigenous
Peoples, and Environmental Change in Canada and Norway
Wilfrid William John Greaves
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Political Science University of Toronto
2016
Abstract
As climate change transforms the circumpolar Arctic, ‘Arctic security’ has increasingly
been used as a concept to address the most urgent related policy questions. But security is a
contested concept, and there is contradiction among the various understandings of what it
actually entails in the Arctic region. This dissertation investigates competing conceptions of
security and environmental change by state and non-state actors in the Arctic regions of Canada
and Norway. It asks why, despite being understood as a threat to national and global security by
other states and in other regional contexts, has climate change not been constituted as a security
threat by Arctic states? I examine this question through a comparative analysis of Canada and
Norway’s foreign and security policies, how they construct the significance of climate change,
and those policies’ correspondence with local Indigenous conceptions of Arctic security. The
findings suggest that the conception of security held by Arctic Indigenous peoples have been
structurally excluded from official Arctic security discourse. The dissertation makes three
central contributions: it offers a comparative analysis of circumpolar states’ understandings of
Arctic security; it undertakes the first comparative analysis of Indigenous understandings of
Arctic security; and it proposes a revised theory of how certain identities condition the process
through which in/security is socially constructed.
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Acknowledgments
This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my doctoral
supervisor, Matthew J. Hoffmann, and my committee members, Steven Bernstein and Rauna
Kuokkanen. It has also benefited greatly from the suggestions and knowledge of my internal and
external readers, Graham White of the University of Toronto and Simon Dalby of the Balsillie
School of International Affairs. I have been fortunate to receive advice and support from
numerous faculty members of the University of Toronto, including professors Nancy Bertoldi,
Wendy Wong, and the late Stephen Clarkson. I owe many debts to friends and graduate student
colleagues at the University of Toronto, including: Megan Dersnah, Craig Damian Smith, Dave
Zarnett, Aarie Glas, Jodi Adams, Kiran Banerjee, Jerald Sabin, and Adrienne Davidson. I also
appreciate the valuable research assistance of Amir Fleischmann.
My interest in and knowledge of the Arctic has been constantly informed and motivated by the
work and support of professors P. Whitney Lackenbauer of St. Jerome’s University, Rob Huebert
of the University of Calgary, and Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv of the University of Tromsø. I am
indebted to all three of them. This dissertation project benefited greatly from the Walter and
Duncan Gordon Foundation and the Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, particularly Tom
Axworthy and Sara French. My fieldwork was also greatly assisted by Else Grete Broderstad
and the faculty, staff, and students at the Centre for Sámi Studies at the University of Tromsø.
My research was supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, the Government of Ontario, the former Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade Canada, and the Department of Political Science, School of Graduate
Studies, and Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice at the University of Toronto.
Lastly, none of this would have been possible without the support of my wife, Carolyn Cornford
Greaves, to whom I owe so much, and our daughter, Eleanor, whose impending arrival was a
fine motivation to get the thing done.
This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Sherry Dolores Greaves, grandmother, Peggy
Dolores Greaves, and grandfather, Wilfrid Edmund Greaves, who began this journey with me but
did not see its finish. Their love remains a constant source of inspiration.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv
List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. viii
List of Appendices ......................................................................................................................... ix
Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................................... 1
Climate, Change, and the Arctic ................................................................................................ 1 1
1.1 Changing Global Climate ................................................................................................... 4
1.2 The Changing Arctic ........................................................................................................... 8
1.3 Defining the Arctic ........................................................................................................... 12
1.4 Changing Arctic Security .................................................................................................. 17
1.5 Methodology, Case Selection and Evidence ..................................................................... 22
1.5.1 Case Selection ....................................................................................................... 24
1.5.2 Evidence of (Attempted) Securitization ................................................................ 25
1.6 Outline of Dissertation ...................................................................................................... 29
Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................................................... 33
Indigeneity, Non-Dominance and Research ............................................................................ 33 2
2.1 Indigeneity and Non-Dominance ...................................................................................... 35
2.1.1 Colonialism and Power ......................................................................................... 39
2.2 Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic ...................................................................................... 41
2.3 Research, Non-Dominance and Indigenous Peoples ........................................................ 46
2.3.1 Decolonization and Indigenist Research ............................................................... 48
Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................................................... 54
Security, Theory, and the (Arctic) Environment ...................................................................... 54 3
3.1 Constructing In/Security ................................................................................................... 55
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3.2 Securitization Theory: The Copenhagen School and Its Critics ....................................... 63
3.2.1 Normal Politics and Non-Securitized Issues ......................................................... 71
3.2.2 Intersubjectivity and Illocutionary Speech Acts ................................................... 74
3.2.3 Identity and Securitization .................................................................................... 77
3.3 Revising Securitization: Non-Dominance and In/Security ............................................... 81
3.3.1 Silencing and Subsuming Indigenous Insecurity .................................................. 85
3.4 Insecurity and the Environment ........................................................................................ 90
3.4.1 Securitizing Climate Change ................................................................................ 94
3.5 Why Securitize .................................................................................................................. 97
3.6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 103
Chapter 4 ..................................................................................................................................... 106
Understanding In/Security in the Canadian Arctic ................................................................ 106 4
4.1 Indigenous Peoples and In/Security in the Canadian Arctic ........................................... 108
4.1.1 Indigenous Insecurities ....................................................................................... 114
4.1.2 Inuit Perspectives on Security and Sovereignty .................................................. 118
4.1.3 In/Security, Resources, and Climate Change ...................................................... 124
4.1.4 Security and Self-Determination ......................................................................... 128
4.1.5 Synthesizing Indigenous Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic 131
4.2 State Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic .......................................... 132
4.2.1 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Liberal Years ........................................ 137
4.2.2 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Harper Conservatives ........................... 141
4.3 Summarizing State Insecurity in the Canadian Arctic .................................................... 151
4.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 153
Chapter 5 ..................................................................................................................................... 156
Non-Dominance and Securitization in the Canadian Arctic .................................................. 156 5
5.1 Non-Dominance in the Canadian Arctic ......................................................................... 157
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5.2 Securitization Non-Dominance: Silenced Insecurity ...................................................... 161
5.2.1 Marginalized Voices ........................................................................................... 162
5.2.2 Boundaries and Definitions ................................................................................. 168
5.2.3 Foundational Issues ............................................................................................. 173
5.3 Subsumed Insecurity ....................................................................................................... 176
5.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 184
Chapter 6 ..................................................................................................................................... 187
Understanding In/Security in Northern Norway .................................................................... 187 6
6.1 Scandinavian Colonialism .............................................................................................. 188
6.1.1 Stuck in the Middle: Sámi and the Modern State ............................................... 189
6.2 Changing In/Security in the Norwegian High North ...................................................... 197
6.2.1 A Post-Cold War Region .................................................................................... 201
6.2.2 A New High North Initiative .............................................................................. 208
6.3 Identifying Norway’s Arctic Security Priorities ............................................................. 213
6.3.1 Fearing the Bear .................................................................................................. 213
6.3.2 Northern Riches and the Welfare State ............................................................... 218
6.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 226
Chapter 7 ..................................................................................................................................... 228
Explaining In/Security in Norwegian Sápmi ......................................................................... 228 7
7.1 Sámi in Norway .............................................................................................................. 228
7.2 Sámi Understandings of In/Security ............................................................................... 235
7.3 Explaining Sámi Non-Securitization .............................................................................. 247
7.3.1 Ecological Difference ......................................................................................... 247
7.3.2 Social Inclusion ................................................................................................... 251
7.3.3 Geography ........................................................................................................... 255
7.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 257
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Chapter 8 ..................................................................................................................................... 260
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 260 8
8.1 Indigenous Understandings of Arctic In/Security ........................................................... 260
8.2 State Understandings of Arctic In/Security .................................................................... 263
8.3 Indigenous Securitization and Non-Securitization ......................................................... 267
8.4 Indigenous Peoples and Securitization Non-Dominance ................................................ 269
8.5 Security, States, and Radical Environmental Change ..................................................... 273
8.6 Critical Environmental Security in the Arctic ................................................................ 281
8.7 Seeking Security in the Anthropocene ............................................................................ 289
Appendices .................................................................................................................................. 292
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Political Map of the Circumpolar Arctic…………………………………………16
Figure 2: Map of Arctic Indigenous Peoples………………………………………………..43
Figure 3: CS Securitization Process………………………………………………………...64
Figure 4: Revised Securitization Process…………………………………………………...88
Figure 5: Map of the Canadian Arctic……………………………………………………...108
Figure 6: Map of Sápmi…………………………………………………………………….191
Figure 7: Map of Norway and surrounding areas…………………………………………..198
Figure 8: Revised Securitization Process…………………………………………………..271
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List of Appendices
Appendix 1: Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Securitizing Moves, 2001-2011………293
Appendix 2: Sámi Securitizing Moves, 2001-2011………………………………………...296
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Chapter 1
Climate, Change, and the Arctic 1The circumpolar Arctic is undergoing unprecedented ecological, political, and social
transformation, compounding already dramatic changes over the course of the 20th century.
More than ever, events in the Arctic region are relevant far beyond its boundaries, and actors
from around the world are increasingly interested and involved in the circumpolar area. In
addition to the governments of Arctic states, neighbouring and distant countries, militaries,
international organizations, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, civil
society groups, Indigenous peoples, academics, journalists, and general publics have all noted the
rapid changes in the region. Many of these actors have attempted to influence the direction of
change in the Arctic, seeking to shape circumpolar affairs in ways that suit their interests, values,
or worldviews. The Arctic has become a hot topic with high stakes, and how changes occur and
are managed, indeed, the very vision for the Arctic’s future that is embraced by powerful actors,
will have profound implications for states, peoples, and individuals. To those observers
principally concerned with global climate change and growing demand for hydrocarbon energy,
changes in the Arctic have implications for the entire world.
Anthropogenic, or human-caused, environmental change – particularly global climate change but
also local or regional environmental degradation – is the most significant current driver of the
interrelated changes affecting the Arctic, and occupy a central place in policy, research, and
media attention. Among the many responses to environmental change has been a renewed
interest in the meaning of in/security in the Arctic region.1 The confluence of increasingly
evident climate change with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s-2000s led many states to re-
examine their Arctic interests in light of the changing political and physical environment,
generating a wave of new Arctic foreign and security policies by circumpolar states. However,
other actors – including sub-national governments, Indigenous peoples, NGOs, scholars, and
1 I refer to ‘in/security’ because of the inherent duality of the concepts of security and insecurity. As discussed in Chapter 3, the construction of one object as ‘secure’ entails the construction of others as ‘insecure’, or beyond the boundaries of the security being sought. Thus, what is secure (Inside) is only comprehensible in relation to what is insecure (Outside). Referring to ‘in/security’ recognizes both aspects of this dynamic, acknowledging that security for some usually entails insecurity for others.
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corporations – have also articulated conceptions of ‘Arctic security’ that both support and
challenge the security interests identified by Arctic states. While there are similarities among the
understandings of Arctic security articulated by circumpolar states, these are often paradoxical,
and frequently diverge from or contradict the understandings of security articulated by non-state
actors within those states. Overall, there is variation among the different representations of
in/security in, to, and for the Arctic region, and its fundamental meaning remains contested.
One of the central differences among these understandings of Arctic security is how to
understand the relevance of environmental change. All contemporary representations of Arctic
security, including the policies of circumpolar states, acknowledge that climate change is
occurring: it is the common backdrop against which re-evaluations of in/security in the Arctic are
considered. However, climate change has been constructed very differently within the security
discourses of states and non-state actors in the Arctic region. Despite widespread concern over
the implications of climate change for the regional ecology and its human inhabitants,
particularly Indigenous peoples and their traditional ways of life, Arctic states have not
constructed climate change or its direct impacts as threats to their security. Instead, state
understandings of Arctic security tend to emphasize two core national interests: traditional and
unconventional military threats to their territorial sovereignty, and the extraction of renewable
and non-renewable natural resources essential to their economies. Though climate change is the
catalyst for these re-imaginings of Arctic security, circumpolar states have not considered the
impacts of climate change as the principal hazards to be secured against. Rather, Arctic security
is understood to relate to protection against second order phenomena enabled by climate change,
or, paradoxically, as pursuit of economic activity that will directly contribute to climate change.
This dissertation investigates how contemporary understandings of Arctic in/security and
environmental change have been constructed. It explores two related research questions linked
to the process of constructing security threats, called securitization. Why, despite being
understood as a threat to national and global security by other states, in other regional contexts,
and by Arctic states in other contexts, has environmental change not been constituted as a
security issue by states in the Arctic region itself? In particular, why has environmental change
not been constructed as threatening when it is understood and articulated as such by many Arctic
Indigenous peoples? The failure to securitize environmental change in the Arctic is the central
puzzle of this dissertation, and is puzzling precisely because there would seem to be a felicitous
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combination of factors for the issue to be successfully constructed as a security threat:
environmental security claims employ the grammar and vocabulary of in/security; the actors
making those claims are well-established, legitimate representatives of Arctic Indigenous
peoples; and there is a significant material basis to the hazards held to be threatening.
Drawing on research from securitization theory, critical security studies, Indigenous politics, and
the history and politics of the Arctic region, this project investigates how in/security has been
constructed by circumpolar states and Indigenous political actors, and offers a revised account of
securitization to explain why Indigenous understandings of in/security have not been
incorporated within their national Arctic security policies. In sum, it argues that certain factors
intervene in the securitization process to impede particular understandings of security from being
adopted. I argue that: a) identities of securitizing actors, and b) the material and social context
within which in/security claims occur exercise a powerful influence on the articulation of
security claims and the likely success of those claims within a given set of politics. Specifically,
the identities of Arctic Indigenous peoples as historically oppressed and currently marginalized
structurally limit their ability to successfully ‘speak’ security to the state. Rather than succeed,
Indigenous understandings of in/security are silenced and subsumed within discourses that do not
threaten the preferred policies of circumpolar states. Indigeneity thus acts as a mechanism by
which settler-colonial institutions that ultimately determine how Arctic in/security is constructed
reject or ignore security claims made by Indigenous peoples.
Meanwhile, the impacts of environmental change are highly contextual, and are mediated by
individual and community relations with the broader society. Thus, the mere fact of pan-Arctic
climate change is insufficient to generate a conception of environmental change as existentially
threatening, including for some Indigenous peoples. The role of Indigenous peoples as principal
advocates linking Arctic insecurity with climate change is a key feature of why it has not been
securitized within the policies of Arctic states, but the differing material experiences of
environmental change also contribute to diverse views among Indigenous peoples over how
threatening environmental change actually is. This dissertation thus consists of two distinct
components: an empirical analysis of how Arctic in/security is understood by state and
Indigenous actors, and a revised account of the process of securitization that better incorporates
the roles of identity and materiality in explaining the success or failure of particular
understandings of in/security.
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The remainder of this chapter outlines the regional backdrop against which this project is
situated, and explains its research design. First, it lays out the context of global climate change,
and the specific environmental changes occurring in the Arctic. It discusses how these changes
complicate the very definition of what the Arctic is, and how they pose widespread challenges to
states and peoples in the region. The chapter then outlines the research design, case selection,
and methodology of this dissertation, details its empirical and normative goals, and concludes
with a brief summary of each of the subsequent chapters.
1.1 Changing Global Climate
Earth’s climate is changing as increasing concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG)
such as methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide (CO2) leads to retention of solar energy and
warming of the planet’s surface.2 Primarily caused by human activity since the Industrial
Revolution such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and other changes in land use, climate
change has warmed Earth’s average surface temperature by nearly one degree Celsius since
1880, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a
total 2-3 degrees warming by the end of the 21st century.3 Atmospheric concentrations of CO2
have increased by nearly 50 per cent from 280 parts per million (ppm) prior to the industrial
period (circa 1750) to over 400 ppm in 2014, exceeding the estimated limit of 350 ppm required
to limit global temperature rise to a nominally manageable increase of two degrees.4 With CO2
concentrations predicted to reach 490-1200 ppm by 2100 depending on the rate of global
emissions increase, since at least the 1980s it has been widely understood that “humanity is
conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate
2 IPCC, “Summary for Policymakers,” in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contributions of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 3 The most recent IPCC report states this warming to be caused by human activity with a confidence interval of greater than 95%, meaning that it is extremely likely the globalized burning of fossil fuels through industrial, commercial, and individual use that is causing the Earth to warm. IPCC 2013, 5-20. 4 The Copenhagen Accord agreed to at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in 2009 set a target to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. See UNFCCC, "Copenhagen Accord,” (United Nations, December 18, 2009). Accessed at http://www.unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf on May 5, 2014.
5
consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war.”5 Current GHG concentrations will
already drive climate change throughout this century, but “continued emissions of greenhouse
gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting
climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,”6
through decarbonization of the global economy or technological innovation.
Unfortunately, current estimates “indicate that recent [GHG] emissions and future emission
trends imply higher 21st century emissions levels than previously projected. As a consequence,
the likelihood of 4˚C warming being reached or exceeded this century has increased … In the
absence of further mitigation action there is a 40 per cent chance of warming exceeding 4˚C by
2100 and a 10 per cent chance of it exceeding 5˚C in the same period.”7 Current GHG
concentrations are higher that at any time in the last 800,000 years, with rates of combined
natural and manmade annual emissions exceeding those of any period in the last 22,000 years.8
These conditions are well outside the range in which human civilization has developed, and will
likely result in a global climate radically different than the one in which contemporary social,
political, and demographic configurations of human life have emerged. The possibility of such
significant increases in global temperature has caused concern over the prospect of ‘tipping
points’ or threshold effects that might catalyze rapid, uncontrollable climate change with
catastrophic consequences for ecological integrity and biological resilience around the globe.9 In
particular, there is growing concern that positive feedbacks generated by the warming climate
may significantly contribute to climate change, including, inter alia, the release of methane
currently stored in Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost, the melting of polar ice reducing global
5 Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, Statement of the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security (Toronto, Government of Canada: 1988), 292. Accessed at http://www.greenparty.ca/releases/30.06.2008 on March 1, 2013. 6 IPCC 2013, 19. 7 World Bank, Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience. A Report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013), xv. 8 IPCC 2013, 11. 9 Timothy M. Lenton, “Early Warning of Climate Tipping Points,” Nature Climate Change 1, no. 4 (2011): 201-209; Timothy M. Lenton, Hermann Held, Jim W. Hall, Wolfgang Lucht, Stefan Rahmstorf, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, “Tipping Elements in the Earth’s Climate System,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 6 (2008): 1786-1793.
6
reflectivity of solar radiation (albedo), or the collapse of the Greenland or Antarctic ice-sheets.10
Recent data also suggest that most models used to study global climate change are conservative
in their estimates, and that, particularly for vulnerable ecosystems such as the Arctic, changes
may be occurring faster and more acutely than previously predicted.11
While impacts vary significantly by region, global warming is already causing: species
extinction, biodiversity loss, desertification, rising sea levels, coastal flooding, declining crop
yields, reduced freshwater, increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and
mass displacement of vulnerable people, particularly in the Global South.12 Due to their scope,
climate impacts extend across the social, cultural, political, and economic sectors of human life,
but disproportionately affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations, who are also
least responsible for historical emissions of GHGs and least economically able to fund adaptation
and mitigation efforts.13 Estimates of the total economic costs of climate change vary depending
on a range of included factors and assumptions about both climate change and human adaptation.
However, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report suggests that “incomplete estimates of global
annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2˚C are between 0.2 and 2.0%
of income … [and] losses are more likely than not to be greater, rather than smaller, than this
range.”14 The estimates of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,
commissioned for the British Government and released in 2006, are even higher: “The overall
costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each
year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates
of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.”15 The Stern Review estimates the costs of
10 IPCC 2013, 16; Timothy M. Lenton, “Arctic Climate Tipping Points,” Ambio 41, no. 1 (2012): 10-22. 11 Chris Derksen and Ross Brown, “Spring snow cover extent reductions in the 2008-2012 period exceeding climate model projections,” Geophysical Research Letters 39, no. 19 (2012): 1-6; Glenn Scherer, “Climate Science Predictions Prove Too Conservative,” Scientific American (December 6, 2012). Accessed at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm ?id=climate-science-predictions-prove-too-conservative on March 1, 2013. 12 IPCC 2013; World Bank 2013. 13 World Bank 2013. 14 IPCC 2013, 19. 15 Nicholas Stern, Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (London: HM Treasury, 2006), vi.
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mitigating climate change to be relatively small at approximately 1% of global GDP per year,16
but the economic imbalance between mitigation versus continuing current levels of global GHG
emissions has thus far failed to motivate significant global emissions reductions.
The effects of climate change are exacerbated by the fact that it represents only one aspect of a
broader ecological crisis facing Earth and its inhabitants. Climate change, along with
biodiversity loss and human interference in the nitrogen cycle, form three (out of a total seven)
global ecological boundaries thought to have already been exceeded due to human activity, with
two others, ocean acidification and interference in the phosphorus cycle, approaching their
estimated safe thresholds.17 The cumulative effects of an industrialized civilization of over
seven billion human beings have begun to strain the carrying capacity of the global biosphere.
Anthropogenic climate change that began with “the emergence of wide-scale fossil-fuel use in
the industrial revolution period … has become a worldwide transformation of rocks into air, a
geological reversal of hundreds of millions of years of carbon sequestration from the
atmosphere.”18 Together with other contemporary and recent-historical interactions between
humanity and the biosphere, the result is the emergence of a new geological era, the
Anthropocene, characterized by humanity’s ability to fundamentally affect the global ecological
context that it relies upon for survival.19
Anthropogenic alteration of the biosphere has been a major subject of scientific inquiry since the
1970s, but only emerged as a leading, albeit divisive, political issue in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In 1972, the UN Conference on the Human Environment first drew global attention to planet-
wide environmental problems, the same year that Limits to Growth examined the constraints to
economic growth on a finite planet, catalyzing widespread concern over the sustainability of the
16 Stern 2006, vi. 17 Johan Rockström, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Björn Nykvist, Cynthia A. de Wit, Terry Hughes, Sander van der Leeuw, Henning Rodhe, Sverker Sörlin, Peter K. Snyder, Robert Costanza, Uno Svedin, Malin Falkenmark, Louise Karlberg, Robert W. Corell, Victoria J. Fabry, James Hansen, Brian Walker, Diana Liverman, Katherine Richardson, Paul Crutzen, Jonathan A. Foley, “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461, no. 7263 (2009): 472-475. 18 Simon Dalby, Security and Environmental Change (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 99. 19 Paul J. Crutzen, “Geology of Mankind,” Nature 415, no. 23 (2002): 23.
8
human-environment relationship.20 In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and
Development popularized the idea of ‘sustainable development’, one year before the Toronto
Conference on the Changing Atmosphere issued its dire warning equating the risks of climate
change to those of nuclear conflict. The much-heralded 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and subsequent
signing of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC), suggested recognition by global leaders of the need to seriously engage
with the ecological challenges of the late 20th century.
Initially, climate change was the subject of significant political activity, even optimism, as the
waning of superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union enabled greater
international cooperation around what emerged as one of the foremost global issues of the post-
Cold era. The signing of the UNFCCC, and later its additional Kyoto Protocol, were seen as
major milestones on the road towards mitigating humanity’s warming of the biosphere.
However, these and other multilateral and national efforts to mitigate GHG emissions have failed
to curb the trend of humanity’s growing volume of total emissions. This failure has led to
increased concern over the corresponding acceleration of the pace and severity of climate change
impacts around the world. In particular, the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports,
released in 2001 and 2007, respectively, catalyzed widespread fear over the scope and scale of
global climate change, as well as the broad inadequacy of existing efforts to affect significant
emissions reductions.21 The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, released in 2014, reiterates the
emergent severity of climate change, articulating the litany of worldwide environmental hazards
attributed to anthropogenic interference, and underscoring the consequences of our collective
lack of progress in effectively reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.22
1.2 The Changing Arctic
The effects of the changing climate are perhaps most visible in the circumpolar regions, where
20 Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth (New York: New American Library, 1972). 21 IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 22 IPCC 2013.
9
warming temperatures are reshaping the Arctic’s ecology, and fundamentally affecting human,
animal, and plant life across the region. As the most sensitive parts of the globe to climate
variation, the polar regions – both the Arctic and Antarctica – act as barometers of the health of
the global climate system; they are ‘canaries in the coalmine’ experiencing the fastest and most
dramatic climate change-related impacts on the planet. As identified by numerous studies,
notably the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and IPCC’s Fourth and Fifth Assessment
Reports, Arctic sea ice is melting rapidly, glaciers are receding, snow cover is reduced, and
temperatures are increasing at approximately twice the average global rate.23 Seasonal changes
on land have been dramatic, including warmer temperatures with more extreme winter-summer
variation, melting permafrost, changing terrestrial water systems, increased lake temperatures,
stress on plant and animal populations, invasive species, and other impacts on flora and fauna.24
However, particularly significant effects are occurring in marine systems, since the Arctic region
is a cryosphere largely composed of frozen water. Sea ice volume is estimated to have decreased
by between 9-13% per decade between 1979-2012,25 reaching an historic low of 35% less than
the 1979-2000 average in the summer of 2011.26 In total, “over the past three decades, Arctic
summer sea ice retreat was unprecedented and sea surface temperatures were anomalously high
in at least the last 1,450 years.”27 Recent studies observe that sea ice is melting even faster than
predicted by recent warming models, resulting in record low summer ice levels years before they
23 IPCC 2013, 9; IPCC 2007; J.N. Larsen, O.A. Anisimov, A. Constable, A.B. Hollowed, N. Maynard, P. Prestrud, T.D. Prowse, and J.M.R. Stone. “Polar Regions,” in V.R. Barros, C.B. Field, D.J. Dokken, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White, eds, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014). 24 ACIA, Impacts of a Warming Climate: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004); IPCC 2007; IPCC 2014. 25 IPCC 2013, 9. 26 Wynne Parry, “Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low, According to One Measure,” LiveScience (September 12, 2011). Accessed at http://www.livescience.com/16023-arctic-sea-ice-record.html on May 2, 2014. 27 IPCC 2013, 9.
10
were predicted to occur.28 The Arctic, a region characterized by its frigid climate and the frozen
ocean at its core, is predicted to be free of summer sea ice in as few as 30 years,29 marking a
radical and irreversible alteration to the most definitive feature of the northern polar region.
The scope and scale of this transformation is such that it is altering the ecological basis upon
which all human activity in the Arctic has been based. Climate change is affecting, and
undermining, established ways of living in one of the harshest and most challenging survival
environments in the world.30 Researchers have identified up to eleven direct and indirect climate
related impacts on Arctic human health, including: new physical hazards related to the changing
landscape, increased rates of accidents and fatalities due to unpredictable ice and weather
patterns, new vectors for communicable disease, changes to food- and water-borne pathogens,
increased exposure to environmental contaminants, and ozone depletion causing increased
exposure to ultraviolet radiation.31 Concerns over traditional food sources, particularly large
mammals, fish stocks, and plant life, have spread as the quality and availability of ‘country
foods’ have become increasingly eroded.32 This, in turn, exposes human populations to greater
vulnerability to changes in local economies towards market-based waged systems, as people and
communities become increasingly unable to support themselves using traditional subsistence
methods.33 It also affects Indigenous cultures that are closely linked to the natural environment,
including animals whose hunting and consumption is central to cultural and spiritual practices.34
28 IPCC 2014, 3; Institute of Environmental Physics, “Arctic sea ice extent small as never before,” (September 8, 2011). Accessed at http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/seaice/amsr/; National Snow and Ice Data Center, “Arctic sea ice at minimum extent,” (September 15, 2011). Accessed at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2011/091511.html. 29 M. Wang and J.E. Overland, “A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years?” Geophysical Research Letters 36, no. 7 (2009): 1-5. 30 AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004). 31 Jacinthe Séguin, ed, Human Health in a Changing Climate: A Canadian Assessment of Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity (Ottawa: Health Canada, 2008), 324-327; Carl M. Hild and Vigdis Stordahl, “Human Health and Well-being,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 155-168. 32 Hild and Stordahl 2004; Stephanie Meakin and Tiina Kurvits, Assessing the Impacts of Climate Change on Food Security in the Canadian Arctic (Ottawa: GRID-Arendal, 2009). 33 Gérard Duhaime, “Economic Systems,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 69-84; Nils Aarsæther, Larissa Riabova, and Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, “Community Viability,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 139-154. 34 Yvon Csonka and Peter Schweitzer, “Societies and Cultures: Change and Persistence,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 45-68.
11
The warming environment is also undermining the physical integrity of communities and
infrastructure in vulnerable areas across the Arctic. Due partly to recent studies of the West
Antarctic ice sheet, estimated rates of glacier melt are expected to raise global sea levels by as
much as 10 feet over the next few centuries,35 and “in some cases, communities and industrial
facilities in coastal zones are already threatened or being forced to relocate.”36 Impacts are
already apparent in damage to critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, airstrips, pipelines,
homes, and sewage systems as a result of melting permafrost and the destabilization of the
ground upon which many Arctic communities are built. Some communities have been forced to
relocate as coastal erosion renders their homes uninhabitable; the US Army Corps of Engineers
identifies as many as 178 Alaskan villages as threatened,37 as are coastal communities in
Canada, Greenland, and Russia.38 According to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment: “The
sum of these factors threatens to overwhelm the adaptive capacity of some Arctic populations
and ecosystems. The increasingly rapid rate of recent climate change poses new challenges to
the resilience of Arctic life.”39 This assessment of the severity of climate-related challenges
affecting the Arctic is confirmed by the more recent findings of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment
Report, which notes that “the rapid rate at which climate is changing in the Polar Regions will
impact natural and social systems and may exceed the rate at which some of their components
can successfully adapt.”40 Overall, it is clear that environmental changes have profound
implications for medium and long-term human wellbeing in the Arctic, and require significant
efforts to facilitate adaptation and mitigation of their worst impacts.
These major ecological changes are occurring roughly concurrent with major political and social
35 Justin Gillis and Kenneth Chang, “Scientists warn of rising oceans from polar melt,” The New York Times (May 12, 2014). Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/earth/collapse-of-parts-of-west-antarctica-ice-sheet-has-begun-scientists-say.html?_r=0 on May 15, 2014. 36 Christine K. Durbak and Claudia M. Strauss, “Securing a Healthier World,” in Felix Dodds and Tim Pippard, eds, Human and Environmental Security: An Agenda for Change (London: Earthscan, 2005), 134. 37 EPA, “Coastal Alaska Native Villages Plan for Relocation,” Adaptation Examples in Alaska. Accessed at http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/alaska-adaptation.html on May 6, 2014. 38 ACIA 2004, 81; K.R. Barnhart, I. Overeem, and R.S. Anderson, “The effect of changing sea ice on the physical vulnerability of Arctic coasts,” The Cryosphere 8 (2014): 1777-1779. 39 ACIA 2004, 5. 40 IPCC 2014, 3.
12
changes across the region, as well. The post-Cold War period has witnessed the transformation
of the Arctic from a zone of conflict to one of cooperation; the creation of new regional
governance structures, such as the Arctic Council, to manage changing regional relations;
growing interest by non-regional state and non-state actors; and global economic phenomena,
such as growing resource scarcity and concerns over ‘peak oil’ that have focused significant
attention on the Arctic’s undeveloped hydrocarbon resources, estimated at 13% of global oil and
30% of global gas reserves.41 But dramatic as it is, environmental change is occurring against a
familiar Arctic backdrop: sparse population density and few urban centres; limited infrastructure;
ongoing and unresolved questions of Indigenous peoples’ claims to rights, land, and self-
determination; the relative underdevelopment of regional governance arrangements to facilitate
dispute resolution, interstate negotiation, and multilateral policymaking; and persistent rivalry
between Russia and its Arctic neighbours. The shift from a seasonally ice-bound to eventually
ice-free region will fundamentally alter domestic and regional politics, opportunities for
economic development, the salience of traditional indigenous knowledge based on changing
ecological conditions, and the viability of subsistence ways of life. These interrelated changes
are generating a basic transformation of every aspect of social, political, and economic life in the
circumpolar Arctic.
1.3 Defining the Arctic
Taken together, regional ecological changes affect the definition of ‘the Arctic’ itself, which has
typically been understood on the basis of its distinct ecosystem. There is no authoritative
definition of the Arctic region, but most characterize the Arctic based on its unique ecological
features, such as high latitude, extreme winter temperatures, specific biota, and encirclement of
the Arctic Ocean.42 Definitions of the Arctic have also become more attentive to the human and
41 Donald L. Gautier, Kenneth J. Bird, Ronald R. Charpentier, Arthur Grantz, David W. Houseknecht, Timothy R. Klett, Thomas E. Moore, Janet K. Pitman, Christopher J. Schenk, John H. Schuenemeyer, Kai Sørensen, Marilyn E. Tennyson, Zenon C. Valin, Craig J. Wandrey, “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,” Science 324. no. 5931 (2009): 1175-1179. 42 The ACIA (2004, 4) defines the Arctic in ecological terms, while the AHDR (Young and Einarsson, 17-18) relies on a hybrid definition incorporating ecological, geographical, and socio-political dimensions. Typical ecological
13
political factors that constitute the region as a distinct arena of global politics. But the Arctic as
an ecological region is, in many ways, easier to define than the Arctic as a socio-political region,
which is why the region-ness of the Arctic is complicated by the changing climate.43 As the
Arctic Human Development Report notes:
There is nothing intuitively obvious about the idea of treating the Arctic as a distinct region … [since it] consists largely of segments of nation states whose political centers of gravity lie, for the most part, far to the south … It is possible to resort to the use of biophysical criteria to determine the extent of the Arctic as a region … [but] this approach has little to recommend it in cultural, economic, or political terms, [and] it also fails to produce a clear cut result … [Many] writers have questioned the appropriateness of treating the Arctic as a region at all.44
Nonetheless, the Arctic is now generally viewed as a distinct and coherent region defined by its
ecological distinctiveness and the complex governance regime that has emerged to manage its
interstate relations.45 As many scholars have discussed, shifts in global politics and increasing
cooperation among circumpolar states caused the gradual emergence of an Arctic region from
the 1970s onwards.46 No longer a liminal buffer-zone separating distinct regions in North
America, Northern Europe, and Soviet Eurasia, in geopolitical terms the Arctic has rapidly
progressed “from Cold War theatre to mosaic of cooperation.”47 Importantly, this cooperation
has been premised from the outset on conserving and protecting the fragile Arctic environment,
definitions of the Arctic include the area above the latitude of 66˚30 N, circumscribed by the Arctic Circle; the 10˚C July isotherm, i.e. the area where the average July temperature does not exceed 10˚C; and the northernmost tree line. 43 For instance, the political grouping of the ‘Arctic 5’ is comprised of states that are littoral to the Arctic Ocean, resulting in the exclusion of three states typically considered to belong to the Arctic but lacking immediate proximity to the Arctic Ocean. 44 Oran R. Young and Níels Einarsson, “Introduction,” in AHDR, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Steffanson Arctic Institute, 2004), 17-18. 45 Andrew Chater and Wilfrid Greaves, “Security Governance in the Arctic,” in Jim Sperling, ed, Handbook on Governance and Security (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2014). 46 Kristian Åtland, “Mikhail Gorbachev, the Murmansk Initiative, and the Desecuritization of Interstate Relations in the Arctic,” Cooperation and Conflict 43, no. 3 (2008): 289-311; Carina Keskitalo, “International Region-building: Development of the Arctic as an International Region,” Cooperation and Conflict 42 no. 2 (2007): 187-205; Oran Young, “Governing the Arctic: from Cold War Theater to Mosaic of Cooperation,” Global Governance 11, no. 1 (2005): 9-15; Oran Young, “Whither the Arctic? Conflict or Cooperation in the Circumpolar North,” Polar Record 45, no. 232 (2009): 73-82. 47 Young 2005, 9.
14
and ecological factors have remained key to interstate relations and the constitution of the Arctic
as a political region. The famed speech by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Murmansk in
1987, which ushered in a new era of Arctic cooperation and signified the beginning of the end of
the Cold War, emphasized Arctic environmental issues as key to East-West cooperation.48 Thus,
some see Arctic security relations as forming a “regional environmental security complex”
centred on the ecological holism and interdependence that characterizes the circumpolar
region.49
As depicted in Figure 1, today, the Arctic is generally understood to comprise territories and sub-
national regions within eight sovereign states (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
Russia, Sweden, and the USA), and contain roughly 4 million inhabitants (half of them Russian)
spread across an approximately 40 million km2 area surrounding the Arctic Ocean, accounting
for about 8 percent of the Earth’s surface.50 However, with the exception of Iceland, the Arctic
consists only of territories in the northern margins of each of these countries, reflecting the
historical reality that “the Arctic is a region of peripheries … Matters of policy relating to the
Arctic have traditionally involved interactions between northern peripheries and the metropoles
of states located far to the south.”51 Partly for this reason, circumpolar politics are notable for
the high level of political engagement of Arctic Indigenous peoples.52 Though varying
significantly based on national context, overall they are perhaps the most politically empowered
Indigenous peoples in the world.53 Some Arctic Indigenous peoples have achieved significant
degrees of autonomous self-government or devolved sub-national governments, as in Greenland
and for First Nations and Inuit in the Canadian territories of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and
48 Åtland 2008. 49 Heather Exner-Pirot, “What is the Arctic a Case of? The Arctic as a Regional Environmental Security Complex and the Implications for Policy,” The Polar Journal 3, no. 1 (2013): 120–35; Chater and Greaves 2014. 50 Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Arctic Pollution Issues: A State of the Arctic Environment Report (Oslo: AMAP, 1997). 51 Young 2005, 9-10. 52 Iceland is the exception as the only circumpolar state located entirely north of 60 degrees latitude and the only one without an Indigenous population. 53 Timo Koivurova and Leena Heinämäki, “The Participation of Indigenous Peoples in International Norm-Making in the Arctic,” Polar Record 42, no. 221 (2006): 101-109; Monica Tennberg, “Indigenous Peoples as International Political Actors: A Summary,” Polar Record 46, no. 238 (2010): 264-270.
15
Nunavut.54 Others are represented by non-state or quasi-official bodies such as the Alaska
Native Regional Corporations or the three Sámi Parliaments in Fennoscandia.55 Indigenous
peoples have achieved a particularly high degree of formal political involvement in the Arctic
Council, the premier forum for regional interstate cooperation, where six Permanent Participants
represent Indigenous peoples alongside the states that govern them. The Permanent Participants
“sit at the same table with the Arctic states and may table proposals for decision. Even though
final decisions [of the Arctic Council] are made by the Arctic states in consensus, the permanent
participants must … be fully consulted, which is close to a de facto power of veto should they all
reject a particular proposal.”56 Some, notably Inuit in Greenland and Canada, even engage in
political practices and assert a range of legal rights usually reserved for sovereign states.57 Thus,
to a significant extent, the Arctic as a political region is also defined by the inclusion of its
Indigenous peoples.
In terms of its region-ness, it is therefore reasonable to suggest the Arctic consists of three
distinct but inter-related features: its eight sovereign states, the presence and political agency of
its Indigenous peoples, and the unique ecological context that links them together. The
emergence of a distinct post-Cold War polar region is noteworthy because it signifies a
redrawing of the Arctic imaginary, as well as the geopolitical implications of new opportunities
for political agency to state and non-state actors from across, and beyond, the circumpolar
region. But as the Arctic transforms due to the warming climate, the ecology that has
underpinned human activities in the region, and formed the basis for regional cooperation, is
eroding. As climate change has become increasingly visible around the circumpole, Arctic
54 Natalia Loukacheva, Arctic Promise: Legal and Political Autonomy of Greenland and Nunavut (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 55 Finland, Norway, and Sweden each have a separate Sámi Parliament representing their respective Indigenous populations. There is also a Sámi population on the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia who have observer representation at the transnational Sámi Parliamentary Conference, but no formal political structure within Russia. 56 Koivurova and Heinämäki 2006, 104. 57 Frances Abele and Thierry Rodon, “Inuit Diplomacy in the Global ERA: The Strengths of Multilateral Internationalism,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 13, no. 3 (2007): 45-63; Inuit Circumpolar Council, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic (ICC, 2009); Jessica Shadian, “From States to Polities: Reconceptualizing Sovereignty through Inuit Governance,” European Journal of International Relations 16, no. 3 (2010): 485-510; Jessica Shadian, The Politics of Arctic Sovereignty: Oil, Ice, and Inuit Governance (New York: Routledge, 2014); Gary N. Wilson, “Inuit Diplomacy in the Circumpolar North” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 13, no. 3 (2007): 65-80.
16
Figure 1: Political Map of the Circumpolar Arctic
governments have acknowledged the magnitude of its impacts, proposed policies to address
them, and claimed to recognize the significant challenges already unfolding or predicted to arise.
As the subsequent chapters will discuss, many of these challenges have been articulated as
security issues, though climate change itself has not been constructed as such by circumpolar
states. The widely employed link between the changing environment and in/security speaks
directly to academic debates over the merits and implications of ‘securitizing’ the environment,
i.e. treating environmental factors as relevant to state and international security. These debates
have yet to be resolved, but have developed in important ways in light of the increasing severity
of climate change and its impacts, as discussed in Chapter 3.
70o
80o
60o
Alaska(U.S.A.)
C A
N A
D A
YukonTerritory
Northwest Terri- tories
Nunavut
Greenland(Denmark)
Faroe Islands(Denmark)
Nordland
Väster-botten
Norr-botten
Lappi
Oulu
Murmansk(Oblast)
Arkhangelsk(Oblast)
Magadan(Oblast)
Nenets(Aut. Okr.) Khanty-Mansi
(Aut. Okrug)
Yamalo-Nenets (Aut. Okr.)
Taimyr(Dolgano-Nenets)
(former Aut. Okrug)
Evenkia(former Aut. Okrug)
Chukotka(Aut. Okrug)
Krasnoyarsk (Territory)
Tyumen (Oblast)
Sakha (Yakutia)(Republic)
NovayaZemlya
(R.F.)
Frans JosefLand(R.F.)
Karelia (Rep.)
Komi(Republic)
Troms
Finnmark
Svalbard(Norway)
ICELAND
NO
RWAY
SWED
EN
FINLAND
R U
S S
I A
N
F E
D E
R A
T I
O N
Koryakia(former
Aut. Okr.)
Kamchatka (Terri
tory
)
Nunavik
Arctic administrative areascompiled byWinfried K. Dallmann,Norwegian Polar Institute
17
1.4 Changing Arctic Security
There is little question that understandings of in/security in the Arctic have changed profoundly
over the past several decades. This change has been driven by the political developments of the
post-Cold War period, and the growing accessibility of the Arctic as a result of environmental
change. During the Cold War, the Arctic suffered from a dichotomy whereby its over-
militarization as a buffer between competing superpowers resulted in an under-politicization
from which it has still only partially emerged.58 The geopolitical conditions that transformed the
Arctic “first into a military flank, then a military front or even a ‘military theatre’” restricted the
development of effective political institutions.59 The end of the Cold War thus altered the
geopolitical context that had kept the Arctic frozen in a state of superpower competition, stifling
opportunities for regional development and necessitating the deployment of substantial military
resources to the region. This political shift has interacted with the changing environment to
affect the security of Arctic states in at least three ways: it has catalyzed regional cooperation; it
has made the Arctic more accessible to state and commercial actors, raising the stakes for
outstanding boundary disputes and resource development; and it has contributed to the
emergence of various unconventional security issues.
Cooperation on environmental issues catalyzed a major improvement in Arctic security towards
the end of the Cold War, as the impending collapse of the Soviet Union opened space to
normalize inter-state relations. Gorbachev’s 1987 Murmansk speech called for the Arctic to
become a “zone of peace” characterized by a nuclear weapons-free zone in Northern Europe,
negotiations on restricting military activity and scaling down conventional armaments in the
region, and implementation of confidence-building measures.60 Environmental issues were the
locus of these efforts as Soviet/Russian officials engaged with their Western counterparts on a
range of initiatives, resulting in greater scientific and environmental cooperation and
establishment of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy,
58 Keskitalo 2007, 194 59 AHDR 2004, 218 60 Åtland 2008, 294.
18
and eventually the Arctic Council.61 The Murmansk speech set in motion the new institutional
structure for the post-Cold War Arctic in which states and Indigenous Peoples are permanently
represented, and commitment to a cooperative and rule-governed regional order. From the
perspective of conventional inter-state security, the Arctic of the 1990s and early 2000s was far
more secure than it had been during the preceding decades.
However, in recent years the Arctic has undergone a moderate remilitarization and relative
increase in inter-state tension. Arctic states have increased military spending and activities, and
some have employed bellicose rhetoric while asserting their regional interests.62 While the
United States never really decreased its Arctic military presence, militarized rhetoric and
activities have increased in Canada,63 Norway,64 and Russia.65 Circumpolar states have
reinvested in Arctic military capabilities and infrastructure; undertaken sovereignty assertion
patrols and more frequent military exercises; renewed activities such as long range bomber
patrols and ‘buzzing’ neighbours’ airspace; reacted and over-reacted to each other’s military
activities; and dismissed claims of non-Arctic states like China and South Korea to a legitimate
role in the region, despite the latters’ investments in Arctic research and ice-breaking
capabilities.66 Growth in civilian activity, primarily related to tourism and destinational
61 Johan Eriksson, “Security in the Barents Region: Interpretations and Implications of the Norwegian Barents Initiative,” Cooperation and Conflict 30, no. 3 (1995): 259-286; Geir Hønneland, “East-West Collaboration in the European North,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (2010): 837-850. 62 Rob Huebert, Heather Exner-Pirot, Adam Lajeunesse and Jay Gulledge, Climate Change and International Security: The Arctic as a Bellwether (Arlington: Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 2012). 63 Rob Huebert, “Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security in a Transforming World,” Foreign Policy for Canada’s Tomorrow, No. 4 (Toronto: Canadian International Council, 2009); Rob Huebert, The Newly Emerging Arctic Security Environment (Calgary: Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, 2010); P. Whitney Lackenbauer, “Mirror Images? Canada, Russia, and the Circumpolar World,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (2010): 879-897; Kristofer Bergh, “The Arctic Policies of Canada and the United States: Domestic Motives and International Context,” SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security, no. 2012/1 (2012): 1-19. 64 Kristian Åtland and Torbjørn Pedersen, “The Svalbard Archipelago in Russian Security Policy: Overcoming the Legacy of Fear – or Reproducing It?” European Security 17, no. 2-3 (2008): 227-251; Øystein Jensen and Svein Vigeland Rottem, “The Politics of Security and International Law in Norway’s Arctic Waters,” Polar Record 46, no. 236 (2010): 75–83. 65 Caitlyn L. Antrim, “The Next Geographical Pivot: The Russian Arctic in the 21st Century,” Naval War College Review 63, no. 3 (2010): 15–37; Katarzyna Zysk, “Russia’s Arctic Security Strategy: Ambitions and Constraints,” Joint Forces Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2010): 103–10; Kristian Åtland, “Russia’s Armed Forces and the Arctic: All Quiet on the Northern Front?” Contemporary Security Policy 32, no. 2 (2011): 267-285. 66 Huebert et al. 2012
19
shipping, also requires military assets be stationed regionally to provide search and rescue
capabilities in case of accidents. While some military activities have been cooperative, such as
joint exercises between multiple Arctic states and several meetings of all Arctic military chiefs, it
is unclear how regional relations will be affected by new tensions related to non-Arctic
phenomena, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea in spring 2014 and support for armed
separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, and subsequent Western sanctions against Russian officials.
But pan-Arctic cooperation continues, and though some scholars have expressed concern over
the prospect of regional conflict,67 most reject the likelihood of armed violence in the region.68
This increased militarism has been catalyzed by environmental change, particularly the
increasing navigability and accessibility of historically ice-covered waters. When the Arctic
Ocean was frozen for most of the year, states had little incentive to quarrel over regional
disagreements. Disputed Arctic boundaries had little effect on core national interests, and states
were unwilling to risk destabilizing the global strategic balance or their diplomatic relations over
trivial Arctic issues. The inaccessibility of most offshore Arctic resources made them
geopolitically insignificant. As sea ice has receded, however, states have paid greater attention
to the delimitation of their Arctic maritime boundaries and expressed interest in settling
outstanding disputes. This has coincided with the need to submit claims to their extended
continental shelves within ten years of ratifying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS).69 While Norway and Russia negotiated their boundary in the Barents Sea in 2010,
maritime disputes remain between Canada and Greenland (Denmark) and Canada and the United
States, and there is geographic overlap between the Canadian, Danish, and Russian continental
shelf submissions under UNCLOS to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf
(CLCS). Although generally expected to be resolved through negotiation, cooperation in
determining their extended continental shelves might be one area strained by the recent
67 Huebert 2009, 2010. 68 Young 2009; Kathrin Keil, “The Arctic: A New Region of Conflict? The Case of Oil and Gas,” Cooperation and Conflict 49, no. 2 (2014): 162-190. 69 Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon, “Canada and Arctic Politics: The Continental Shelf Extension,” Ocean Development and International Law 39, no. 4 (2008): 343-359; Klaus Dodds, “Flag Planting and Finger Pointing: The Law of the Sea, the Arctic and the Political Geographies of the Extended Continental Shelf,” Political Geography 29, no. 2 (2010): 63-73.
20
deterioration in Western-Russian relations, and, given the lengthy and non-binding nature of
CLCS determinations, their outcome is uncertain.
In addition to the symbolic value and national attachment to certain Arctic geographies, notably
the North Pole, what lies behind states’ interests in asserting and expanding their Arctic
sovereignty is desire for the greatest possible future economic benefits from Arctic resources.70
At stake are shipping lanes, fisheries, and hydrocarbons, the latter estimated to be 90 billion
barrels of oil (13% of undiscovered global resources) and 46 trillion cubic metres of natural gas
(30% of undiscovered global resources).71 Major conflicts are unlikely given that doubt remains
over the viability of developing these resources, and because the majority are believed to lie in
undisputed sovereign territory.72 But the link between sovereignty assertion and energy
resources is clear: “Issues of Arctic energy and development and Arctic sovereignty are linked
… When no one was talking about actually developing Arctic resources, the many sovereignty
issues could be and were ignored.”73 In practice, many continue to be ignored, though the stakes
involved in the symbolic politics of Arctic territory have grown as resource extraction has
become a greater possibility. Though all Arctic states continue to emphasize the absence of
conventional military threats in the region and reaffirm their commitments to peaceful resolution
of Arctic disputes, many have also constructed Arctic resources as central to their national
economic security interests.74 Thus, while there is little evidence the warming environment will
directly result in interstate violence, the opening of the Arctic has led to a renewed emphasis on
military activity, and the prospect of resource wealth has raised the stakes for states asserting and
defending their Arctic sovereignty claims.
70 Jeffrey Mazo, “Who Owns the North Pole?” Survival 56, no. 1 (2014): 61-70. 71 Gautier et al. 2009. 72 Keil 2014. 73 Benoit Beauchamp and Rob Huebert, “Canada’s Sovereignty Linked to Energy Resources in the Arctic,” Arctic 61, no. 3 (2008): 342. 74 Leif C. Jensen and Pål Wilter Skedsmo, “Approaching the North: Norwegian and Russian Foreign Policy Discourses on the European Arctic,” Polar Research 29, no. 3 (2010): 439-450; Leif C. Jensen, “Seduced and Surrounded by Security: A Post-Structuralist Take on Norwegian High North Securitizing Discourses,” Cooperation and Conflict 48, no. 1 (2012): 80-99.
21
Finally, environmental change has led to the emergence of unconventional security issues.
Though they have yet to actually materialize, prospective risks such as illegal shipping,
smuggling, irregular migration, and even terrorism, in increasingly accessible Arctic waters have
attracted high-level concern and informed training scenarios for some armed forces.75 Many
unconventional security issues are also directly or indirectly related to the extraction of Arctic
resources. New security governance practices are being established to respond to threats related
to the growing volume of maritime traffic, such as new agreements on regional search and rescue
and oil spill emergency response.76 In this respect, the changing environment causes new
threats, such as increased risk of damage to vessels and oilrigs from sea ice and unpredictable
weather, and new objects of security, including the Arctic ecosystem itself. Indeed, significant
popular concern has emerged over the possibility of a major oil spill, shipwreck, or extraction
related accident occurring in the region, with some Arctic communities employing legal or
advocacy tactics to prevent resource projects from taking place nearby.77 However, several
circumpolar states have also characterized activism or protests related to climate change and
resource extraction as illegitimate, criminal, terrorist, or threatening to their national interests.
Canada and Russia, in particular, have been accused of enacting new legislation to police
domestic dissent and allow the state to pursue its goal of resource extraction.78 Thus, while the
environment has long mediated understandings of security threats in the Arctic, both the direct
impacts of environmental change and activities enabled as a result are being constituted as
security issues in the Arctic. As discussed in greater detail in Chapters 4-7, current security
issues identified by Arctic states highlight the relationship between environmental change,
national defence, sovereign territoriality, resource extraction, and domestic political opposition.
75 Michael Byers, Who Owns the Arctic: Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 16-18; Meagan Fitzpatrick, “Arctic military exercise targets human-smuggling ‘ecotourists’,” CBC News (August 24, 2012). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/arctic-military-exercise-targets-human-smuggling-ecotourists-1.1166215 on July 6, 2014. 76 Chater and Greaves 2014 77 Gail Fondahl and Anna Sirina, “Oil Pipeline Development and Indigenous Rights in Eastern Siberia,” Indigenous Affairs 2, no. 3 (2006): 58-67; Berit Kristoffersen and Brigt Dale, “Post-Petroleum Security in Lofoten: How Identity Matters,” Arctic Review on Law and Politics 5, no. 2 (2014): 201-226. 78 Atle Staalesen, “Putin arms Arctic drillers,” Barents Observer (April 23, 2014). Accessed at http://barentsobserver.com/en/security/2014/04/putin-arms-arctic-drillers-23-04 on July 6, 2014; Tina Dafnos, “First Nations in the Crosshairs,” Canadian Dimension 49, no. 2 (2015). Accessed at https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/first-nations-in-the-crosshairs on August 19, 2015.
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1.5 Methodology, Case Selection and Evidence
This project takes as its starting point that understandings of in/security are socially constructed,
essentially contested, and governed by relations of power within a given political community.
On this basis, it seeks to explain how particular understandings of the relationship between
environmental change and security have been incorporated into the foreign and security policies
of circumpolar states. To do this, it employs the conceptual tools of securitization theory, which
views understandings of security not as objective analyses of material conditions, but as efforts
to securitize – raise to the discursive level of existential threat – issues relevant to the interests of
particular sets of actors. Regardless of their accuracy or normativity, all representations of
in/security constitute securitizing moves that attempt to designate particular phenomena as
requiring immediate attention and superordinate status within relevant policy discussions,
usually by identifying a threat to a certain referent object.
According to Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, whose ideas are discussed extensively in Chapter 3,
“securitization studies aims to gain an increasingly precise understanding of who securitizes, on
what issues (threats), for whom (referent objects), why, with what results, and, not least, under
what conditions (i.e., what explains when securitization is successful).”79 Securitization, the
process of constituting a political issue as a security issue, can thus be studied through asking
five questions:80
1) What is the referent object of a securitizing move?
2) From what does the referent object require protection (i.e., what is the threat)?
3) What actions are proposed to protect against the specified threat?
4) What actions are actually taken?
5) What are the consequences of the actions taken for the referent object?
79 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 32. 80 These questions are inspired by the five-step defence policy model in Philippe Lagassé and Paul Robinson, Reviving Realism in the Canadian Defence Debate (Kingston: Centre for International Relations, 2008), 58.
23
Such questions of referents, threats, policies, and consequences have been the typical lines of
inquiry of securitization analyses. But the ubiquity of ‘security’ in various political and policy
discourses inoculates many analysts to the properties of security that make it a signifier of socio-
political power and driver of government action. Securitization theory has increasingly been
pressed to incorporate other questions that more effectively address how the identities of actors
at different points in the securitization process co-constitute particular constructions of
in/security. Such questions include: What is the relationship between the actor making a security
claim and the audience adjudicating it? Why are particular referent objects secured over others?
Why are particular policy-responses taken over others? Whose conception of in/security do such
policies reflect, and whose conceptions of in/security are omitted? Whose interests are
securitized is particularly important when studying the security policies of democratic societies,
where security is considered a public good and the political system is expected to respond to the
demands of citizens. The question of whose understanding of security informs state policy is a
crucial indicator of broader societal relations of power, authority, and political inclusion, and is
deeply implicated in constituting the conditions of in/security for specific groups of people.
This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of how security and environmental change
are understood in government policies, and by Indigenous peoples, in two circumpolar states:
Canada and Norway. For each case, official understandings of Arctic security are compared and
contrasted with those of sub-national and non-state actors representing Inuit and Sámi peoples,
respectively. It explores historical trends and some more recent developments, but its emphasis
is on contemporary understandings during the period 2001-2011, which encompasses several
important milestones in the production of knowledge around climate change, including the
IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and the
Arctic Human Development Report. It also includes the period during which all circumpolar
states released new Arctic security policies, and in which a number of flashpoint events related to
the Arctic ecosystem, regional governance, and interstate relations catalyzed varying degrees of
public and policymaking concern over issues pertaining to Arctic security.
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1.5.1 Case Selection
As part of a holistic ecological region, all Arctic states are experiencing similar forms of
environmental change that is generating or reinvigorating national debates over Arctic security.
Theoretically, therefore, any Arctic state could be a subject of this analysis. In practice,
however, there are a number of factors that direct this research to focus principally on Canada
and Norway. First, Canada and Norway are especially suitable comparators: both are middle-
power Arctic states, with neither having their foreign and security policies or regional interests
filtered through a global role or history of Great Power status in the same way as, for instance,
the United States or Russia. Similar political, social, and economic features – including strong
liberal democratic political systems; peripheral Arctic geographies but strong Northern identities;
sizeable Indigenous minorities and devolved forms of Indigenous governance; significant but
limited military capabilities; and mixed primary-tertiary national economies – make Canada and
Norway appropriate for in-depth case studies. Both are also members of NATO, offering an
important control for possible variation in terms of each state’s need to defend itself against
external threats. Finally, prominent inclusion of human security perspectives in their post-Cold
War foreign policies make these two cases the most-likely examples for the success of
securitizing moves that identify environmental threats to human security in the Arctic.81
The other three coastal states – Greenland/Denmark, Russia, and the United States – are more
idiosyncratic, and while instructive of certain trends in Arctic security are more difficult to
compare with their circumpolar neighbours. Denmark is only an Arctic state by virtue of its
suzerainty over Greenland, which is self-governing and increasingly autonomous in domestic
affairs, though foreign policy remains a Danish responsibility. The process of constructing
Greenland’s security interests is thus subject to different political forces than for Arctic
territories less independent and subject to more centralized political control from their non-Arctic
national capitals. Russia is the largest and most populous circumpolar state, but is also
historically, culturally, and geopolitically distinct from its Arctic neighbours. Russian security
interests in the region are shaped by its antagonistic history with the West during the Cold War,
and by enduring political rivalries with the United States and some European states. Russia is
81 Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 121.
25
also the only Arctic state not to be fully democratic, meaning that its internal political processes
would not be expected to be as open or responsive to non-state securitizing moves. Indeed, as a
quasi-authoritarian polity, there are strong reasons to expect securitization to operate quite
differently in Russia than in the Arctic democracies.82
The United States is also an outlier, as its role as a declining hegemon means that Arctic issues
are filtered through the lens of its global security interests. For this reason, the United States is
not a signatory of UNCLOS, the legal regime governing the Arctic region, which places it
outside of the framework through which many Arctic issues are adjudicated. The United States
is also only an Arctic state by virtue of Alaska, which was the most recent state to join the Union
and is, with Hawaii, the most peripheral to the American heartland. The United States thus lacks
a strong Arctic identity, which shapes its attitudes and interactions towards the region. The three
remaining Arctic states – Finland, Iceland, and Sweden – are excluded primarily because they
are not littoral to the Arctic Ocean, making them largely irrelevant to the central object of Arctic
security concern, namely the new challenges and opportunities afforded by climate change and
the melting sea ice.83 Iceland also lacks an Indigenous minority population, making it
inapplicable to significant portions of this project.
1.5.2 Evidence of (Attempted) Securitization
Following on Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde, “securitization can be studied directly; it does not
need indicators. The way to study securitization is to study discourse and political
constellations.”84 Data on different understandings of Arctic in/security were collected through
various methods, including textual and documentary analysis, primary interviews, and
82 Juha A. Vuori, “Illocutionary Logic and Strands of Securitization: Applying the Theory of Securitization to the Study of Non-Democratic Political Orders,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 1 (2008): 65-99. 83 Iceland is arguably littoral to the Arctic Ocean, but was excluded from the grouping of the Arctic 5, those states which identified themselves as bordering the Arctic Ocean. However, as a small state of fewer than 300,000, a small economy, limited military capabilities, and no Indigenous population, Iceland is limited in its political agency in the Arctic region. 84 Buzan et al. 1998, 25.
26
participant observation.85 Official state understandings of Arctic in/security are derived from
detailed examination of government documents, policy decisions, speeches, and relevant
secondary sources. For Indigenous understandings of Arctic security, I undertook textual
analysis of documents, pubic statements, and media that conceptualize Arctic in/security or
articulate securitizing moves produced by organizations representing Arctic Indigenous peoples
during the period 2001-2011. Such documents include policy statements, research papers, press
releases, speeches, parliamentary and other public testimonies, films, and academic contributions
by such groups as national Indigenous organizations, Indigenous governments, the Permanent
Participants of the Arctic Council, and individual Indigenous leaders. All texts, documents, and
media examined for this dissertation are available publicly and were produced or professionally
translated into English, with the sole exception of certain Norwegian language online news
media, which I translated using Google. Internal or confidential documents by these
organizations were not available for this analysis. Appendices of texts making security claims
on behalf of Indigenous peoples are included at the end of this dissertation.
Unsurprisingly, there were far more texts available in English for Indigenous peoples in Canada
than in Norway. Therefore, to supplement the limited number of documents in English available
for Sámi understandings of in/security, I conducted 12, in-person, semi-structured English
language interviews with leaders and individuals representing prominent Sámi organizations,
including: the Sámediggi (Sámi Parliament of Norway), the Sámi Reindeer Herders’ Association
of Norway, and the Saami Council. Interviewees were determined using a combination of key
informant and snowball selection methods.86 I also conducted participant observation over the
course of five months as a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Sámi Studies at the University of
Tromsø from April-July 2014. During this time I observed and engaged with Sámi politicians,
academics, activists, community members, and reindeer herders in northern Norway and
elsewhere in Sápmi. I also participated in a seven-day excursion to five communities in Sápmi
located in the Norwegian county of Norland and the Swedish county of Norrbotten. These
occasions afforded me a variety of opportunities to observe activities and discussions pertaining
to climate change, natural resource development, Sámi politics, and Norwegian state policy.
85 Participant observation was limited to the case of Sámi in Norway. 86 These 12 interviews represent a response rate of approximately 1:3.
27
Findings from this fieldwork are discussed in Chapter 7. In May 2014, I also conducted a
supplementary interview with Canadian Inuit leader Mary Simon by telephone. Transcripts and
recordings of all interviews are stored with the author. The data from this textual analyses, for
Inuit, and primary interviews, for Sámi, provide the core evidence for this project’s empirical
goal of mapping official and Indigenous understandings of Arctic in/security, supported by
appropriate secondary sources for comparative analysis of the two case studies.
The research findings were analyzed to identify securitizing moves pertaining to the Arctic made
by state- and Indigenous actors, with the goal of providing a representative picture of how
in/security is articulated in the circumpolar region. The focus is not on uncovering an underlying
‘true’ or ‘real’ conceptualization of in/security, but rather on examining how actors have
depicted their in/security in an effort to mobilize state action. Securitizing moves are identified
when they discursively construct issues in the Arctic region as security issues using the “general
grammar of security … plus the particular dialects of the different sectors, such as talk[ing]
identity in the societal sector, recognition and sovereignty in the political sector, [and]
sustainability in the environmental sector.”87 While this exercise is necessarily interpretive,
requiring judgments about what should be considered ‘security’-relevant, it is not arbitrary.
Indicators of the attempts at securitization include, but are not limited to, use of terms such as
‘security’, ‘insecurity’, ‘threat’, ‘hazard’, ‘danger’, and ‘risk’ to articulate what is threatening,
what is threatened, and a proposed defence-response. Less important than which specific words
or terms are used is the meaning they convey. “Security is about survival … it is when an issue
is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object,”88 denoting a situation
of crisis, emergency, or fear that legitimates extraordinary action. It is when the survival of a
referent object is depicted as threatened that in/security is invoked.
Since in/security is socially constructed, these data represent efforts to depict Arctic in/security
in specific ways, and afford an opportunity to compare how depictions differ between the official
securitizations of circumpolar governments and Arctic Indigenous peoples. Methodologically, it
is important to consider securitizing moves that have both succeeded in becoming complete
87 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. 88 Buzan et al. 1998, 21.
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securitizations, i.e. been accepted by the state, and those that have not. Solely considering
successful securitizations risks conflating the security preferences of dominant societal actors
with the security concerns of all groups within the state. Inattention to the limited ability of
certain groups to engage the state on ‘their’ security issues omits consideration of groups with
different security concerns co-habiting the same political space. It renders the security interests
of non-dominant social groups invisible because the authoritative audience, perhaps hostile or
oblivious to their concerns, may never accept their securitizing moves. Failed securitizations
must also be examined in order to identify what types of securitizing moves, originating from
which political actors, appear unlikely to succeed. When the security claims of particular actors
fail to be accepted by the state we have an entry point to examine the power relations operating
within a given social context that render only some security claims successful, while
marginalizing others as insufficient for the elevation in political attention suggested by
successful invocation of security language.
As discussed in Chapter 3, various analysts have examined the link between security and
environment. Researchers have examined how security in the Arctic is being undermined by
environmental hazards including climate change, pollution, ecological degradation, and resource
depletion,89 but the changing environment is also the centrepiece of state efforts to reconceive
their Arctic security interests in the post-Cold War era. Since 2006, all five coastal Arctic states
have released new Arctic security policies in direct response to the changing regional climate.90
As this dissertation examines, though varied in their focus and emphasis, official state
articulations of Arctic security nonetheless ascribe a shared significance to the changing
circumpolar environment, particularly the opening of the Arctic Ocean to maritime traffic,
89 Commission on Arctic Climate Change, The Shared Future: A Report of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change (Washington DC: The Aspen Institute, 2011); Jayantha Dhanapala, John Harris, and Jennifer Simons, eds, Arctic Security in the 21st Century: Conference Report (Burnaby: School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, 2008); Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Dawn R. Bazely, Maria Goloviznina, and Andrew J. Tanentzap, eds, Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic (New York: Routledge, 2014); James Kraska, ed, Arctic Security in an Age of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Kenneth S. Yalowitz, James F. Collins, and Ross A. Virginia, The Arctic Climate Change and Security Policy Conference: Final Report and Findings (Hanover: Dartmouth College, 2008). 90 Canada, Canada’s Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2009); Denmark, Kingdom of Denmark Strategy for the Arctic 2011-2012 (Copenhagen: Government of Denmark, 2011); Norway, The Norwegian Government’s High North Strategy (Oslo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2006); Russia, National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation to 2020 (Moscow: Russian Federation, 2009); White House, National Strategy for the Arctic Region (Washington DC: White House, 2013).
29
resource extraction, and potential rivals. Climate change, even more than the end of the Cold
War, has forced a reassessment of how security is understood and pursued in the Arctic region.
But there are distinct parameters to how Arctic states understand the security implications of
environmental change. Official state understandings of Arctic in/security are primarily
concerned with some combination of: politico-legal sovereignty over Arctic land, maritime
areas, and submarine resources; extraction of those resources; and defence against foreign
military action and unconventional security issues. Within this framework, people, communities,
and the broader Arctic ecology are not constructed as the primary referent objects of security
policy. Thus, despite the centrality of climate change, circumpolar security policies remain
focused on defence against potential geostrategic and sovereign territorial threats exacerbated by
climate change, or the opportunities for profitable development of oil, natural gas, and other
natural resources made possible by climate change. Given the magnitude of climate change in
the Arctic, the construction of climate change as a security threat by other states, and the
participation of Arctic states in the construction of climate change as a security issue in other
contexts – all discussed in Chapter 3 – the failure to construct environmental change in itself as a
threat remains a puzzling dimension to the social construction Arctic in/security. Given that
favourable conditions for successful securitization appear to be present, the puzzle is why have
understandings of in/security and environmental change, largely made by Arctic Indigenous
peoples, generally failed within their domestic political contexts?
1.6 Outline of Dissertation
The remainder of this dissertation consists of seven chapters, of which the first two contribute the
theoretical and conceptual building blocks on which this research is based. Chapter 2 discusses
the concept of indigeneity and the constitutive relationship between political non-dominance and
Indigenous peoples. It provides an overview of Arctic Indigenous peoples, focusing on their
emergence as central political actors in the circumpolar region. It also discusses some of the
challenges and implications of research on Indigenous peoples, and outlines three contributions
of this project to an indigenist research program.
30
Chapter 3 discusses in/security as a social construction, and outlines its changing nature over the
modern period. It then outlines securitization theory, describing the original Copenhagen School
account before discussing three interrelated critiques of their approach related to: normal politics
and desecuritization; intersubjectivity and illocutionary speech acts; and the role of identity in
the securitization process. The chapter proposes a revised account of securitization that better
incorporates the role of identity and materiality for the making and acceptance of security claims.
It argues that securitization must better incorporate identity and materiality in explaining the
social construction of in/security. In this revised theory, the material context of securitizing
actors within their broader society affects the motivation to make political claims as security
claims to begin with. Subsequently, the identity of actors making security claims, and their
relationship to the audience empowered to adjudicate them, structures the likely failure or
success of their securitizing moves.
Recognizing that securitization is structured by the power relations between the actor making
security claims and the audience adjudicating them, for Indigenous peoples this means that
security claims must be ‘heard’ by an audience consisting of power-holders in the settler-colonial
states they inhabit, which I argue results in Indigenous securitizing moves being either silenced
or subsumed within colonial security discourses. The outcome is securitization non-dominance,
the structural inability to have one’s securitizing moves accepted by an authoritative audience,
which results in Indigenous peoples being unable to mobilize the sovereign to defend them
against material hazards they consider threatening to their survival or wellbeing. Chapter 3
concludes by examining debates over linking environmental issues with in/security, and defends
the security-relevance of anthropogenic environmental changes by arguing that securitization
might be necessary to defend valued referent objects in the face of ineffectual political responses
to objective material hazards.
Chapters 4-7 contain the empirical contributions of this dissertation, examining the construction
of Arctic in/security within the official policies of the circumpolar states and the views of Arctic
Indigenous peoples. Chapter 4 examines the historical and contemporary construction of
in/security in the Canadian Arctic. It first outlines the views of Indigenous peoples – primarily
Inuit but also perspectives of representatives of some Athabaskan peoples such as Gwich’in and
Dene – then compares these with the official policies of the Canadian state. In contrast to the
human security account articulated by Indigenous peoples that centres on climate change and its
31
impacts for the environment, culture and identity, and autonomy, the chapter identifies official
Canadian Arctic security discourse and policy as based on twin pillars of military defence of
Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and the exploitation of Arctic resources. This juxtaposition
indicates the tension between the state understanding of security and the views of Indigenous
peoples, and the degree to which Indigenous views are not represented in government discourse.
Chapter 5 explains the absence of Indigenous understandings from mainstream Arctic security
discourse in Canada. It shows the ways in which Indigenous views have been silenced and
subsumed, through such channels as limited access to legislators and political decision makers,
the restrictions of operating under colonial legal structures, and the incorporation of claims to
Inuit sovereignty over Arctic territories into the legal basis for Canadian sovereignty claims. It
argues that Inuit, and other Indigenous peoples in northern Canada, are securitization non-
dominant in that they are unable to have their security claims accepted by the state.
Chapter 6 shifts to the second case study, and examines the construction of in/security in the
Norwegian High North. It explores how Norway’s Arctic security interests were constructed
during the Cold War and how they have changed both post-Cold War and in the context of
regional climate change. It demonstrates the Norwegian government’s Arctic security interests
are defined around managing relations with its Russian neighbour, and on the continued
extraction of hydrocarbon resources. The official Norwegian view of Arctic security is thus
similar to Canada’s in its dual focus on militarism and resource extraction, and shared worries
with respect to Russia, though marked by a difference in rhetorical tone.
In Chapter 7, these security priorities are compared with those of Sámi in Norway, who identify
protection of traditional reindeer grazing areas in Sápmi and preservation and revitalization of
culture and language as the core interests relevant to their survival as Indigenous people. The
chapter also examines the development of Sámi as an Indigenous minority, specifically their
important role in the historical formation of the modern Scandinavian states and the emergence
of Sámi political institutions. However, despite a clear conception of what in/security means to
Sámi in Norway, they have not attempted to construct their most serious issues as security issues
within Norwegian political discourse. As such, Sámi have not functioned as securitizing actors
in Norway the way Inuit and other Indigenous peoples have in Canada. The chapter concludes
by hypothesizing three factors to explain why Sámi have not sought to securitize their highest
32
priority issues: the relatively less severe effects of climate change in Sápmi; the high degree of
social inclusion of Sámi within Norwegian society; and the influence of Russia on maintaining a
more robust national security discourse in Norway.
Chapter 8 summarizes six central findings of this dissertation. It outlines the three main
empirical findings related to the understandings of Arctic in/security held by Indigenous peoples
and the states in which they reside, and the exclusion or omission of Indigenous views from the
Arctic security policies of Canada and Norway. It then identifies three implications of these
findings for securitization theory and our understanding of the relationship between in/security
and the environment. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what in/security in the Arctic
means in the context of the Anthropocene. It provides a normative argument for why a
sustainable understanding of Arctic security requires a critical disposition towards the
relationship between conditions of in/security and human-caused environmental change. It
outlines how such a critical understanding of Arctic security and the environment might look,
and how it must differ from dominant current accounts reflected in the policies of circumpolar
states. The final suggestion of this dissertation is that incorporating the understandings of
in/security articulated by Indigenous peoples is one route towards establishing a more sustainable
conception of Arctic security. Thus, we should seek to decolonize and indigenize dominant
understandings of what in/security in the Arctic means under conditions of radical and
transformative environmental change.
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Chapter 2
Indigeneity, Non-Dominance and Research 2As the changing Arctic attracts growing attention from outsiders, and from the southern-based
governments of circumpolar states, the roles and rights of Indigenous peoples have become
increasingly important.91 Though historically marginal to regional geopolitics and national
policymaking within their own states, Arctic Indigenous peoples have emerged as a key set of
actors in circumpolar politics. The political, economic, and social conditions in which they live
vary considerably across their different home countries, but nearly half a million Indigenous
people currently reside in the northern polar region. Most are represented within unique
structures of governance, and in some cases self-government, within their respective states, and
all are represented at the regional level through the six Indigenous organizations recognized as
Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council. With the exception of those in Russia, Arctic
Indigenous peoples also enjoy certain benefits as citizens of wealthy, industrialized states in the
Global North, including: robust legal frameworks ensuring certain indigenous rights; legal
recourse when those rights are violated; social benefits including public welfare, employment
insurance, health care services, and support for Indigenous language and education; and, in some
cases, established rights to Indigenous land use, land title, and collective land ownership.
Compared to the challenges facing Indigenous populations in much of the world, Arctic
Indigenous peoples enjoy relatively high qualities of life, relatively high degrees of political
autonomy, and relatively benign contemporary relationships with the settler-colonial
governments whose sovereign authority they live under.
Nonetheless, non-dominance remains an integral part of the lived experience of Indigenous
peoples in the Arctic, and is a recurring component of how indigeneity itself is defined.92 It is
this non-dominance – defined as the structural inability to affect the decisions that shape the
conditions of peoples’ own lives – that differentiates indigeneity from other forms of origination
or belonging to a particular geographic space or region. Non-dominance is constitutive of
91 In this dissertation, ‘Indigenous’ is capitalized when referring to specific peoples, as in the case of the Arctic, but not capitalized when referring generally to indigenous peoples or applying indigenous as a non-specific adjective. 92 Although it could be argued this is not the case for Inuit of Greenland and Nunavut; see Loukacheva 2007.
34
indigeneity, and of relations between Indigenous peoples and non-indigenous majorities within
settler-colonial societies. Recognizing the role of non-dominance allows for meaningful
distinction between, for instance, Inuit as indigenous to the Arctic and the English as native
inhabitants of England. As a category, indigeneity derives less from phenotypical, ethno-racial,
or geographic factors than it does from how these affect distributions of social and material
power within a given polity. The English may be the original inhabitants of England, but since
they enjoy a preponderance of political power within their territory and are not subject to
political control by a group originating from beyond their territorial boundaries, they are not
considered an ‘indigenous’ people.93 Without the fact of non-dominance or subordination to a
separate and distinct group, indigeneity possesses little meaning: when they control the particular
area where they live, people from that place aren’t indigenous, they’re just people.94
This chapter examines indigeneity and non-dominance in the circumpolar Arctic. It first surveys
debates over how indigeneity is defined and how it is reflected in contemporary global politics.
It then reiterates a conception of indigeneity as linked to non-dominance within one’s own home
territory, outlining the significance of both material and ideational forms of non-dominance for
Arctic Indigenous peoples. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the significance of
research into Indigenous understandings of in/security in the circumpolar region, and offers some
reflections on research, decolonization, and Arctic Indigenous peoples
93 That ‘the English people’ are not, per se, the original inhabitants of the southern portion of the isle of Britain both underscores and complicates discussions over how indigeneity is defined. The contemporary English people are descended from a variety of tribal and early medieval societies with distinct languages and customs (such as the Britons, Saxons, Celts, Picts, and others) who were conquered and assimilated by both Saxon and French Norman kings over a period of several centuries, supplemented by genetic material from Norse raiders and successive migrations from across the British Isles, the European continent, and eventually around the world. As with many other majority populations who inhabit their own traditional homelands, the English are not so much the ‘original’ inhabitants as they are an amalgam of conquering and subject populations transformed into a cohesive people only during the modern era of sovereign state formation and national identity construction. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to now consider them as native to England because they have subsumed and assimilated all prior inhabitants and existed in their contemporary form for nearly a thousand years. This thousand-year occupancy alone imparts no meaning to the English as an indigenous people, however, because they exercise power over their territory and decision-making over their own future. For further discussion of the history of the English people, see Catherine Hills, The Origins of the English (London: Duckworth, 2003). For further discussion of national identity construction in the modern era, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). 94 Indigeneity for various Western European peoples is disputed, however. For instance, on the basis of their colonization and subjugation by the English, it could be argued that the Scots and Irish constitute indigenous peoples within their ancestral countries.
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2.1 Indigeneity and Non-Dominance
As discussed in Chapter 1, a defining feature of the Arctic region is the prior occupation,
continued presence, and political involvement of its Indigenous peoples. But the category of
Arctic Indigenous peoples is diverse, and their historical experiences and current political
situations vary greatly according to national context. Moreover, any effort to discuss ‘Arctic
Indigenous peoples’ presupposes a clear definition of who such peoples are. Although there
have been significant advances in recent years with respect to the international recognition of
indigenous peoples’ rights, most notably through the International Labour Organization (ILO)
Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(UNDRIPS), defining who is indigenous is a fraught and divisive task. Historically, settler-
colonial governments determined various categories of indigeneity (such as ‘Indian’, ‘Native’,
‘Aboriginal’, etc.) as methods of exercising control over and encouraging division among
indigenous peoples. Government designation of who is and is not indigenous is thus,
unsurprisingly, a delicate subject that evokes much of the taxonomic racism of the colonial era;
in several countries, how indigenous status is legally determined remains subject of active
political debate. The result is that ‘indigenous peoples’ is often left undefined rather than
prescribing criteria for inclusion.
Thus, there are no universal or binding legal criteria for who qualifies as an indigenous person or
as an indigenous people. Neither the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues nor
UNDRIPS offers a formal definition, relying instead on individual and collective self-
identification for determining indigeneity. Social scientists have also struggled extensively with
this question, debating the anthropological versus socio-political dimensions of indigenous
identity, whether disparate experiences of political domination suffice to warrant the strategic
essentialism and (neo)colonizing potential of labelling people(s) as indigenous, and the
legitimacy of indigeneity versus other identity claims as ‘first peoples’.95 Some indigenous
scholars, supported by organizations including the ILO and other bodies within the UN, insist
“the question of ‘who is indigenous’ is best answered by indigenous communities themselves …
95 Mathias Guenther et al, “Discussion: The Concept of Indigeneity,” Social Anthropology 14, no. 1 (2006): 17-32; Quentin Gausset, Justin Kenrick, and Robert Gibb, “Indigeneity and Autochtony: A Couple of False Twins?” Social Anthropology 19, no. 2 (2011): 135-142.
36
‘only indigenous peoples could define indigenous peoples’.”96 As such, it can be difficult to
specify which groups or individuals are properly understood as indigenous; resolve tensions
between ‘indigenous’ and other terms used to describe, categorize, and govern indigenous
peoples; and determine whether ‘indigenous’ itself is an appropriate or meaningful descriptor.97
Generalizations about indigeneity are perilous, but some broad conclusions are possible. First,
though indigeneity is often rooted in primordial or essentialist social identities associated with
particular geographic places, as the basis for collective identity and modern political claims it is
clearly a social construct. In the context of global trends towards decolonization of occupied and
subject peoples in the latter 20th century, a common indigenous identity was fostered in order to
link the shared experiences of more than 350 million diverse people in more than 70 countries
around the globe.98 Despite this diversity, some common elements for defining indigeneity have
been established within social science and international law. Ronald Niezen has studied the
emergence of indigenous identity as the basis of an international social movement making
political claims against domination by colonizing states. Acknowledging that “the ambiguity of
the term is perhaps its most significant feature,” he notes that indigeneity has been defined in at
least three ways: legally/analytically, practically/strategically, and collectively.99 These three
approaches roughly correspond with different roles of indigenous peoples as, respectively:
objects of academic study and subjects of legal and political control; agents and actors within
domestic and international political systems; and a globe-spanning identity group for colonized
peoples. In the first instance, indigeneity is defined by outside experts and/or colonial states, in
the second it is based on self-identification, and in the third it is intersubjectively determined
between discrete indigenous groups and the broader global community of indigenous peoples,
96 Jeff J. Corntassel, “Who is Indigenous? ‘Peoplehood’ and Ethnonationalist Approaches to Rearticulating Indigenous Identity,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 9, no. 1 (2003): 75-100. 97 As Niezen (2003) describes, the concept of indigeneity has entered popular and academic usage only in recent decades, largely as a result of developments within international law. Other political and legal terms are used in specific national contexts. For example, in Canada there are three constitutionally recognized groups of Aboriginal people (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis), with all three living in Canada’s Arctic territory. Indigenous peoples in the Russian Arctic region are often referred to as the Small Numbered Peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East. ‘Indigenous peoples’ is thus an umbrella term that encompasses numerous specific Indigenous groups. 98 Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 99 Niezen 2003, 19.
37
including political structures such as the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Under
these circumstances, the potential for definitional confusion and contradiction is clear.
While no definition of indigenous peoples is universal, a commonly accepted working definition
was developed by former UN Special Rapporteur on Discrimination Against Indigenous Peoples
José Martínez Cobo. In a seminal report, “Study on the Problem of Discrimination Against
Indigenous Populations,” he proposed that:
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.100
The Cobo definition is generally considered to be “comprehensive and durable,” leading to its
widespread adoption in studies of indigeneity even if it imperfectly captures the conditions of
some indigenous peoples (such as those who have been displaced from and thus no longer
occupy their traditional territories) and of societies that have experienced more complex forms of
migration, social hierarchy, and autochthonous inter-ethnic power relations (such as India).101
This definition has broadly influenced indigenous scholarship and politics since its formulation
in the early 1980s, and remains the touchstone conceptualization of indigeneity within the field.
A second generalization about definitions of indigeneity is that they emphasize the centrality of
political non-dominance to the constitution of indigenous peoples as social actors and to their
historical and contemporary lived experiences. Non-dominance is an explicit feature of the Cobo
definition that has also been incorporated into subsequent work by both indigenous and non-
indigenous scholars. Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel characterize indigeneity as “the
struggle to survive as distinct peoples … against colonizing states’ efforts to eradicate
[indigenous peoples] culturally, politically and physically … They remain, as in earlier colonial
100 José Martínez Cobo, “United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and its Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations,” UN Doc. E./CN.4/Sub.2/1986/7/Add. 4 (1986), para 379. Emphasis added. 101 Niezen 2003, 20.
38
eras, occupied peoples who have been dispossessed and disempowered in their own
homelands.”102 Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras contend: “The concept of indigenous peoples
involves those descendants of original occupants who acknowledge their distinctiveness and
marginalisation, and use this politicised awareness to mobilise into action.”103 Tedd Gurr
describes indigenous peoples as “conquered descendants of earlier inhabitants of a region who
live mainly in conformity with traditional social, economic, and cultural customs that are sharply
distinct from those of dominant groups,”104 though it is debatable whether overt conquest is
requisite to establish a people as politically non-dominant, as this would exclude the experiences
of indigenous peoples in much of Canada and northern Europe. These and other scholars
premise their understandings of indigeneity on the fact that indigenous peoples do not retain
ultimate political authority over their own traditional territories, and furthermore that the settler-
colonial states that do exercise such authority have done so in a way antagonistic to their
interests. The definitional emphasis upon a continuous state of being colonized, dominated, or
oppressed has led some scholars to question the conceptualization of indigeneity as an
identity,105 but is nonetheless a defining feature of how indigenous peoples are understood, and
their rights and interests articulated. These definitions recognize non-dominance as a common
aspect of the lived experiences of indigenous peoples around the world, partly defined by the
lack of political autonomy over a group’s communal existence. Decision-making power over
indigenous peoples’ traditional territories remains in the hands of non-indigenous systems of
political authority that consider their own legitimacy to supersede indigenous forms of
governance and political organization.
On this basis, some scholars go one step furthering in also identifying resistance to political
domination as a component of indigeneity. While non-dominance partly defines indigenous
people, resistance to it is central to indigenism as a political movement and indigenous peoples
102 Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel, “Being Indigenous: Resurgences Against Contemporary Colonialism,” Government and Opposition 40, no. 4 (2005): 597-598. 103 Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras, The Politics of Indigeneity: Challenging the State in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2005), 30. 104 Tedd Gurr, Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000), 17. 105 Adam Kuper, “The Return of the Native,” Current Anthropology 44, no. 3 (2003): 389-402.
39
as political actors. To Alfred and Corntassel, “it is this oppositional, place-based existence,
along with the consciousness of being in struggle against the dispossessing and demeaning fact
of colonization by foreign peoples, that fundamentally distinguishes Indigenous peoples from
other peoples of the world.”106 Similarly, Maaka and Fleras claim “Aboriginal peoples share a
common desire to transcend colonial mentalities, contest existing constitutional principles,
challenge the normalisation of injustices within systems of power, and transform the structures of
dominance that distort and disrupt.”107 For indigenous peoples, understood to “derive much of
their identity from histories of state-sponsored genocide, forced settlement, relocation, political
marginalization, and various formal attempts at cultural destruction,”108 non-dominance and
resistance to it, experienced both personally and inter-generationally, are defining features of
indigenous identity and lived experience. Though indigenous peoples are non-dominant to
different degrees and in different ways, their political, economic, and social domination by
historical and contemporary settler-colonial societies constitutes the political salience of their
claims to indigeneity. As theorized in Chapter 3 and examined empirically in Chapters 4-7, non-
dominance is also central to the forms of in/security experienced by Indigenous peoples in the
circumpolar region. Despite recent achievements and significant progress in global indigenous
politics, which signify improvement in the relationships between many Indigenous peoples and
their colonial metropoles, I suggest that Arctic Indigenous peoples experience non-dominance in
terms of their ability to define and pursue security.
2.1.1 Colonialism and Power
Non-dominance results from the shortage or absence of power, defined by Barnett and Duvall as
“the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to
determine their circumstances and fate … the capacities of actors to determine the conditions of
106 Alfred and Corntassel 2005, 597. 107 Maaka and Fleras 2005, 9. 108 Niezen 2003, 5.
40
their existence.”109 Power takes at least four different forms depending on the kinds and
specificity of social relations through which it operates: compulsory, institutional, structural, and
productive.110 All four forms of power have historically structured the relations between
indigenous peoples and settler-colonial states, but in modern Arctic societies compulsory power
has generally receded as political actors have increasingly acknowledged Indigenous peoples’
inherent, constitutional, and legal rights. However, institutional power as “actors’ indirect
control over the conditions of action of socially distant others,” structural power “as the
constitutive relations of a direct and specific [kind],” and productive power as “diffusive
constitutive relations to produce the situated social capacities of actors,”111 all remain applicable
to the power states exert over Arctic Indigenous peoples. In reverse order, the very
establishment of settler states constitutes Indigenous peoples by producing them as a sub-altern
population within their own territories (productive power). Specific indigenous peoples have
been constituted and shaped through the policies and actions of settler states, for example in
terms of policies of relocation and amalgamation of indigenous communities, or through the very
designation of specific peoples as indigenous or not through legal and constitutional instruments
(structural power). Finally, the institutions and agents of settler governance continue to exercise
direct and indirect authority over the political and collective decisions of Indigenous peoples,
structuring Indigenous self-government and constraining their capacity to realize self-
determination (institutional power).
Non-dominance is not a phenomenon limited to indigenous peoples, and its social significance is
certainly not restricted to its relevance for in/security. Since “these effects [of power] work to
the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others,”112 non-dominance is reflected in various
material and non-material forms throughout the world: groups experience poverty, prejudice,
injustice, disenfranchisement, and violence by virtue of their structurally determined subordinate,
marginalized, or liminal positions within their societies. Non-dominance is thus constituted in
109 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, “Power in International Politics,” International Organization 59, no. 1 (2005): 42. 110 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 43. 111 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 48. 112 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 42.
41
varying ways along multiple societal cleavages dependent upon the specific context, and not all
forms of societal non-dominance may be relevant to securitization. However, understanding the
relationship between power and non-dominance is important to this dissertation project because
it also influences who is able to contribute, and in what ways, to public discourse: “Relations of
dominance and non-dominance determine who defines norms and practices and who must follow
them; who is important and who is not; who defines the parameters of the debate and who does
not; who is valuable and who is not.”113 In some cases, non-dominance may translate into
structural or systematic restrictions upon a group’s ability to influence government policy
regarding designation and defence against security threats to that group. Securitization non-
dominance reflects both structural and institutional power, because it is both direct and
constitutive of actors, and diffused through regulation of the interactions between particular
social actors. Securitization non-dominance is thus a reflection of broader forms of non-
dominance as they pertain to the ability to construct and respond to in/security. The argument of
securitization non-dominance is fully developed in Chapter 3, and the forms of non-dominance
experienced by Arctic Indigenous peoples are discussed further below and in their specific
national contexts in Chapters 4-7.
2.2 Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic
Indigenous peoples in the circumpolar region exhibit both typical and atypical traits for
indigenous peoples in contemporary global politics. On the one hand, they are historically
colonized populations who no longer exert full decision-making authority over their traditional
lands. They also demonstrate clear continuity with pre-colonial practices and social
organization, due in part to the relatively recent experiences of colonization by many Arctic
Indigenous peoples, especially in North America. On the other hand, most of the Arctic states
are stronger democratic systems with rule of law, economic and social benefits, and respect for
indigenous rights than many other countries with indigenous populations. As discussed below,
Arctic Indigenous peoples enjoy among the highest qualities of life and greatest degrees of
113 Gunhild Hoogensen and Kirsti Stuvøy, “Gender, Resistance, and Human Security,” Security Dialogue 37, no. (2006): 219.
42
political autonomy and inclusion of any indigenous peoples in the world. With the notable
exception of Russia, Arctic Indigenous peoples have politically organized themselves into
formations that sometimes challenge the preferences of their colonial state governments without
fear of overt political repression, violence, or retaliation. They thus enjoy a higher degree of
political freedom than most, while also experiencing material conditions and political non-
dominance that curtail their political agency, reflecting their status within their settler-colonial
political contexts.
While debates over indigeneity and identity remain relevant in the circumpolar region, by virtue
of their distinct structures of political representation Arctic Indigenous peoples are somewhat
more clearly identifiable than elsewhere. By definition, they comprise the Indigenous peoples
living in the Arctic regions of the eight circumpolar states. Informed by the Cobo definition, the
Arctic Human Development Report defines Indigenous peoples as:
Those peoples who were marginalized when the modern states were created and identify themselves as indigenous peoples. They are associated with specific territories to which they trace their histories. They exhibit one or more of the following characteristics: they speak a language that is different from that of the dominant group(s); they are being discriminated against in the political system; they are being discriminated against within the legal system; their cultures diverge from that of the remaining society; they often diverge from the mainstream society in their resource use by being hunters and gatherers, nomads, pastoralists, or swidden farmers; they consider themselves and are considered by others as different from the rest of the population.114
Indigenous peoples number approximately 500,000 out of the total 4 million inhabitants of the
circumpolar region, and, as shown in Figure 2, form a ring of overlapping trans-state populations
surrounding the Arctic Ocean. A majority of these live in Russia, which also has the greatest
diversity of Indigenous peoples with over 41 different groups, including the more populous
Chukchi, Evenki, Khaka, Khanty, Nenet, Tuvan, and Yakut peoples. Aleuts are indigenous
people in the easternmost Russian region of Kamchatka who also inhabit the islands off western
Alaska. Mainland Alaska is home to Athabaskan, Gwich’in, and Inuit (Alaskan Eskimo) peoples
whose territories cross into northern Canada. Inuit form a majority of the Indigenous population
114 Csonka and Schweitzer 2004, 46.
43
Figure 2: Map of Arctic Indigenous Peoples
80o
70o
60o
50o
compiled by W.K. Dallmann© Norwegian Polar Institute
Indigenous peoples of the Arctic countries Notes:
For the USA, only peoples in the State of Alaska are shown. For the Russian Federation, only peoples of the North, Siberia and Far East are shown.
Majority populations of independent states are not shown, not even when they form minorities in adjacent countries (e.g. Finns in Norway).
Areas show colours according to the original languages of the respective indigenous peoples, even if they do not speak these languages today.
Overlapping populations are not shown. The map does not claim to show exact boundaries between the individual groups.
In the Russian Federation, indigenous peoples have a special status only when numbering less than 50,000. Names of larger indigenous peoples are written in green.
Subdivision according to language families
Uralic-Yukagiran family
Altaic family
Chukotko-Kamchatkan family
Yukagiran branch
Ket (isolated language)
Nivkh (isolated language)
Ainu (isolated language)
Eskimo-Aleut family
Finno-Ugric branch
Samodic branch
Turkic branch
Mongolic branch
Tunguso-Manchurian branch
Inuit group of Eskimo branch
Yupik group of Eskimo branch
Aleut group
Na'Dene family
Penutan family
Macro-Algonkian family
Macro-Sioux family
Athabaskan branch
Eyak branch
Tlingit branch
Haida branch
Algonkian branch
Wakasha branch
Salish branch
Sioux branch
Iroquois branch
Indo-European family
Germanic branch
C A
N A
D A
U
S
A
ALASKA
GREENLAND
ICELAND
NORWAYFAROE
ISLANDS
NUNAVUT
DENMARK
FIN-LAND
SWEDEN
R U S S I A
N F E D
E R A T I O
N
Saami
Saami
Saami
Nenets
NenetsKhant
Mansi
Khant
Komi Komi-Permyaks
KomiIzhma-Komi
Selkup
NenetsSelkup
KetKetEnets
Nga-nasan
Dolgan
Even
Even Even
Even
Chulym
Teleut Kuman-din
Khakas
Altai
Tuvinians
Tuvinians
Chelkan
TubaTelengit
Soyot
Buryat
Buryat
Buryat
Tofa
Tuvinian- Todzhin
Evenk
Evenk
Evenk
Evenk
Evenk
Evenk
Taz
Udege
AinupreviouslyAinu
previouslyAinu previously
Ainu
Negi- dal
Nanai
Orochi
UlchiOrok
Aleut
Aleut
Aleut
Nivkh
Alyutor
Koryak
Koryak
Chuvan
Chukchi
Chukchi
Siberian Yup'ik
CentralAlaskanYup'ik
Itelmen
Kerek
Iñupiat
Iñupiat
Kamchadal
Alutiiq
Alutiiq
Eyak
Tlingit
Tlingit
Haida
Gwich'in
Tsimshian
KoyukonHän
Tanana
Holikachuk
Deg Hit'an
Dena’ina
Ahtna UpperKuskokwim
Tanacross
Upper Tanana
Inuvialuit
InuitInuit
Inuit
Inuit
Tuchone
Tagish
Northern Slavey
Bear Lake
Dogrib
SouthernSlavey
Kaska
Tahltan
Yellowknife
Chipewyan
Tsetsaut
SekaniBabine
Carrier
Beaver
Sarsi
Kalaallit
Kalaallit
Kalaallit
Kalaallit
Vepsians
Karelians
Faroese
Karelians
Shor
Yukagir
Yukagir
Sakha(Yakut)
Sakha(Yakut)
Nootka
Kwakiutl
Salish
Blackfoot
Atsina
Assiniboine
Cree
Cree
Cree
Cree
Cree
Ojibwa
Naskapi
Huron
Montagnais-Naskapi
Algonkin
Abnaki
Beothuk
Haudeno-saunee
Haudeno-saunee
44
and a plurality of the total population in the Canadian Arctic, as well as a large majority of nearly
90 percent in neighbouring Greenland. Sámi are the only recognized Indigenous people in all of
Europe, comprising the entire indigenous populations of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, with a
small number also on the Kola Peninsula in western Russia.115 While now rooted in the social
and political structures of particular states, the sociological boundaries of Arctic Indigenous
peoples are not consistent with the colonial boundaries that have been imposed upon them.
Indigenous peoples serve as living reminders of pre-modern patterns of habitation in the
circumpolar region, and reflect relationships and associations that transcend sovereign borders.
The formal political involvement of Indigenous peoples in the circumpolar region is one of the
key features of the post-Cold War Arctic order. In addition to significant degrees of self-
government, political autonomy, or elected representation exercised by Indigenous peoples
throughout much of the region – particularly Self Rule for the Inuit majority in Greenland; self-
government or high representation in public governments for Canadian Inuit through the
establishment of four land claim areas; and the separate Sámi Parliaments of Norway, Sweden,
and Finland – Indigenous peoples have also been central to the establishment and activities of the
Arctic Council. Founded in 1996 to provide a dedicated regional forum for dialogue and
cooperation, the Council owes much of the impetus for its creation to the organization and
activism of Indigenous advocacy groups. Since the 1960s, Indigenous peoples across the Arctic
increasingly established representative organizations to both lobby governments and speak on
behalf of their people, who at the time very much remained colonial subjects of their southern-
based governments. John English, historian of the Arctic Council, credits the efforts of these
organizations and the leaders they produced with the eventual success of the Arctic Council
negotiations: “Voices that were silenced in the fifties became audible in the sixties, eloquent in
the seventies, and powerful and influential later. The colonized now came to the colonial
capitals no longer as subjects but as actors shaping their times and the lives of their people.”116
The emergence of Indigenous voices as a potent political force would substantially alter the
shape of the circumpolar region.
115 Antoine Dubreuil, “The Arctic of the Regions: Between Indigenous Peoples and Sub-National Entities – Which Perspective?” International Journal 66, no. 4 (2011): 923-938. 116 John English, Ice and Water: Politics, Peoples, and the Arctic Council (Toronto: Penguin, 2013), 95.
45
Arising from social movements for Indigenous rights and representation, six groups were
formally incorporated into regional governance through their inclusion as Permanent Participants
on the Arctic Council: the Arctic Athabaskan Council, Aleut International Association, Gwich’in
Council International, Inuit Circumpolar Council, Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of
the North, and the Saami Council. As the first international intergovernmental body in the world
to grant indigenous peoples formal status with rights to membership and participation
approximating that of the Member States, the Council provides Indigenous peoples with
representation at the premier forum for regional cooperation. English argues that “it is a mark of
the historic change that the growing prominence of the Arctic Council with its indigenous
participants means that many rules will now be set not only in imperial southern capitals but
often by northern peoples.”117 English’s detailed analysis of the Council’s origins concurs with
the conclusions of other leading scholars like Oran Young that it is partly through the efforts of
Indigenous peoples that the Arctic has developed from a “region of peripheries” into a coherent
region of its own,118 and with Timo Koivurova and Leena Heinämäki that Arctic Indigenous
peoples have become so key to regional politics as to enjoy a status close to that of veto-
holders.119 Although they continue to reflect the significant differences of opportunity afforded
by their respective historical experiences and contemporary circumstances, Arctic Indigenous
peoples have been at the forefront of advancing the political interests of indigenous peoples and
their inclusion in organizations and fora previously reserved for states.
In this respect, Arctic Indigenous peoples reflect the global achievements of indigenous peoples
in fostering an awareness of indigeneity as a basis for rights and political inclusion, and
establishing a social movement to support the political project of “global indigenism.”120 The
adoption of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, the
creation of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and moves towards recognition and
reparations for colonially inflicted wrongs all signify the contemporary emergence of indigenous
117 English 2013, 298. 118 Young 2005, 9-10. 119 Koivurova and Heinämäki 2006, 104. 120 J. Marshall Beier, “Inter-national Affairs: Indigeneity, Globality, and the Canadian State,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 13, no. 3 (2007): 121-131; Niezen 2003.
46
peoples as political actors. The terms of this inclusion remain constrained, however, by the
interests and actions of settler-colonial states and the international institutions over which they
exhibit significant influence. Although “the most egregious expressions of colonialism have
been discredited … what remained untouched are those ‘colonial agendas’ that have had a
controlling (systemic) effect in privileging national (white) interests at the expense of indigenous
rights.”121 Despite the significant progress that has been made by settler-colonial governments
and legal authorities in terms of acknowledging and respecting indigenous rights and title, the
relationships between indigenous peoples and their governments remain structured by the
dominance of settler-colonial values, institutions, and interests. Though more empowered than
ever before, and more so than most indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world, even in the
Arctic, Indigenous peoples lack the power to control their own collective futures.
2.3 Research, Non-Dominance and Indigenous Peoples
The non-dominance of Arctic Indigenous peoples is reflected in two distinct forms: material and
non-material (ideational). The material reflections of political non-dominance vary by country
and are discussed in subsequent chapters, but generally include lower qualities of life, forms of
governmental control, and restrictions upon indigenous rights and autonomy resulting from “the
demoralising effects of dispossession, forced removals, open racism and discrimination, and
destruction of language, identity, and culture.”122 Less overt but more pernicious, however, is
the ideational non-dominance that has resulted in the discrediting of indigenous forms of
knowledge and knowledge production, the privileging of settler-colonial legal and political
systems, and the ongoing marginalization of indigenous ways of knowing and being relative to
those of settlers. Ideational non-dominance is a form of power that operates “in underlying
social structures and systems of knowledge that advantage some and disadvantage others.”123
Indigenous traditional knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge have long been viewed
as threatening to the colonial order, and have been subjected to concerted efforts at destruction,
121 Maaka and Fleras 2005, 12. 122 Maaka and Fleras 2005, 26. 123 Barnett and Duvall 2005, 42.
47
erasure, and forgetting. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith asserts, “the negation of indigenous views of
history was a critical part of asserting colonial ideology, partly because such views were
regarded as clearly ‘primitive’ and ‘incorrect’ and mostly because they challenged and resisted
the vision of colonization.”124 Colonial authorities sought to render indigenous populations
legible to new forms of state power, which necessitated structuring the social terrain on which
indigenous/non-indigenous relations would occur in a manner advantageous to the colonizer.
This included depriving prior indigenous knowledge and forms of organization of the legitimacy
to challenge settler-colonial organization and Western forms of knowledge by subjecting them to
alien standards of colonial law and morality, preventing their transmission to younger
generations, and eventually co-opting them into certain settler-colonial decision-making
processes and academic research.125 The result has been the widespread discrediting of the
scientific validity, legal weight, and moral worth of indigenous knowledge precisely on the basis
of its difference from settler-colonial/scientific rationalist modes of thought and action.126
The ideational dimension of indigenous non-dominance is important to specify because it sets
the context for the material dimension that is more readily visible in indigenous/non-indigenous
relations. The two are intimately linked, as it is the severing of indigenous peoples’ ties to their
cultural and epistemological heritage that facilitates the material dispossession of their lands,
rights, and resources, and establishes the context for settler domination in their new societies.
Erasure occurs in two ways: through the exclusion and enforced forgetting of traditional
indigenous knowledge, and through the displacement and disruption of societies guided by and
responsible for generating that knowledge. Vandana Shiva observes: “Over and above rendering
local knowledge invisible by declaring it non-existent or illegitimate, the dominant system also
makes alternatives disappear by erasing or destroying the reality which they attempt to
represent.”127 The current Arctic context exemplifies this dynamic, wherein traditional
knowledge has been denied scientific authority and excluded from official decision making at the
124 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed, 1999), 29. 125 Deborah McGregor, “Coming Full Circle: Indigenous Knowledge, Environment and Our Future,” American Indian Quarterly 28, no. 3/4 (2004): 385-410; Tuhiwai Smith 1999. 126 Claude Denis, We Are Not You: First Nations and Canadian Modernity (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1997). 127 Quoted in Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 100.
48
same time that settler-colonial political, economic, and social policies have wrought changes on
Arctic societies and ecosystems that undermine the applicability of traditional knowledge in the
first place. Relevant examples range from human impacts on the Arctic ecosystem such that
traditional ecological knowledge no longer reflects the characteristics of the circumpolar climate,
to settler-colonial policies that have discriminated against indigenous women with impacts on
traditional structures of community authority.128 The rejection and delegitimization of
indigenous knowledge provides a vital precondition for the material non-dominance experienced
by indigenous peoples, particularly as it pertains to the inability to make decisions regarding
traditional land-use on ancestral territories, and related decisions over how indigenous peoples
can and should live in the modern world.
2.3.1 Decolonization and Indigenist Research
A central component of this dissertation involves the understandings of Indigenous peoples
towards the meaning of in/security in the Arctic region. Given the importance of epistemology
and knowledge production to power relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples,
pursuing appropriate and respectful research involving indigenous peoples is complicated by a
history of Western academic research fraught with deceit, injustice, abuse, appropriation, and
perpetuation of the very structures that render indigenous peoples non-dominant within their
national communities. One of the key functions that academic research has performed in this
process is the explicit or implicit privileging of settler-colonial and state perspectives, resulting
in the erasure and denial of indigenous histories, epistemologies, and contemporary interests.129
Far from just the objective interpretation of facts through theory, Tuhiwai Smith notes the
“problem is that academic writing is a form of selecting, arranging and presenting knowledge. It
128 The differences between Western scientific and indigenous observations of Arctic climate change are shown in the film Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, which highlights some of the disagreements and differing interpretations between indigenous and scientific understandings of the changing environment. The film is available at http://www.isuma.tv/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change. For a discussion of traditional knowledge and traditional forms of community authority see Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, Jackie Price, and Elena Wilson-Rowe, “Women’s Participation in Decision-Making: Human Security in the Canadian Arctic,” in Hoogensen Gjørv et al., Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic (New York: Routledge, 2014). 129 Marie Battiste, ed, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000); Tuhiwai Smith 1999.
49
privileges sets of texts, views about the history of an idea, what issues count as significant; and,
by engaging in the same process uncritically, we too can render indigenous writers invisible or
unimportant while reinforcing the validity of other writers.”130 If research into issues pertaining
to indigenous peoples is undertaken without consideration of their views, including but not
limited to the inclusion of indigenous voices and perspectives, then that research contributes to
the “cognitive imperialism” that underpinned colonization.131 Perhaps especially for disciplines
such as political science, international relations, and security studies that have primarily focused
on state behaviour, the international system of sovereign states, and the mechanisms of interstate
violence and cooperation that constitute global order, there has been little account of indigenous
peoples: “On the international scene it is extremely rare and unusual when indigenous accounts
are accepted and acknowledged as valid interpretations of what has taken place.”132 Therefore,
contemporary research must be conscious of its role in supporting or silencing the voices of
indigenous peoples and other non-dominant groups, and the ethical implications of writing them
out of academic accounts of modern politics.
To this end, Tuhiwai Smith promotes an ‘indigenist’ research agenda to help decolonize the
methodological and epistemological approaches of academic research. For indigenous scholars,
decolonizing research may be integral to their individual and collective senses of Self as
indigenous people,133 but for non-indigenous scholars, like myself, the drive for an indigenist
research agenda “evolves from a need to comprehend, resist, and transform the crises related to
the dual concerns of the effect that colonization has had on Indigenous peoples and the ongoing
erosion of Indigenous languages, knowledge, and culture as a result of colonization.”134 In this
way, indigenist research “borrows freely from feminist research and critical approaches to
research, but privileges indigenous voices.”135 For me, the desire to help decolonize research
through this dissertation stems from: recognition that the Euro-centric theoretical traditions of
130 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 36. 131 Battiste 2000, xvii. 132 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 35. 133 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 38. 134 Battiste 2000, xx-xxi. 135 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 147.
50
academia offer an incomplete understanding of the social and natural worlds; acknowledgment
of the historic and contemporary harms inflicted on indigenous peoples by the convergence of
state practices and mainstream scholarship; and understanding that circumpolar research is
empirically incomplete without incorporating the views of Arctic Indigenous peoples.
Decolonization – in this case of how in/security is understood in the circumpolar Arctic – is thus
an analytical and normative goal of this project.
It is important to note, however, that decolonization does not and cannot mean returning to a pre-
colonial reality; the cognitive, material, and affective legacies of colonialism may be repaired,
but they can never be undone. As such, decolonization “does not mean and has not meant a total
rejection of all theory or research or Western knowledge. Rather, it is about centring
[indigenous] concerns and worldviews and then coming to know and understand theory and
research from [indigenous] perspectives and for [indigenous] purposes.”136 Indigenist research
seeks to bring indigenous peoples’ views back into the realm of knowledge production from
which they have typically been excluded. Such an understanding of the possibility and limits of
decolonization will not satisfy those who call for decolonization to be applied literally to settler-
colonial political, social, and economic systems and institutions currently extant on Indigenous
lands, and who decry the use of “decolonization as metaphor … because it turns decolonization
into an empty signifier to be filled by any track towards liberation.” These critics argue that
“decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of land simultaneous
to recognition of how land and recognition of land have always been differently understood and
enacted; that is, all the land, and not just symbolically.”137
On such terms, decolonizing the foreign and security policies of settler-colonial states is an
oxymoron; real decolonization would involve fully disassembling settler societies’ power over
indigenous peoples through the restoration of all settler-occupied territories to the descendants of
their original inhabitants. This literal view of decolonization is rejected in this dissertation as
neither a useful starting point nor even a desirable objective for political or academic praxis.
Such a maximalist and literal conception of decolonization elides profound normative questions
136 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 39. 137 Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 7. Emphasis in original.
51
regarding the future of native-born settler descendants and more recent immigrants inhabiting
indigenous lands, and offers no reasonable starting point for political negotiation, cooperation,
and reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Instead, this dissertation
employs an understanding of decolonization that aspires towards a post-colonial politics capable
of guiding social scientific inquiry and informing meaningful political change, rather than
contemplating an impossible restoration of pre-colonial reality. It seeks to bring the voices and
views of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic to the same page as the perspectives of Arctic states,
incorporating the original inhabitants of the circumpolar region into a discourse of Arctic
security from which they have been excluded.
In outlining possible parameters for an indigenist research agenda, Tuhiwai Smith identifies 25
different projects that comprise a comprehensive research program for indigenous peoples. The
projects have both empirical and methodological goals, namely to incorporate indigenous
knowledge and indigenous knowledge production into academic research:
The projects are not claimed to be entirely indigenous or to have been created by indigenous researchers. Some approaches have arisen out of social science methodologies, which in turn have arisen out of methodological issues raised by research with various oppressed groups. Some projects invite multidisciplinary research approaches. Others have arisen directly out of indigenous practices … Most fall well within what will be recognized as empirical research, [but] not all do.138
As a non-indigenous person, and moreover as a privileged, male member of settler-colonial
society in Canada, one of the Arctic states under examination in this dissertation, some of these
research projects are unavailable to me. It is neither possible nor would it be appropriate for me
to engage in claiming, naming, or giving testimony to indigenous experiences. Other projects
such as revitalizing, restoring, and returning indigenous practices, language, culture, or territory
are beyond the scope of this dissertation. However, elements of three indigenist projects are
contained within this research, and can be meaningfully and appropriately contributed to by me
as a non-indigenous scholar examining indigenous political issues:
Indigenizing consists of two dimensions: “The first one is similar to that which has occurred in literature with a centring of the landscapes, images, languages, themes, metaphors, and stories in the indigenous world … [The second] centres a politics of
138 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 142-143.
52
indigenous identity and indigenous cultural action … grounded in the alternative conceptions of world view and value systems.”139
Representing: “The representing project spans both the notion of representation as a political concept and representation as a form of voice and expression. In the political sense colonialism specifically excluded indigenous peoples from any form of decision making. State and governments have long made decisions hostile to the interests of indigenous communities … Being able as a minimum right to voice the views and opinions of indigenous communities in various decision-making bodies is still being struggled over.”140
Reframing: “Reframing is about taking much greater control over the ways in which indigenous issues and social problems are discussed and handled … The framing of an issue is about making decisions about its parameters, about what is in the foreground, what is in the background, and what shadings or complexities exist within the frame. The project of reframing is related to defining the problem or issue and determining how best to solve that problem.”141
To be sure, this dissertation presents detailed examinations of the Arctic policies of two
circumpolar states. As such, it could be said to (re)produce the conceptions of Arctic in/security
employed by settler societies that have marginalized, instrumentalized, and oppressed Indigenous
peoples in the region. However, the dissertation also provides the first detailed case-based and
comparative analysis of the views of Arctic Indigenous peoples towards the meaning of
in/security in their homelands. In doing so, it builds upon and contributes to recent literature,
especially in Canada, that centres indigenous peoples in the foreign and security policies and
practices of the states in which they reside.142 This project thus reframes the way in which
139 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 146. 140 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 150. 141 Tuhiwai Smith 1999, 153. 142 J. Marshall Beier, International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology, and the Limits of International Theory (New York: Palgrave, 2005); Beier 2007; Leanne Broadhead, “Canadian Sovereignty versus Northern Security: The Case for Updating Our Mental Map of the Arctic,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (2010): 913-930; Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan, “Settler Governmentality in Canada and the Algonquins of Barriere Lake,” Security Dialogue 43, no. 5 (2012): 421-438; Cameron Harrington and Emma Levcavalier, “The Environment and Emancipation in Critical Security Studies: The Case of the Canadian Arctic,” Critical Studies on Security 2, no. 1 (2014): 105-119.
53
issues vital to Indigenous peoples – such as environmental change, linguistic and cultural
preservation, natural resources, and self-government – are typically understood by policymakers
and academic audiences in the metropolitan south of Arctic states. In doing so, it represents
those issues that Indigenous peoples have articulated as most pressing to their continued survival
and wellbeing as security issues, extending the theoretical logic of socially constructing
in/security beyond states and privileged national actors to include Indigenous peoples. And in
examining the ways in which Indigenous views of Arctic security have not been successfully
incorporated into the foreign and security policies of circumpolar states, it indigenizes that
discourse and challenges it to account for the exclusion of Indigenous views. As an academic
study rooted in interpretivist, Western social scientific methodology that also considers the views
and practices of settler states, this is at best a hybrid indigenist research project. However, it
aspires to contribute towards the decolonization of how Arctic security is understood through the
deliberate and focused incorporation of those indigenous voices that have been silenced or
subsumed. Perhaps once the discourse has been decolonized, the policies and practices of Arctic
states will follow.
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Chapter 3
Security, Theory, and the (Arctic) Environment 3As the climate changes, the circumpolar Arctic has often been discussed using the language of
in/security to describe threats and challenges emerging in the region. Arctic states have
articulated new and longstanding regional security interests, and a range of non-state actors have
responded with their own views on what issues constitute various forms of in/security in the
region. Some of these views correspond with those expressed by Arctic states through their
regional foreign and security policies, while others diverge, or even fundamentally challenge
them. Arctic security, then, remains contested, and there is no consensus among the different
representations of in/security in and for the region; indeed, there is outright contradiction. This
variation draws attention to questions of how the understanding of in/security contained within
state policy is determined, whose understanding of in/security it reflects, and whose interests it
serves. Fundamentally, it raises the question of how is security constructed, and why are
particular constructions of in/security accepted? The theoretical challenge has been to account
not only for what security is, but also how it comes about and under what conditions it can
change.
This chapter discusses securitization theory, the most prominent framework for explaining the
social construction of in/security to have emerged within International Security Studies. First, it
provides a brief genealogy of the dominant contemporary understanding of security, before
explaining how in/security is an essentially contested concept and a social construct. It then
outlines securitization theory as originally developed by the members of the Copenhagen School,
before detailing three interrelated critiques of the CS approach that suggest the need for a revised
analytical formulation of securitization. Building, in particular, on the inadequate role of identity
in the securitization process, the chapter explains how non-dominant social groups can be
prevented from having their issues successfully securitized. I propose that better incorporation
of identity allows securitization to explain how official and popular understandings of in/security
in the Arctic have been constructed through structural limitations upon the capacity of particular
actors, specifically Arctic Indigenous peoples, to engage in securitization processes. Drawing on
the work of Lene Hansen, I present a model for explaining the role of non-dominance in
silencing and subsuming the securitizing moves of certain groups. In this respect, I propose that
55
non-dominant groups, including Arctic Indigenous peoples, may experience a double form of
insecurity: they are confronted by social and material phenomena serious enough to desire
securitizing them, but are then unable to generate an effective or sufficient state response to those
issues by being unable to transform them into security issues. This securitization non-dominance
may exacerbate material hazards for non-dominant social groups by preventing them from
effectively mobilizing sovereign power in defence against particular threats. In the case of some
Arctic Indigenous peoples, this applies to their unsuccessful attempts to securitize human-caused
environmental changes. The chapter then examines the theoretical debates over linking security
and the environment and assesses climate change as a security issue. Finally, it presents an
argument for why we should reconsider securitization as a valuable part of policymaking and
important aspect of political inclusion.
3.1 Constructing In/Security
It is far more common to encounter references to ‘security’ than to ‘insecurity’ within
contemporary International Relations (IR) and International Security Studies (ISS). The latter
field’s very name illustrates this point. Security is used widely and often to refer to a desirable
or aspirational condition to be pursued and defended. In this way, security is conventionally
understood in quite objective ways, with insecurity usually defined implicitly by security’s
absence. In this dissertation, however, I prefer a dual concept of in/security, separating the two
only when specifically differentiating them or referring to the work of others. The reason for this
is that security is always linked to insecurity, and not solely as its opposite.143 I argue that most
uses of ‘security’ – in the context of IR and ISS – possess dual significance. In identifying
what/who is to be secured one also indicates what/who is not. The concept of security implies a
negative: every (re)production of security depicts what is relegated to the zone of insecurity
beyond the boundary of its concern. Like the sovereign state itself, in/security is characterized
143 Roberts employs a different justification for employing ‘insecurity’ over ‘security’. See David Roberts, Human Insecurity: Global Structures of Violence (London: Zed Books, 2008).
56
by a dynamic of Inside/Outside: what is Inside (secure) is constitutive of what is Outside
(insecure), and vice versa; neither is comprehensible without the other.144
By employing the term in/security, I emphasize the inherent normative aspect of using security
language, what Jef Huysmans refers to as “the normative dilemma of writing security.”145
Making security claims is an inherently social and political activity that necessarily involves
people, whether as the referent objects to be secured or those whose interests are served by
securing non-human objects. The effects of in/security discourse can be profound because it is
people in their individual lives and collective groups – be they families, communities, identity
groups, or nations – who are rendered as existing within or beyond the legitimate parameters of
security concern. Emphasizing security alone enables those whose security is not being raised,
questioned, pursued, or implemented to be overlooked. Moreover, focusing on security may
obscure the ways in which security for some is generated through the insecurity of others. The
Inside/Outside in/security dynamic exercises material power because of how it directs resources
towards protecting some persons/peoples/groups over others, and exercises ideational power
through the shaping of our cognitive imaginaries of how we are made secure, and what
relationship our security has with the in/security of others. This co-constitution of security and
insecurity is captured here through the use of ‘in/security’ unless there is a specific purpose in
referring to one condition separately from the other.
In the modern period, in/security has traditionally been associated with the maintenance of the
sovereign territorial state, the use of state-authorized violence, and the distribution of power and
interests within the international state system. The exercise of power by the sovereign was
necessary to protect individuals from threats of violence within the context of a territorially
bounded space. Sovereign power actually constitutes the modern state, as in the classic
Weberian definition of the state as possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical
144 R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and R.B.J. Walker, “The Subject of Security,” in Keith Krause and Michael Williams, eds, Critical Security Studies (London: UCL Press, 1997), 61-81. 145 Jef Huysmans, “Defining Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma of Writing Security,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27, no. 1 (2002): 41-62.
57
force.146 Since the power to defend individuals primarily resided with the state, and the principal
threat of mass violence emanated from other states, security was understood as defending one
state against all others. This is the essence of in/security in the Westphalian era: territorially
bounded, juridically equal political units engaged in relations of competition and conflict, with
the wellbeing of individuals fundamentally tied to the survival and prosperity of their respective
states. Security was seen “as a condition both of individuals and of states … A condition, or an
objective, that constituted a relationship between individuals and states or societies.”147 By
virtue of the anarchic structure of the international system, however, preserving the state
necessarily came first. This idea of security continued to evolve through the revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, during which time the state as the provider of
security for individuals shifted towards an understanding of national security which emphasized
the state-qua-state as the object to be protected.148 Security gradually came to mean national
security: the protection of the state against military threats to its survival and national interests.
In epistemological terms, objectivist accounts tend to treat in/security as an objective condition
that exists out there, something determinable through positivist inquiry and obtained or avoided
through prudent policymaking.149 Commonplace both historically and today, such uses typically
accept the prior actuality of the threats and referent objects they examine, (re)producing them as
if the threat unproblematically existed and the referent object naturally merited and required
protection. It is the fact that objective understandings reify the threats and referents under
examination that makes them problematic: “Even if one wanted to take a more objectivist
approach … doing so would demand an objective measure of security that no security theory has
yet provided.”150 Objectivism is evident in the normalization of a conception of in/security
146 Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, trans and eds, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 [1919]), 78. 147 Emma Rothschild, “What is Security?” Daedalus 124, no. 3 (1995): 61. Emphasis in original. 148 Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 22-30; Rothschild 1995, 61. 149 For epistemology in security studies and International Relations see: Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Smith 2005; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 32-43. 150 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998), 30.
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focused on military violence employed by or against sovereign states, even though states have
highly divergent understandings of when their national security is militarily threatened. Bill
McSweeney notes: “The centrality of the state-as-actor is assumed, and with it the need to
measure, or quantify, the conditions in which its security or insecurity is achieved.”151 In
general usage, ‘security’ still connotes the defence of the state and its national interests from
military threats and challengers. But such an understanding is neither natural nor given; rather, it
results from particular developments in modern global politics and the field of ISS.152 The
objectivist account of national security became dominant during the 20th century, when two
world wars, countless small ones, and the forty year-long prospect of nuclear conflict constituted
widely accepted threats, and strongly suggested the relevance of organized state violence to
conditions of security at the national and international levels. This view of in/security was
shaped by circumstance and historical context, but was never natural, inevitable, or structurally
determined.
The dominant national security understanding of in/security became contested from the 1970s
onwards as ISS underwent a series of theoretical and empirical shifts. As the Cold War dragged
on and states and people around the world became confronted by serious challenges unrelated to
the bipolar balance of power or the risk of nuclear conflict, the understanding of security as
inherently tied to the state and organized violence became increasingly challenged. Actors
within academia and beyond sought to alter, undermine, or re-appropriate how security was
understood and pursued at the individual, national, and international levels. In the West, the
anti-nuclear peace research community sought to frame the existence and potential use of nuclear
weapons as a source of insecurity rather than viable protection against the Soviet threat.153
Scholars and practitioners of development emphasized the critical situation of the global poor
and many states in the ‘Third World’, as well as the indirect costs of prioritizing military
151 Bill McSweeney, Identity, Interests, and Security: A Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 15. 152 For a comprehensive account of the emergence of International Security Studies and the dominant conception of security, see Buzan and Hansen 2009. 153 Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167-191; Arthur Westing, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment (London: Taylor and Francis, 1977); David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
59
expenditures over social investments.154 The women’s movement and global processes of
decolonization inspired feminist, critical, and postcolonial approaches to directly engage
dominant academic depictions of in/security, seeking to radically reorient the subjects and
contexts of in/security by inquiring into the lived experiences of women, children, minorities,
and other subaltern groups.155 Lastly, environmentalists, invoking the local, national, and global
impacts of military and economic activities on the environment, began observing the need for
certain ecological conditions to be maintained in order for conditions of security to be
sustainable.156 Dominant state-, military-, and Western-centric accounts of security thus became
widely challenged, especially following the proliferation of new and varied usages of in/security
that emerged post-1990.157
As a result of these and related developments within academia, civil society, and global politics,
scholars became increasingly aware of the multiple meanings of security that had entered into
use. McSweeney observes that security possesses “nominal” and “adjectival” forms that connote
different things; negative ‘protection from’ and positive ‘ability to’, respectively: “The familiar
distinction between ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’ illustrates the difference, and it is closely
related.”158 He and others have noted the incompatibility of these different conceptions, and
argued that far from having a given meaning tied to military defence of the sovereign state,
‘security’ varies according to national and social context, and had been re-imagined at different
points in history. Several scholars explicitly sought to ‘redefine security’, arguing that
154 Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (New York: Clarendon Press, 1982); Peter Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986); Jacques Fontanel, “The Economic Effects of Military Expenditure in Third World Countries,” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 4 (1990): 461-466. 155 Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defence Intellectuals,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12, no. 4 (1987): 687-718; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (London: Macmillan, 1988); J. Ann Tickner, “Hans Morgenthau’s Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation,” Millennium 17, no. 3 (1988): 429-440; Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990). 156 Richard Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (New York: Random House, 1971); Norman Myers, “The Environmental Dimension to Security Issues,” The Environmentalist 6, no. 4 (1986): 251-257; Norman Myers, “The Environment and Security,” Foreign Policy 74 (1989): 23-41. 157 Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, “The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies,” Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 329-352. 158 McSweeney 1999, 14.
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conventional national security discourse was simply inadequate to capture the full range of
emerging security issues.159 Writing in 1952, Arnold Wolfers was among the first to observe the
mutability of in/security, noting: “When formulas such as ‘national interest’ or ‘national
security’ gain popularity they need to be scrutinized with particular care. They may not mean
the same thing to different people. They may not have any precise meaning at all.”160 He
explored this mutability by examining shifting meanings of national security in US government
policy between the Great Depression and the 1950s, noting the change from an economic to
military conception of the American national interest. Wolfers was undeniably ahead of his
time, as the onset of the Cold War would largely cement the state- and military-centric meaning
of security, in the US and elsewhere, for several more decades. But his work paved the way for
future inquiries into the question that stalked academic and policy discussions of in/security:
what does a concept meaning such different things to different people actually mean?
Beginning in the 1980s, and increasing considerably in the 1990s, the answer offered by
constructivist scholars is that in/security has no given meaning; rather, it is a social construct
whose substantive content is ascribed by social actors. Perhaps the single most important
constructivist contribution to International Relations has been to highlight how concepts that are
central to the field – such as anarchy, power, security, or the state – only appear normal because
they have been made to appear so. Rather than objective, such phenomena are, to paraphrase
Alexander Wendt, whatever social actors make of them.161 In the case of in/security, however,
not only does it have no necessary meaning, no objective definition is possible. Drawing on
W.B. Gallie’s insight that there is no objective meaning for inherently normative concepts such
as ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, or ‘justice’, Steve Smith argues that security is also a “contested
concept” whose basic meaning is a matter of inherent dispute: “No neutral definition is possible
… [because] any meaning depends upon and in turn supports a specific view of politics … All
159 Lester Brown, Redefining National Security. Worldwatch Paper 14 (Washington DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1977); Richard H. Ullman, “Redefining Security,” International Security 8, no. 1 (1983): 129-153; Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Redefining Security,” Foreign Affairs 68, no. 2 (1989): 162-177. 160 Arnold Wolfers, “‘National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol,” Political Science Quarterly 67, no. 4 (1952), 481. 161 Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” International Organization 46, no. (1992): 391-425.
61
definitions are theory-dependent, and all definitions reflect normative commitments.”162 Smith
thus echoes one of the basic tenets of critical theorizing, famously articulated by Robert Cox:
“Theory is always for someone, and for some purpose.”163 In arguing that it is the state that
must be secured – often because insecurity is structurally determined by the imperative for
survival under conditions of international anarchy – objectivist accounts exhibit prior views
about states, anarchy, and the behaviour of rational actors, and express preferences for how
politics should be conducted, typified by Stephen Walt’s exemplar account of Realist security
studies.164
Far from being natural, a seemingly inherent link between the state and the meaning of security
was naturalized by powerful actors such as state, military, and economic elites whose interests
were advanced by securing the state.165 In a general sense, this has been part of the process of
modern statebuilding: the construction of sovereign territorial entities as the normal units of
global politics and the natural objects to be secured under conditions of anarchy. From its
inception, the territorial state has also been linked to the promotion of economic interests for elite
actors.166 Studies have also examined the role of key actors in (re)producing particular accounts
of in/security within Western governments and academia, such as the significant role played by
RAND Corporation in objectifying deterrence and second-strike retaliation within American
nuclear doctrine during the Cold War.167 But while powerful, the state-centric and military
meaning of security is not fixed: rather, as an essentially contested concept and a social
construct, it is inherently contestable and possible, if difficult, to change.
162 Steve Smith, “The Contested Concept of Security,” in Ken Booth, ed, Critical Security Studies and World Politics (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 27-28. 163 Robert W. Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10, no. 2 (1981): 128. Emphasis in original. 164 Stephen M. Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1991): 211-239. 165 Rothschild 1995, 62; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 22-30. 166 Hendrik Spruyt, “Institutional Selection in International Relations: State Anarchy as Order,” International Organization 48, no. 4 (1994): 527-557; Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 167 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983); Trine Villumsen Berling, “Science and Securitization: Objectivation, the Authority of the Speaker and Mobilization of Scientific Facts,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 385-397.
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Absent a unified, objective definition of security, ISS has been challenged to define a common
core that encompasses often-conflicted understandings of its foundational concept. One
approach has been to assert that the social construction of security only means that it has no
inherent or natural meaning with respect to specific types of threats to particular types of referent
objects or at certain levels of analysis. But what unifies disparate constructions of in/security is
the shared view that “security is about survival. It is when an issue is presented as posing an
existential threat to a designated referent object.”168 If security’s basic meaning is about
survival, then the essentially contested components of in/security are what should be understood
as security-relevant (threat construction) and who is deserving of having their survival secured
through the exercise of the state’s sovereign power. Such an approach allows for traditional
state- and military-centric accounts of in/security to co-exist within the same academic field as
accounts that emphasize non-state referent objects and non-military sources of threat.169 This
definition allows ISS to encompass the tremendous diversity of scholarship and praxis that has
occurred within the framework of ‘security’. This is crucial because the lexicon and grammar of
security are routinely applied to realms such as the economy, environment, energy, identity,
culture, language, water, food, health, and cyberspace, and to alternative referent objects above
and below the state (such as individuals, peoples, cultures, species, the international system, the
planet, etc.). Generally referred to as the widening and deepening of security, this shift signifies
both a broad acknowledgement of the numerous phenomena relevant to the survival and
wellbeing of peoples and states, and the ongoing contestation within the field over how
in/security should be understood.170
A definitional grounding in survival, though not without certain problems, has the benefit of
bringing some order to a widened concept of in/security while also emphasizing its normative
dimension. If in/security is about survival, then asserting that it is socially constructed does not
imply that it is devoid of meaning or that its definition makes no difference. To the contrary, it
matters precisely how security is understood and implemented, because the answer will influence
who or what enjoys the benefits of security under sovereign power and who or what does not.
168 Buzan et al. 1998, 21. 169 Buzan et al. 1998, 27. 170 Buzan et al. 1998, 2-7; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 187-225.
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The meaning of security is disputed precisely because it is a powerful social and political
concept that deeply affects people’s lives, today and throughout modern history: “The very act of
defining security and making a claim for that definition is an act of power, supporting the politics
that depend on that definition, or making a normative claim for why security ought to be defined
in a particular way.”171 Security is powerful because the basic core of its meaning is understood
to invoke the prospect of survival to some object of social value. What follows, then, must be
some determination of what is deemed worthy of survival, and what is not. If security is about
survival, then what matters is how the determination of what is to survive is actually made.
3.2 Securitization Theory: The Copenhagen School and Its Critics
Emerging from debates over the widening and deepening of security in the late Cold War period,
securitization theory (ST) has become the most significant constructivist approach within
International Security Studies. The subject of a vast literature and a significant number and
variety of internal debates, ST was initially developed through the individual and co-authored
work of Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan, the core members of the so-called Copenhagen School of
International Relations (CS).172 The impossibility of identifying a single objective meaning of
security led the CS to focus instead upon what gives ‘security’ its particular social and political
power. Rather than debating its definition, the CS focused instead on what invoking security
does, namely the process by which political issues are transformed into security issues. Taking
seriously in/security as socially constructed, the CS understands in/security not as something that
is, but as something that becomes. Their seminal theoretical contribution lies in outlining the
process through which the transformation into security relevance, namely securitization, occurs.
171 Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv and Marina Goloviznina, “Introduction,” in Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, Dawn Bazely, Marina Goloviznina, and Andrew Tanentzap, eds, Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic (New York: Routledge, 2014), 2. 172 Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era. 2nd ed (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991); Ole Wæver, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, ed, On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995): 46-86; Ole Wæver, Concepts of Security (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 1997); Buzan et al. 1998; Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
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In the CS account, designating an issue as a security issue means that it supersedes all others,
moving it beyond the realm of ‘normal’ politics by legitimizing extraordinary measures to
address it. Securitization is equivalent to saying “if we [the political community] do not tackle
this problem, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or will not be free to
deal with it in our own way).”173 Successfully securitizing an issue thus (re)produces a
particular social meaning of in/security by designating that which we should be most afraid of
because it threatens our ability to do everything else. The continual reproduction of particular
meanings of in/security can accumulate over time, creating dominant, even axiomatic,
understandings of what in/security means within a given context. But such meanings are never
fixed, nor do they become naturalized or reified through their (re)production. Rather, it is the
capacity for in/security to change, for security problems to “emerge and dissolve,”174 how, and
under what conditions, that is of interest to securitization theory.
Figure 3: CS Securitization Process
Drawing on John Austin’s linguistic theory of “performative utterances,”175 the CS securitization
process involves two steps, as laid out in Figure 3. First, a social actor – in theory any actor,
173 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 174 Thierry Balzacq, ed, Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (New York: Routledge, 2011). 175 John Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975 [1962]).
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though as discussed later, not all actors are equally positioned to make security claims – makes a
securitizing move, thus becoming a securitizing actor. A securitizing move identifies a threat to
a referent object whose survival is endangered. The CS understands the securitizing move to be
a speech act that employs the grammar and logic of in/security: “A speech act is interesting
because it holds the insurrecting potential to break the ordinary, to establish meaning that is not
already in the context. It reworks or produces a context by the performative success of the
act.”176 For most securitizing moves, the logic is one of emergency, danger, of current or
impending crisis.177 Often employing language such as, but not limited to, ‘security’,
‘insecurity’, ‘threat’, ‘survival’, ‘danger’, and ‘existence’, securitizing moves invoke an
existential threat to a specified referent object with the goal of mobilizing political power in
response. Though the CS privileges the term ‘security’, this meaning – the discursive
construction of something as threatened and requiring an urgent and public response for its
survival – is more important than the specific language used. While the CS understands
securitization as primarily a discursive process, it is inherently performative in the sense that
when securitization succeeds something is actually done. Wæver clearly notes the linguistic and
performative aspects of securitization when he claims: “The word ‘security’ is the act; the
utterance is the primary reality.”178 If successful, securitization transforms something into a
security issue legitimating action in correspondence with the urgency of the security designation.
For a securitizing move to become a complete securitization, however, it must be accepted by an
authoritative audience with the power to invoke exceptional measures in defence of the referent
object. This is the second step in the securitization process: the adjudication of security claims
by an audience “who have to be convinced in order for a securitizing move to be successful.”179
Securitizing moves alone are easy to make and abundant to find; they are evidenced by the
176 Buzan et al. 1998, 46. 177 This logic is influenced by the political theory of Carl Schmitt; see Filip Ejdus, ed, “Carl Schmitt and the Copenhagen School of Security Studies,” Western Baltic Security Observer 4, no. 13 (2009), 1-77. For a contrasting view see Didier Bigo and Anastasia Tsoukala, eds, Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes After 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2008). 178 Wæver 1995, 55. Emphasis in original. 179 Ole Wæver, “Securitisation: Taking Stock of a Research Programme in Security Studies,” unpublished paper (2003): 11-12. Quoted in Sarah Léonard and Christian Kaunert, “Reconceptualizing the Audience in Securitization Theory,” in Thierry Balzacq, ed, Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (New York: Routledge, 2011), 59.
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proliferation of ‘security talk’ that has accompanied the post-Cold War widening of security
away from military violence and its deepening above and below the state. But the power of the
complete securitization lies in securitizing moves crossing the threshold of acceptance by the
proper audience, which is often but not exclusively tied to a sovereign state.180 It is by this
acceptance “through which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political
community to treat something as an existential threat to a valued referent object, and to enable a
call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat.”181 Although often vague and
somewhat contradictory, as discussed below, the CS formulation relies upon the audience’s
acceptance of a securitizing move because of their emphasis upon the extraordinary measures
and legitimate rule-breaking such acceptance enables.182 Once completed, “‘security’ is the
move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a
special kind of politics or as above politics … justifying actions outside the normal bounds of
political procedure.”183 The role and nature of the audience are among the most important and
debated aspects of securitization theory, since there is an inconsistency between the argument
that the audience must accept a securitizing move and Wæver’s assertion that by merely uttering
‘security’ something is done. This debate – over whether securitization is an intersubjective or
an illocutionary process – is taken up below.
The utterance of a securitizing move forms the internal dimension of securitization, but the
successful construction of in/security also requires certain external dimensions to be in place.184
Still drawing on Austinian language theory, the CS describe three facilitating conditions that
structure the likely success or failure of a securitizing move: use of the grammar of security, the
social capital and authority of the securitizing actor, and the features of the object held to be
180 Various audiences are specified in the CS’s work: it is usually implied to be a democratic public, but may also be a legislative body, political executive, or supranational organization such as the European Union or United Nations Security Council. 181 Buzan and Wæver 2003, 491. 182 Buzan et al. 1998, 21, 26; Wæver 1995, 55. 183 Buzan et al. 1998, 23-24. 184 The distinction between internal and external dimensions of securitization is discussed in Holger Stritzel, “Towards a Theory of Securitization: Copenhagen and Beyond,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 3 (2007): 359-360.
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threatening.185 These conditions shape and constrain whether certain securitizing moves will be
accepted, whether certain securitizing actors will be heard, and whether certain phenomena can
be credibly securitized. They also reflect the concession – which only emerged in the
Copenhagen School’s later writings – that securitizing moves do not operate in discursive
vacuums where all speech acts are equally likely to succeed. In contrast with the stricter post-
structuralism of Wæver’s sole-authored work that “points to the centrality of studying in a text,
how it produces its own meaning, rather than relating it to a ‘context’,”186 the CS collectively
acknowledges that security “is a structured field in which some actors are placed in positions of
power.”187 Which issues will be securitized is thus subject to specific social context, and vary
by place, era, prevailing attitudes, and material circumstances.
In its aims, CS securitization theory is explicitly not concerned with identifying real or objective
security threats, but rather the discursive process through which security threats are
established.188 Even conceding the role of facilitating conditions, the CS remains “radically
constructivist”189 in that in/security is determined by the success of particular securitizing moves
in elevating an issue to the fore of the audience’s consciousness and the apex of political priority.
Whether or not a material danger corresponding to a securitizing move exists is irrelevant to the
construction of security threats, just as the normative or practical implications of responding to a
particular threat are inconsequential to its validity as a successful securitization. To the CS,
“‘security’ is thus a self-referential practice, because it is in this practice that the issue becomes a
security issue – not necessarily because a real existential threat exists but because the issue is
presented as such a threat.”190 Successful securitizations may represent objectively dangerous
material phenomena, or have little or no basis in materiality, with the latter emerging either from
a subjective perception of threat or from instrumental use of security language.
185 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. 186 Ole Wæver 2004. Quoted in Stritzel 2007, 361. Emphasis in original. 187 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 188 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 189 Buzan et al. 1998, 35. 190 Buzan et al. 1998, 24.
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The CS view of security as self-referential means it is neither characterized by the absence of a
threat, per se, nor understood as a binary opposite to insecurity. Instead, “insecurity is the
situation when there is a threat and no defence against it; security is a situation with a threat and
a defence against it.”191 Security is not constituted by the absence of threats, but by the
specification of a threat and a suitable defence-response. By contrast, the absence of threats –
not their material absence, but lack of issues socially constructed as such – is a condition outside
the realm of security the CS refers to as “normal politics.”192 As Wæver explains:
When there is no security problem, we do not conceptualize our situation in terms of security; instead, security is simply an irrelevant concern. The statement, then, that security is always relative, and one never lives in complete security, has the additional meaning that, if one has such complete security, one does not label it ‘security.’ It therefore never appears. Consequently, transcending a security problem by politicizing it cannot happen through thematization in security terms, only away from such terms.193
The Copenhagen School envisions all possible social issues falling along a spectrum ranging
from depoliticized-politicized-securitized. Issues can move from politicized to securitized, but
also from security back into the realm of normal politics through the reverse process of
desecuritization. Throughout their work, the CS is clear in their preference for issues to be
desecuritized rather than the opposite. For them, “security should be seen as negative, as a
failure to deal with issues as normal politics. Ideally, politics should be able to unfold according
to routine procedures without this extraordinary elevation of specific ‘threats’ to a prepolitical
immediacy.”194 While the CS acknowledges that securitization may sometimes be necessary,
they always consider it regrettable because of the societal cost to the normal operation of
political institutions, protection of particular rights, and the rule of law.
This preference for desecuritization is one of the central distinctions between the Copenhagen
School and other theoretical approaches to security, including subsequent accounts of
securitization. Both objectivist and critical security theories tend to emphasize maximizing the
191 Ole Wæver, “Securitisation: Taking Stock of a Research Programme in Security Studies,” unpublished paper (2003). Quoted in Rita Floyd, Security and Environment: Securitisation Theory and US Environmental Security Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 30-31. Emphasis in original. 192 Buzan et al. 1998, 28-34. 193 Wæver 1995, 56. Emphasis in original. 194 Buzan et al. 1998, 29.
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provision of security, whether through the expansion of material power for sovereign states or
the pursuit of “positive security” for individuals and communities.195 Wæver dismisses this
position, arguing “the trick was and is to move from a positive to a negative meaning … We
want less security!”196 For the CS, rather than more security for threatened referent objects,
“desecuritization itself – as the absence of a world framed in terms of security – is the
emancipatory ideal.”197 Their position exhibits an unqualified preference for the operation of
normal politics lacking the emergency connotations and anti-democratic potential of
securitization. It also suggests the radicalism of the CS position, especially in the early post-
Cold War context in which the theory was first articulated: arguing for less security was, and
remains, a bold and counter-intuitive approach to ISS.
Not content to simply redefine in/security, the Copenhagen School sought to develop a theory
that would make it possible to transcend the threat-response dynamic and its perceived negative
social and political consequences. Their articulation of a radically constructivist approach to
in/security inaugurated a vibrant branch of International Security Studies that has sustained
theoretical discussions and empirical analyses of diverse contexts for over twenty years,
inspiring scores of books and hundreds of articles by scholars around the world.198
Securitization theory provides explanatory leverage into how competing or contradictory
195 For discussions of positive security and securitization see Paul Roe, “The ‘Value’ of Positive Security,” Review of International Studies 34, no. 4 (2008): 777-794; Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv, “Security By Any Other Name: Negative Security, Positive Security, and a Multi-Actor Security Approach,” Review of International Studies 38, no. 4 (2012): 835-859; Paul Roe, “Is Securitization a ‘Negative’ Concept? Revisiting the Normative Debate Over Normal Versus Extraordinary Politics,” Security Dialogue 43, no. 3 (2012): 249-266. 196 Wæver 1995, 56. 197 Floyd 2010, 48-49. 198 A small sample of examples not already cited includes: Hazel Smith, “Bad, Mad, Sad, or Rational Actor? Why the ‘Securitization’ Paradigm Makes for Poor Policy Analysis of North Korea,” International Affairs 76, no. 1 (2000): 111-132; Paul Roe, “Securitization and Minority Rights: Conditions of Desecuritization,” Security Dialogue 35, no. 3 (2004): 279-294; Rita Abrahamsen, “Blair’s Africa: The Politics of Securitization and Fear,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 30, no. 1 (2005): 55-80); Claire Wilkinson, “The Copenhagen School on Tour in Kyrgyzstan: Is Securitization Theory Usable Outside Europe?” Security Dialogue 38, no. 1 (2007): 5-25; Wolfram Lacher, “Actually Existing Security: The Political Economy of the Saharan Threat,” Security Dialogue 39, no. 4 (2008): 383-405; Luis Lobo-Guerrero, “‘Pirates,’ Stewards, and the Securitization of Global Circulation,” International Political Sociology 2, no. 3 (2008): 219-235; Mark B. Salter, “Securitization and Desecuritization: A Dramaturgical Analysis of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority,” Journal of International Relations and Development 11, no. 4 (2008): 321-349; Holger Stritzel, “Security as Translation: Threats, Discourse, and the Politics of Localisation,” Review of International Studies 37, no. 5 (2011): 2491-2517; and Scott Watson, “The Human as ‘Referent Object’? Humanitarianism as Securitization,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 1 (2011): 3-20.
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representations of in/security are constructed within a particular context or for a particular
referent object: “It is from here that the empirical theorizing takes its origins. Knowing different
security discourses and analysing how ‘the other’ is constructed within each allows the observer
to see potential policy fault-lines and securitization processes.”199 Securitization offers a
powerful explanatory framework for the social construction of in/security, providing a theoretical
account for understanding how in/security is always susceptible to contestation.
As originally conceived, however, the CS conceptualization has been critiqued on theoretical,
analytical, and normative grounds. Some critiques include: the alleged inability to assess the
normative implications of securitization;200 inadequate incorporation of materiality into threat
construction;201 unsatisfactory examination of the external context in which securitizing moves
occur;202 theoretical inconsistency about the role of the audience;203 and disputes over how
securitization actually occurs and the salience of emergency or crisis in legitimating security
practices.204 These debates have encouraged some scholars to work towards improving the
validity and coherence of the securitization framework: the original CS theory provides the
foundation on which several different formulations of securitization have been built. These share
a common premise that in/security is socially constructed through the interaction of different
social actors, but differ in their understandings of the form, components, and significance of
those interactions. Several critical accounts of securitization inform the following analysis,
which examines three interrelated problems in the CS theory. The first of these is the CS
account of normal politics and its preference for desecuritization. Second is the tension within
the CS formulation between securitization as an intersubjective process and as an illocutionary
199 Stefano Guzzini, “Securitization as a Causal Mechanism,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 331. 200 Rita Floyd, “Can Securitization Theory Be Used in Normative Analysis? Towards a Just Securitization Theory,” Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 427-439. 201 Thierry Balzacq, “The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context,” European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 2 (2005): 171-201. 202 Balzacq 2005; Stritzel 2007; Matt McDonald, “Securitization and the Construction of Security,” European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 4 (2008): 563-587. 203 Floyd 2010, 50; Léonard and Kaunert 2011, 57-76. 204 Didier Bigo, “When Two Become One: Internal and External Securitisation in Europe,” in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams, eds, International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration: Power, Security and Community (London: Routledge, 2000); Bigo and Tsoukala 2008.
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speech act, which foregrounds theoretical questions about the role of the audience in adjudicating
securitizing moves. Third is the conceptual development of the identity of securitizing actors,
audiences, and analysts within the CS theory. Taken together, these critiques provide the basis
for a revised approach to securitization proposed in the next section.
3.2.1 Normal Politics and Non-Securitized Issues
The Copenhagen School’s preference for desecuritization is derived from a particular view of
normal politics and the nature of the authoritative audience that adjudicates security claims. The
conception of politics underlying the CS account of securitization is democracy-centric: it
assumes possibilities for socio-political actors to more or less freely engage in political
processes, and generally equates the audience to a democratic public. Other possible audiences
include legislative bodies, political executives, elites, or supranational organizations such as the
European Union or United Nations Security Council; the audience must be empowered to act,
and so varies according to the specific threat and referent object in question. The CS allows for
the possibility of securitization to operate in non-democratic contexts, but provides no account of
how it would differ in contexts where people cannot speak openly or there is no independent
authoritative audience.205 Some scholars thus question whether the CS theory can explain the
construction of in/security in non-democratic systems.206 Wæver has acknowledged that the
audience in the original theory is strongly implied to be a democratic public,207 and scholars
employing securitization theory often structure their empirical analyses around the role of an
electorate in accepting securitizing moves.208 But the assumption of a democratic audience
relies upon received views of the responsiveness of political institutions to the demands of
citizens, and offers elections as the only account for how the public can be authoritative when
sovereign power is vested in the institutions of the state. This has led Rita Floyd to argue:
205 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 206 Wilkinson 2007; Vuori 2008. 207 Ole Wæver, “Taking Stock,” 11-12. Quoted in Léonard and Kaunert 2011, 59. By contrast, “consumer society” is identified as the audience in Bigo and Tsoukala 2008, 5. 208 Floyd 2010, 51; Jarrod Hayes, “Securitization, Social Identity, and Democratic Security: Nixon, India, and the Ties That Bind,” International Organization 66, no. 1 (2012): 69.
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The audience in [CS] securitization theory is not an analytical concept at all, but rather a normative concept in analytical disguise. This is because through the idea of ‘intersubjectivity’ Wæver can show, and indeed shows, a normative commitment … Wæver believes that politics should be done consensually and through dialogue and deliberation, as opposed to politics being a top-down process … The concept of audience arises from Wæver’s view of what politics ought to be, therefore not necessarily from how it actually is.209
Securitization moves issues away from normal politics and into the realm of security, but the
actual process of securitization takes place within the realm of normal politics because the issue
has not yet been securitized. The CS is so committed to an ideal of normal politics as
democratic politics that they adopt a view of the audience that limits their theory’s applicability
and may not reflect empirical realities.
The CS requires a democratic view of normal politics because it is essential to justifying their
preference for desecuritization, which rests on the assumption that if issues remain in the normal
political realm they will be tackled through normal political means. Wæver insists that whereas
securitization forecloses political discussion and debate, desecuritization results in politicization,
whereby issues can be resolved without the crisis and emergency connotations of being labelling
security issues.210 Unmentioned in the CS account is the possibility that issues that remain
desecuritized may also remain depoliticized, a prospect raised by Floyd: “Following
desecuritization, an issue may no longer be part of the political agenda for those in power, even
if it is still a concern for other actors.”211 This observation points to a vital gap in securitization
theory: material phenomena endangering people’s lives or wellbeing of groups of people do not
vanish simply because they fail to succeed as securitizations or are not conceived in security
terms. Wæver’s claim that “transcending a security problem by politicizing it cannot happen
through thematization in security terms, only away from such terms,”212 relies upon the view
that normal (democratic) politics effectively addresses serious social issues. Unfortunately, this
209 Floyd 2010, 50-51. Emphasis in original. 210 Wæver 1997, 3. 211 Floyd 2010, 57. 212 Wæver 1995, 56.
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is an overly optimistic reading of democratic politics, particularly when confronting complex,
divisive, or “wicked” problems such as human-caused environmental change.213
The danger of relying upon politicization to address non-securitized issues is made clear when
one considers the distinction between radically constructed security threats and objective hazards
that are often the subjects of securitizing moves. The CS reserves the designation of ‘threat’ for
those moves which succeed in being accepted by the authoritative audience; threats are not based
on their materiality but on the sovereign’s discursive agreement to mobilize its power against a
designated phenomenon. Something may be dangerous, but it is not elevated to the status of
threat unless the state decides to do something about it. Thierry Balzacq effectively notes the
problem with this exclusively discursive account of security threats, though he invites confusion
by employing the term ‘threat’ in both constructed and objective ways:
In its attempts to follow a more radical approach to security problems … the CS has neglected the importance of ‘external or brute threats’, that is, threats that do not depend on language mediation to be what they are – hazards for human life … In [the CS] scheme, there is no security problem except through the language game. Therefore, how problems are ‘out there’ is exclusively contingent upon how we linguistically depict them. This is not always true. For one, language does not construct reality; at best, it shapes our perception of it. Moreover, it is not theoretically useful nor is it empirically credible to hold that what we say about a problem would determine its essence ... Some security problems are the attribute of the development itself.214
In emphasizing the radically constructed nature of security threats to “avoid a view of security
that is given objectively,”215 the CS downplays the material consequences of serious issues that
fail to be securitized. A single sentence in their seminal book, Security: A New Framework for
Analysis, invites analysts to “show the effects of … not securitizing – the inability to handle an
213 Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Richard J. Lazarus, "Super Wicked Problems and Climate Change: Restraining the Present to Liberate the Future," Cornell Law Review 94, no. 5 (2009); Kelly Levin, Benjamin Cashore, Steven Bernstein and Graeme Auld, “Overcoming the Tragedy of Super Wicked Problems: Constraining our Future Selves to Ameliorate Global Climate Change” Policy Sciences 45, no. 2 (2012): 123-152. 214 Balzacq 2005, 181. Emphasis in original. 215 Buzan et al. 1998, 31.
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issue effectively unless it is securitized.”216 But the CS schema allows no room for objective
material dangers to be understood as security-relevant unless successfully securitized. Their
approach to in/security thus marginalizes the physical world and material objects in which and
upon which security logic operates: “Precisely because the Copenhagen School holds that
something becomes a security problem only when it is spoken of, or regarded as a security
problem, they deny the objective existence of security threats.”217 This is consistent with the
CS’s radically constructivist approach, but moves away from the central conceptual core of
security as focused on survival.
The limitations of normal politics combined with the existence of objective material hazards call
into question the Copenhagen School’s default normative objection to securitization. The
preference for desecuritization is only tenable if politicization is more likely to effectively
resolve a given problem; if not, there is no a priori basis on which to prefer desecuritization to
securitization. If desecuritization without effective politicization may result in disaster for a
given referent object, then “in the case of brute threats, securitisation may well be a more viable
political strategy than desecuritisation, considering that securitisation’s unique mobilisation
power can deal with problems faster and more effectively than mere politicisation.”218 In the
Arctic, for instance, desecuritizing environmental change in the absence of effective
politicization may affect the survival of a range of referent objects.
3.2.2 Intersubjectivity and Illocutionary Speech Acts
Understanding the conceptualization of the audience is also key to one of the most fundamental
debates around the CS theory: whether securitization operates as an intersubjective process or an
illocutionary speech act.219 Several scholars have observed that the CS theory suffers from an
incompatible view of securitization as both an intersubjective agreement that transforms
216 Buzan et al. 1998, 40. 217 Floyd 2010, 31. 218 Floyd 2010, 33. 219 The distinction between illocutionary and other types of speech act is also taken from John Austin (1962), and is explained in greater detail in Balzacq 2005, 175.
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securitizing moves into complete securitizations, and as an illocutionary speech act whereby
merely speaking security transforms something into a security issue.220 As Stritzel asks: “How
can the idea of the performative force of a security articulation … be reconciled with the concept
of a (social or intersubjective) process of securitization?”221 The inconsistency can be
summarized as conflicting accounts of the audience as, on the one hand, essential to
securitization because “the issue is only securitized if and when the audience accepts it as
such,”222 but on the other, as superfluous because “security is determined by [securitizing] actors
… It is the actor … who decides whether something is to be handled as an existential threat.”223
The result is confusion over whether securitization is intersubjective – constructed between actor
and audience and therefore not solely self-referential – or illocutionary, and thus self-referential
but not based on some form of social agreement. Put another way, the question is over where the
“social magic”224 of securitization actually lies: with the securitizing actor through a
performative speech act or with the audience with the power to accept or reject securitizing
moves.
The distinction matters because it shapes our understanding of who is required to make
securitization work, and because it directly affects the CS’s justification for preferring
desecuritization. If securitization is intersubjectively established between social actors, then it
has a basis of meaning outside the grammar and language of in/security. The three facilitating
conditions would then matter significantly because they provide the “heuristic artefacts [which] a
securitizing actor [must] use to create (or effectively resonate with) the circumstances that will
facilitate the mobilization of the audience … [The] outcome is to open up the politics and
methods of creating security, since discourse involves practice and refers to variables that are
extra-linguistic.”225 Intersubjectivity exposes securitization to the influence of social context,
220 Balzacq 2005; Floyd 2010. As Stritzel (2007: 363) observes, this inconsistency is sometimes apparent on the same page of the Copenhagen School’s published works. 221 Stritzel 2007, 363. 222 Buzan et al. 1998, 25. 223 Buzan et al. 1998, 31, 34. 224 Thierry Balzacq, “A Theory of Securitization: Origins, Core Assumptions, and Variants,” in Thierry Balzacq, ed, Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (New York: Routledge, 2011), 1. 225 Balzacq 2005, 178-179.
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and retains a role for the audience to reject security claims. But if securitization operates as an
illocution then it is not a process at all, because it is through the mere utterance of a threat’s
existence by a powerful securitizing actor that something is securitized. Whether securitization
operates in one way or the other is an analytical question, but the answer has significant
normative implications. Intersubjectivity maintains space for democratic inclusion, affording the
possibility of involvement by members of a political community in determining what in/security
is. Illocutionary securitization radically empowers the agents of the state, since it reserves for
the sovereign the right to decree what in/security is, reducing it to an expression of the views of
those who already possess political power. Securitization-as-illocution thus conflicts with the
CS ideal of normal (democratic) politics because the audience’s agreement is not required for the
success of the speech act. Conversely, an audience-centric intersubjective approach may
conform to Wæver’s democratic ideal but requires significant compromise on the performative
power the CS imparts to security utterances.
Ultimately, the Copenhagen School is unclear whether securitization is intersubjective or
illocutionary, though other analysts have inferred answers based on close readings of the CS’s
published works. The CS does not clearly theorize who comprises the audience, but expends
significant effort establishing the self-referential and illocutionary nature of security speech acts.
Consequently, Balzacq concludes that “by examining the units of analysis of the CS, which
negate the audience … the CS leans towards self-referentiality [illocution], rather than
intersubjectivity.”226 Floyd concurs, though she and Balzacq differ in their response to the de
facto account of securitization-as-illocution, with Balzacq advocating better inclusion of the
external dimensions of securitization and Floyd seeking to move away from performative speech
acts altogether.227 Stritzel also determines that the CS favours an “internalist” conception of
securitization, and joins Balzacq in emphasizing the need for better analysis of external
dimensions that incorporate other factors and actors into securitization.228 Though distinct in
their own revised approaches to employing securitization, all three agree that securitization-as-
226 Balzacq 2005, 179. 227 Floyd 2010, 52. 228 Stritzel 2007.
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illocution is analytically limiting because it is unlikely to capture the external dimensions that
contribute to the real-world success or failure of securitizing moves.
3.2.3 Identity and Securitization
One of the most important, yet under-developed, external dimensions of securitization theory is
the identity of the actors involved. From the outset, the CS exhibited a distinct but circumscribed
interest in, and relevance to, questions of identity. Some of their earliest writings focused on the
securitization of national, cultural, and linguistic identities in post-Cold War Europe, often in
tandem with the re-emergence of far right ideologies and political parties.229 Distinct from
contributions that viewed identity as a causal factor in the determination of security priorities,230
or saw it as (re)produced through security processes,231 the CS proposed a conception of societal
security in which “the referent object is large-scale collective identities that can function
independent of the state.”232 Noting the inherent conservatism of attempting to secure
‘authentic’ collective identity, the CS details how identity(ies) that link a group’s members have
typically been perceived as threatened through evolution (change over time) and dilution (contact
with outside influences), including individuals within a community represented as outside an
identity group and threatening to it.233 How a communal identity is constructed is therefore key,
since the hazards that are considered to threaten it will vary according to how identity-holders
understand the bonds that link them together: communities experience in/security differently
“depending upon how their identity is constructed.”234 However, the construction of threats to
an identity also serves as a powerful tool for reproducing it: “Threats to identity are thus always
229 Ole Wæver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Order in Europe (London: Pinter, 1993). 230 Peter J. Katzenstein, ed, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identities in World Politics. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 231 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); McSweeney 1999. 232 Buzan et al. 1998, 22. 233 Buzan et al. 1998, 119-140. 234 Buzan et al. 1998, 124.
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a question of the construction of something as threatening some ‘we’ – and often thereby
actually contributing to the construction or reproduction of ‘us’.”235 Its emphasis on social
construction has made securitization theory applicable to examining communal identities that are
themselves socially constructed but which often claim historic, primordial, or essentialist
qualities.236
What the CS pays less attention to is identity as part of the facilitating conditions for the
securitization process itself. At first glance, the CS appears attuned to the importance of identity:
they note that security is a “structured field” and that “social power” shapes the influence of
securitizing actors and the societal perception of particular security issues.237 Socio-political and
state elites, through their control of political and economic resources, mass media, prior
legitimacy, and social capital, occupy dominant positions within securitization processes that
privilege their securitizing moves over those of other actors.238 But the CS moves quickly to
limit the exceptional securitizing role of elites, claiming: “This power, however, is never
absolute: no one is guaranteed the ability to make people accept a claim for necessary security
action, nor is anyone excluded from attempts to articulate alternative interpretations of security.
The field is structured and biased, but no one conclusively ‘holds’ the power of
securitization.”239 The CS thus sees identity as relevant to the interests of actors in making
securitizing moves, but specifies that a securitizing actor’s identity is not determinative of a
move’s success. Subsequent analyses also focus on exploring how securitizing actors’ identities
relate to securitization, and how those identities are affected by external factors.240
Here, again, the CS demonstrates insufficient attention to the audience: they raise the relevance
of identity for the securitizing actors, but not for the audience receiving securitizing moves.
When the CS refers to “the social conditions regarding the position of authority for the
235 Buzan et al. 1998, 120. Emphasis in original. 236 For the social construction of national identity see Anderson 2006. 237 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 238 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. Citing Pierre Bourdieu, Balzacq (2005, 190-191) makes a similar point. 239 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 240 Roxanna Sjöstedt, “Ideas, Identities and Internalizations: Explaining Securitizing Moves,” Cooperation and Conflict 48, no. 1 (2013): 143-164.
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securitizing actor – that is, the relationship between speaker and audience and thereby the
likelihood of the audience accepting the claims made in a securitizing attempt,”241 the relevance
of social conditions is vested in the actor. They insist that “one can not make the actors of
securitization the fixed point of analysis,” but specify that “in concrete analysis, however, it is
important to be specific about who is more or less privileged in articulating security.”242 The
focus on securitizing actors rather than audience reinforces the arguments made by Balzacq,
Floyd, and Stritzel that in the tension between securitization as intersubjective or illocutionary,
the CS favour illocution because it sustains their commitment to the performative power of the
securitizing move. Since the audience is rendered superfluous it is not the subject of conceptual
elaboration.243 Alternatively, the omission may stem from the CS theory’s democratic bias: the
identity of the audience does not have to be theorized in detail because it is assumed to be a
democratic identity, varying by national context but neutral in its function of adjudicating
security claims. But insofar as the CS maintains the intersubjectivity of the securitization
process, it emphasizes the relevance of identity for securitizing actors without extending it to the
audience.
This emphasis is ironic, however, because the CS denies the role of security analysts as
securitizing actors themselves, overlooking how the identity of the analyst matters to securitizing
processes they examine. The CS sees analysts and actors as “functionally distinct”: the role of
the former is restricted to examining the actions of the latter in producing securitizing moves or
successful securitizations.244 They insist, “the security analyst [is] in no position to assume the
role of the securitising actor at any point in the analysis.”245 But this is inconsistent with the
CS’s own radically constructivist approach, since it minimizes:
the role of the political (social) scientist in co-constituting political reality … The securitisation analyst in writing (speaking) about a particular social reality is in part responsible for the co-constitution of this very reality, as by means of her own text this
241 Buzan et al. 1998, 33. 242 Buzan et al. 1998, 32. Emphasis added. 243 Léonard and Kaunert 2011. 244 Buzan et al. 1998, 33-35. 245 Buzan et al. 1998, 33-34.
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reality is (re)produced … In writing or speaking security, the securitisation analyst herself executes a speech act; this speech act is successful if the problem raised becomes recognised as a security problem in the academic literature and/or in the wider policy-making discourse.246
Certainly, analysts examine the securitizing moves of others, but while doing so will either
support the validity of the securitizing move, (re)producing the issue as a security issue, or
critique its empirical validity or successful social construction, undermining its security-ness.
Clearly, “when security analysts ‘observe’ acts of security of security moves, the analyst has
immediately contributed to the politics of the process by recognizing (or not recognizing) an
actor as a security actor and a securitizing move as being successful or not.”247 Especially when
analysing non-traditional security issues, analysts cannot avoid challenging or reproducing their
security-relevance, as evidenced by studies of such diverse phenomena as: gender,248
migrants,249 illegal drugs,250 HIV/AIDS and other epidemic diseases,251 capitalist
consumerism,252 and human-caused environmental change.253
246 Floyd 2010, 47. 247 Hoogensen and Goloviznina 2014, 2. 248 Gunhild Hoogensen and Svein Vigeland Rottem, “Gender Identity and the Subject of Security,” Security Dialogue 25, no. 2 (2004): 155-171; Hoogensen and Stuvøy 2006; Roberts 2008. 249 Jef Huysmans, “The European Union and the Securitization of Migration,” Journal of Common Market Studies 38, no. 5 (2000): 751-777; Roe 2004; Maggie Ibrahim, “The Securitization of Migration: A Racial Discourse,” International Migration 43, no. 5 (2005): 163-187. 250 Kyle Grayson, Chasing Dragons: Security, Identity, and Illicit Drugs in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Emily Crick, “Drugs as an Existential Threat: An Analysis of the International Securitization of Drugs,” International Drug Policy 23, no. 5 (2012): 407-414; Danny Kushlick, “International Security and the Global War on Drugs: The Tragic Irony of Drug Securitisation,” in Richard Pates and Diane Riley, eds, Harm Reduction in Substance Abuse and High Risk Behaviour: International Policy and Practice (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 101-110. 251 Susan Peterson, “Epidemic Disease and National Security,” Security Studies 12, no. 2 (2002): 43-81; Stefan Elbe, “Should HIV/AIDS Be Securitized? The Ethical Dilemmas of Linking HIV/AIDS and Security,” International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2006): 119-144. 252 Simon Dalby, “Geopolitical Identities: Arctic Ecologies and Global Consumption,” Geopolitics 8, no. 1 (2003): 181-201; Vanessa Pupavac, “The Consumerism-Development-Security Nexus,” Security Dialogue 41, no. 6 (2010): 691-713. 253 Heather A. Smith, “Choosing Not to See: Canada, Climate Change, and the Arctic,” International Journal 65, no. 4 (Autumn 2010): 931-942; Matt McDonald, “The Failed Securitization of Climate Change in Australia,” Australian Journal of Political Science 47, no. 4 (2012): 579-592.
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This conclusion is hard to avoid using the Copenhagen School’s own constructivist logic. It is
more theoretically consistent and intellectually honest to consider analysts as securitizing actors
who help construct in/security by contributing epistemological and theoretical innovations that
widen (or narrow) the field of security research, and by articulating particular threats they
consider worthy of investigation or urgently requiring action.254 Conversely, they may work to
desecuritize issues they consider to be inappropriately or problematically constructed as security
threats. Denying the securitizing role of analysts contributes to the naturalization of the security
phenomena that they study, and overlooks the role of experts in co-constituting their fields of
study. Just as important, acknowledging expert analysts as co-constituting political reality
recognizes the role they play in conferring academic authority to particular conceptions of
in/security, and the influence they sometimes exert over political and public opinion.
3.3 Revising Securitization: Non-Dominance and In/Security
Two implications of these critiques inform a revised account of securitization. Revisions are
necessary because, “while securitization gives us powerful tools for analyzing the security
process, it is not a complete theory of security … [It] only begins to address factors that facilitate
or inhibit securitization.”255 First, securitization should be understood as an intersubjective
process, not an illocutionary speech act. While the tension in the Copenhagen School’s account
is difficult to fully resolve, their emphasis upon facilitating conditions directs us towards a view
that securitization must be negotiated between social actors. From the outset, the CS have made
clear that even the most authoritative actors do not possess the power to simply invoke their
preferred meaning of in/security.256 This appears both empirically valid – even powerful actors’
254 Johan Eriksson, “Observers or Advocates? On the Political Role of Security Analysts,” Cooperation and Conflict 34, no. 3 (1999): 311-330. 255 Hayes 2012, 67. 256 Wæver (1995: 58-62) examines how the communist order in Eastern Europe collapsed through the failure of securitizing moves by state and Communist party elites. Subsequent events in global politics emphasize the point that not even power state actors can successful construct in/security solely through their securitizing moves, as demonstrated by such major developments as: the lead-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003; the events of the Arab uprisings in 2011-2012; and the threat by President Obama to use force against the Syria in the summer of 2012 that was rejected by the US Congress.
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securitizing moves sometimes fail – and normatively desirable, as it retains a role for public
involvement and political negotiation over whether securitization should occur. It preserves the
possibility that determinations of in/security can result from a democratic process, and that
authoritative actors may sometimes be forced to respond to securitizing moves initiated by non-
state actors. This latter point is particularly salient in the Arctic, where non-state actors,
including academic and media “purveyors of polar peril” have successfully initiated successful
securitization.257 Intersubjectivity also takes us beyond the confines of the speech act as the sole
form of securitizing move: in/security claims can be made in spoken, written, visual, enacted,
and embodied ways, all of which represent efforts by actors to securitize ‘their’ issues.258
Regardless of the form they take, having securitizing moves made and adjudicated by an
authoritative audience is the core of securitization theory.
The second implication for a revised account of securitization is that the identities of the
securitizing actor, authoritative audience, and analyst all matter. Recognizing the significance of
the audience’s identity is particularly important because it has typically been overlooked. If one
of securitization’s facilitating conditions lies in “the relationship between speaker and audience
and thereby the likelihood of the audience accepting the claims made in a securitizing
attempt,”259 then analysis of identity must also be extended to the audience. Who the audience is
determines the locus of decision making for designating security threats, and their disposition
towards the securitizing actor may be crucial for the outcome of his or her securitizing moves.
These identities, in turn, are shaped through historical and ongoing processes of identity and
interest-construction, requiring an account of securitization as context-dependent and power-
257 Franklyn Griffiths, “Arctic Security: The Indirect Approach,” in James Kraska, ed, Arctic Security in an Age of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 3; Franklyn Griffiths, “Canadian Arctic Sovereignty: Time to Take Yes for an Answer on the Northwest Passage,” in Frances Abele, Thomas J. Courchene, F. Leslie Seidle, and France St-Hilaire, eds, Northern Exposure: People, Power, and Prospects in Canada’s North (Montreal: IRPP, 2009), 13. 258 Michael C. Williams, “Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics,” International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2003): 511-531; Juha A. Vuori, “A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object,” Security Dialogue 41, no. 3 (2010): 255-277; and Mark B. Salter and Can E. Mutlu, eds, Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2013). 259 Buzan et al. 1998, 33.
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laden.260 Securitization must be examined in light of the context in which it is undertaken, and
the unequal abilities of actors to successfully invoke security because of who they are and whom
they are speaking to. In states with high inequality, colonial histories, or political legacies of
marginalizing, disempowering, or oppressing segments of their population, the significance of
the audience and their past and contemporary relationships to the securitizing actor is readily
apparent. Given the political and existential implications of speaking security, the actor-
audience dynamic can never be presumed to be power-free, but requires examination of the
relationships that connect the securitizing actor and audience. A democratic, inclusive, and
pluralistic audience cannot be taken for granted.
My revised approach proposes that whether issues identified by an actor on behalf of a group
with a particular identity are actually securitized is a function of the power relations that exist
among the holders of that group identity and the authoritative audience. I suggest that groups
with oppositional, antagonistic, or threatening identities to the authoritative audience will have
their security claims rejected. I term this securitization non-dominance: groups who are
structurally unable to successfully speak, write, or perform securitizing moves on the basis of
who they are. Following Stritzel’s call for securitization to pay greater focus to the social
context within which securitizing moves occur,261 what is “proposed here [is] to view identity as
a catalyst or gate-keeper in accepting a particular idea as a threat.”262 This does not mean that
dominant groups will always succeed in securitizing their issues, or that all non-dominant groups
will fail to securitize theirs. But it suggests that identity determines why some securitizing
moves fail: not because of the relative seriousness of a danger or the value of a referent object,
but because of the speaker making the in/security claim. In the following chapters, I employ this
theoretical approach to explain the limited power of Indigenous actors to successfully securitize
environmental changes in the Arctic region.
This approach differs from other revised approaches to securitization. First, it challenges
standard accounts of how open and accessible securitization processes actually are. For the CS
260 Balzacq 2005, 179. 261 Stritzel 2007. 262 Sjöstedt 2013, 153. This quotation is taken from Sjöstedt, but her account differs from mine because it continues to focus exclusively on the identities of securitizing actors, not the audience.
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and many subsequent accounts, securitization closes a given issue to democratic debate by
moving it from the realm of normal to exceptional politics. In so doing, it restricts the actors
empowered to speak to that issue and limits room for debate, negotiation, or the expression of
dissenting views. Prior to the move from politics to security, however, issues are held to be
generally open, allowing for “attempts to articulate alternative interpretations of security.”263
This inheres in the idea of normal politics and is implicit in justifying the CS preference for
desecuritization. The concept of securitization non-dominance challenges this assessment of the
relative openness of normal politics by contending that some actors are precluded from
effectively being able to make securitizing moves: for them, securitization is closed from the
outset. This suggests an important corollary to the CS assessment that security “is structured and
biased, but no one conclusively 'holds' the power of securitization.”264 This may be accurate, but
some actors are precluded from accessing the power of securitization, which qualifies our
understanding of security issues and further complicates the CS preference for desecuritization.
Second, this approach extends the focus on identity beyond the securitizing actor to also include
audience and the analyst. The relevant securitizing audiences for this study are not neutral
actors, but the governing powers of the settler-colonial states in which Arctic Indigenous peoples
reside. Since the actor-audience relationship is between colonized-colonizer it is inherently
relevant to securitization because of the basic power inequality, historical legacy, and ongoing
social attitudes that structure relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. For an
authoritative settler-colonial audience to accept securitizing moves by indigenous peoples would
necessitate an acknowledgement of their own role in the constitution of insecurity for indigenous
peoples in the first place. As discussed in Chapter 2, relations of non-dominance are constitutive
of indigeneity, and by definition indigenous peoples have had their rights, interests, property, and
persons violated by their colonizers. When indigenous peoples make securitizing moves to
sovereigns that are at least partly responsible for the hazards that they are facing, the significance
of their imbalanced power relationship and antagonistic identities is unavoidable.
263 Buzan et al. 1998, 31. 264 Buzan et al. 1998, 31.
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Although this research project is theoretically and empirically grounded, my identity as the
analyst is important to the analysis in the following way. I am a young Canadian scholar
fascinated with the Arctic, and an engaged citizen disturbed by the ongoing social and political
relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. I am also deeply concerned
over the present and future implications of human-caused environmental changes, which has
motivated my political engagement with climate change-related issues. The contribution of my
identity to this research project is the very decision to focus on how Arctic in/security has been
constituted in the first place, as well as the choice to highlight Indigenous understandings of
in/security alongside those of Arctic states. I am not responsible for making the securitizing
moves identified here, but in situating them as the focus of study I contribute, in whatever
limited way, to reproducing them as security-relevant and to legitimizing the actors making
them. As an analyst, I have “contributed to the politics of the process by recognizing (or not
recognizing) an actor as a security actor and a securitizing move as being successful or not.”265
Reiterating Floyd’s argument about security analysts as securitizing actors: “In writing or
speaking security, the securitisation analyst [him]self executes a speech act; this speech act is
successful if the problem raised becomes recognised as a security problem in the academic
literature and/or in the wider policy-making discourse.”266 Keeping with Huysmans, there is an
unavoidable normative dimension to writing about security issues, and I acknowledge the aspect
of my research that draws attention to those actors and issues often overlooked within dominant
discourses of in/security in the Arctic.
3.3.1 Silencing and Subsuming Indigenous Insecurity
Understood as the historical and contemporary relationships between Indigenous peoples and the
settler/colonial states in which they reside, indigeneity is an identity that results in securitization
non-dominance. In the context of the contemporary Arctic, I argue that Indigenous securitization
non-dominance operates through two specific mechanisms: the silencing and subsuming of
insecurity, respectively. Lene Hansen first identified these mechanisms in her feminist critique
265 Hoogensen and Goloviznina 2014, 2. 266 Floyd 2010, 47.
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observing the absence of gender within the original CS securitization theory.267 She notes the
CS approach suffers from two:
blank spots … which prevent the inclusion of gender … ‘Security as silence’ occurs when insecurity cannot be voiced, when raising something as a security problem is impossible or might even aggravate the threat being faced. ‘Subsuming security’ arises because gendered security problems often involve an intimate inter-linkage between the subject’s gendered identity and other aspects of the subject’s identity, for example national and religious.268
In effect, security as silence arises from an exclusive focus upon speech acts for communicating
in/security, while subsuming security occurs due to the absorption of a particular referent object
within a more-encompassing one that eclipses or obscures the particular security concerns of the
former. Hansen also emphasizes the appropriateness of gender as a mid-level referent object
occupying space between the individual and international levels of analysis.269 As a socially
constructed collective identity that mediates the distribution of material security hazards for an
identifiable group of people, gender is analogous to national or other communal identities, and is
appropriate to securitization analysis.270 Hansen’s insights are equally applicable to other non-
dominant identity groups, and the gendered construction of indigeneity as subordinate to,
dependent upon, and ultimately inferior to settler/colonial identities makes the stretch from
gender to indigeneity a modest one.
I suggest these mechanisms operate somewhat differently than in Hansen’s original formulation.
Hansen derives ‘security as silence’ from the inability of women in conservative Islamic
societies to speak about the sources of their insecurity without the prospect of further violence,
and thus the greater security they gain by remaining silent. Instead, I emphasize ‘silenced
insecurity’ to examine restrictions upon Indigenous peoples’ abilities to make security claims.
Securitizing moves can be impeded or ignored in an effort to prevent an utterance of in/security
267 Lene Hansen, “The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 25, no. 2 (2000): 285-306. 268 Hansen 2000, 287. 269 Hansen 2000, 294. 270 For another discussion of gender and insecurity see Roberts 2008.
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from being heard or seen.271 Studies of Indigenous politics often emphasize the concept of voice
precisely because Indigenous peoples have had to fight in order to speak for themselves and to be
heard.272 Silenced insecurity draws attention to how securitizing moves may be prevented from
being made, and thus unable to be heard or acknowledged. As Hansen notes, imposed silence
can result in non-verbal securitizing moves, since, even if words are not heard, actions can draw
attention to the bodily enactment of securitizing moves by individuals or groups unable to
effectively voice their interests.273
‘Subsuming insecurity’ operates as Hansen describes, only substituting indigeneity for gender as
the identity subsumed within a larger referent object. Indigeneity is also not “clearly delineated”
from the state or other societal referent objects, and is thus difficult to construct as a coherent,
self-reproducing subject of security.274 Indigeneity is only one aspect of an indigenous person’s
identity, and, by definition, indigenous persons will also have political citizenship of a non-
indigenous settler polity, even if they do not choose to participate in it. This renders it possible
for claims made on the basis of indigeneity to be incorporated into in/security claims made on
the basis of other identities, including citizenship to the state responsible for subjugating
indigenous peoples in the first place. In this respect, there is a strong parallel between Hansen’s
study of gender identities within fundamentalist societies and indigeneity in settler/colonial
societies. She writes: “The construction of appropriate gendered norms of behaviour within a
highly religious discourse functions to link gender and religion in a way which prevents the
articulation of ‘gendered insecurity’, because it would be in opposition to the (constructed)
foundational essence of the religious community.”275
271 Buzan et al (1998: 29) acknowledge the silencing potential of security discourse as part of their reluctance to securitize: “National security should not be idealized. It works to silence opposition and has given power holders many opportunities to exploit “threats” for domestic purposes, to claim a right to handle something with less democratic control and constraint.” 272 Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis, eds, Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London: Sage, 1995); Battiste 2000; Bartholomew Dean and Jerome M. Levi, eds, At the Risk of Being Heard: Identity, Indigenous Rights, and Postcolonial States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Tennberg 2010. 273 Hansen 2000, 303-304. See also “The Corporeal Turn” in Salter and Mutlu 2013, 139-172. 274 Hansen 2000, 297-299. 275 Hansen 2000, 299.
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I propose that the same formulation can be applied to how subsumed insecurity occurs for
indigenous peoples with respect to the national identities of their respective states. Replacing
‘gendered’ with ‘indigenous’ and ‘religious’ with ‘settler-colonial’ offers a clear articulation of
how security for indigenous people can be subsumed. The amended statement reads: the
construction of appropriate indigenous norms of behaviour within a highly settler-colonial
discourse functions to link indigeneity and settler-colonialism in a way which prevents the
articulation of ‘indigenous insecurity’, because it would be in opposition to the (constructed)
foundational essence of the settler-colonial community. Through subsumed insecurity,
securitizing moves may appear to have been successful, but are actually incorporated within
securitizations that contradict the substance of the non-dominant group’s original security claims.
As a result, as illustrated in Figure 4, there are three possible outcomes for securitizing moves
made by non-dominant groups: 1) they may be silenced, and thus never reach the authoritative
audience that must adjudicate them; 2) they may be subsumed within a broader but distinct
securitizing move, thus nominally succeeding while substantively failing to advance the original
security claim; or 3) they may simply fail on their own terms if rejected by the audience.
Figure 4: Revised Securitization Process
In part, this study examines how Indigenous peoples are rendered securitization non-dominant
through the mechanisms of silenced insecurity and subsumed insecurity. Securitization non-
dominance reflects power in both structural and institutional forms, as defined by Barnett and
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Duvall.276 It is both direct and constitutive of actors (structural power), and diffused through
regulation of the interactions between particular social actors (institutional power). Although
there is some overlap between them, silencing insecurity tends to reflect institutional power,
whereas subsuming insecurity is a manifestation of structural power. These are mechanisms
because they affect whether or not the effects of securitization will occur, namely whether
exceptional measures are legitimated: “The effects are determinate, but triggering the mechanism
itself contingent … [Securitization is] the process that is triggered by something else.”277
Having their security claims silenced or subsumed within dominant security discourse is
mechanistic in two ways: one negative, one positive. It is negative in that it prevents the
triggering effect of a successful securitization through the acceptance of a securitizing move, and
positive in that it is through the silencing and subsuming of their security claims that groups are
rendered securitization non-dominant.
The securitization non-dominance of Arctic Indigenous peoples also has implications for the
construction (or not) of environmental change in the circumpolar region. As Chapters 4-7
demonstrate, Indigenous peoples in Canada and Norway have attempted to securitize
environmental changes, arguing that both climate change and regional land-use and
environmental degradation constitute threats to their cultural practices, traditional ways of life,
and ultimately their identities as Indigenous peoples. Since environmental change is at the heart
of the security claims made by Arctic Indigenous peoples, the silencing and subsuming of
Indigenous claims contribute to the non-securitization of environmental change in the region.
These efforts to securitize the environment are relevant to one other theoretical debate within
International Security Studies: whether securitization is, in fact, a desirable or effective way of
addressing environmental hazards. This debate is outlined in the following section, and the
benefits of treating Arctic environmental change as a security issue discussed.
276 Barnett and Duvall 2005. 277 Guzzini 2011, 336.
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3.4 Insecurity and the Environment
It has taken decades for environmental issues to become established as a valid part of
International Security Studies. This trajectory illustrates the difficulty of changing dominant
conceptualizations of in/security, while underlining that such change is possible. The Cold War
period witnessed the slow development of a conceptual link between environmental phenomena
and in/security as critics began to highlight the significance of environmental factors for
political, economic, and social stability. Concerns over domestic and transnational
environmental issues such as nuclear irradiation; chemical use in industry, agriculture, and
warfare; and eventually human-caused environmental change began to influence alternative
conceptions of security mobilized in opposition to the dominant military-nuclear-strategic
discourse centred on bipolar superpower rivalry.278 Scholars including James Lovelock, Norman
Myers, and Arthur Westing pioneered research linking the natural and social sciences, and called
for recognition of the significance of human impacts on the natural environment for continued
conditions of human and planetary wellbeing.279 Though this work was highly analytical, and
largely eschewed explicit framing in terms of in/security, it posed clear securitizing moves
positing human-caused degradation of the natural environment as threatening the “ultimate
security” of humanity and all other life on “this endangered planet.”280
Beginning in the late 1970s, multiple academic efforts drew on these early contributions in order
to “redefine security”, arguing the military-nuclear-strategic security discourse was inadequate to
capture the full range of threats to states’ core national interests.281 One major new focus was
278 Buzan and Hansen 2009, 128. 279 James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere: The Gaia Hypothesis,” Tellus 26, no. 1-2 (1974): 2-10; Arthur Westing, Ecological Consequences of the Second Indochina War (Stockholm: SIPRI, 1976); Westing 1977; James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press (1979); Norman Myers, The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979); Arthur Westing, Warfare in a Fragile World: Military Impact on the Human Environment (London: Taylor and Francis, 1980); Norman Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species: Storehouse for Human Welfare (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983); Myers 1986; Myers 1989; Norman Myers, Population, Resources, and the Environment: The Critical Challenges (New York: United Nations Population Fund, 1991). 280 Falk 1971; Norman Myers, Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Security (New York: Norton, 1993). 281 Brown 1977; Ullman 1983; Michael Renner, National Security: The Economic and Environmental Dimensions. Worldwatch Paper 89 (Washington DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1989); Tuchman Mathews 1989.
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examining so-called ‘resource wars’ for causal links between environmental scarcity and
interstate and communal violence. The Toronto group of environmental conflict research, led by
Thomas Homer-Dixon, argued that human-caused environmental changes and scarcity of key
resources could be important catalysts of inter-group conflict, generating significant debate over
the conceptual and empirical links between environmental conditions and political violence.282
Popular writing, such as Robert Kaplan’s “The Coming Anarchy”, capitalized on this theme,
casting environmental change and resource scarcity as threatening the stability of the global
order and the security of states in the Global North.283
Research into environmental violence precipitated debate along two distinct axes. First, critics
challenged its empirical validity, suggesting that proponents had inferred causality between
scarcity and conflict in situations where other factors intervened.284 Some noted that the
emphasis on scarcity overlooked the potential of resource abundance as a contributing factor for
the outbreak or perpetuation of conflict, further complicating the question of causality.285
Second, and more pertinently for this dissertation, some challenged the very effort to link
environmental issues and in/security. Critics variously argued this would dilute the integrity and
academic rigour of security studies,286 undermine the actual goals of environmentalists by
securitizing another realm of policymaking,287 and risk militarizing state responses to
282 Thomas Homer-Dixon, “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict,” International Security 16, no. 2 (1991): 76-116; Thomas Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases," International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 5-40; Thomas Homer-Dixon and Jessica Blitt, eds, Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population, and Security (Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); Thomas Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 283 Robert Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” Atlantic Monthly 273, no. 2 (1994): 44-76. 284 Thomas Homer-Dixon and Marc A. Levy, “Correspondence: Environment and Security,” International Security 20, no. 3 (1995/96): 189-198; Marc A. Levy, “Time for a Third Wave of Environment and Security Scholarship?” Environmental Change and Security Project: Report 1 (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1995): 44-46; Carsten F. Ronnfeldt, “Three Generations of Environment and Security Research,” Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 4 (1997): 473-482; Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Armed Conflict and the Environment: A Critique of the Literature,” Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 3 (1998): 381-400. 285 Philippe Le Billon, “The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts,” Political Geography 20, no. 5 (2001): 561-584; Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts, eds, Violent Environments (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). 286 Marc A. Levy, “Is the Environment a National Security Issue?” International Security 20, no. 2 (1995): 35-62; Stephen M. Walt, “The Renaissance of Security Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1991): 211-239. 287 Daniel Deudney, “The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 19, no. 3 (1990): 461-476.
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environmental problems in a manner inconsistent with the threat and unconducive to their
resolution.288 These claims, in turn, generated rebuttals suggesting critics were perpetuating the
dominant Realist conception of security as linked to state referent objects and the use of military
force initially rejected by moves towards environmental security.289 This debate is taken up at
the end of this chapter.
The form of environmental security that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s broadened the range of
potential security threats, but remained state-centric in that it focused primarily on the defence of
sovereign states and their interests. States remained the primary objects and providers of
security, and were generally considered to have the power to improve their environmental
security by curtailing certain practices, investing in specific defences, or moderating particular
attitudes. These accounts thus widened security while failing to deepen it.290 They also
perpetuated the dynamic of locating security threats outside the bounds of the political
community, ascribing “responsibility for threat … to the distanced Other on the outside.”291
Environmental security, so conceived, precluded serious consideration of environmental threats
to non-state referent objects, or the role of states and peoples in constituting the conditions of
their own environmental insecurity through, for instance, unsustainable consumption, non-
renewable resource depletion, military activities affecting the environment, or poor land use
management and urban planning. Environmental security remained narrowly defined,
minimizing the potential radicalism of incorporating the environment into security analysis.
By contrast, more critical scholarship has articulated a conception of environmental or ecological
in/security that widens and deepens security analysis, rejects state-centrism, and is reflexive
about people’s role in undermining the environmental conditions necessary for their own
288 Ken Conca, “The Environment-Security Trap,” Dissent 45, no. 3 (1998): 40-45. 289 Nina Graeger, “Environmental Security?” Journal of Peace Research 33, no. 1 (1996): 109-116; Gregory D. Foster, “Environmental Security: The Search for Strategic Legitimacy,” Armed Forces and Society 27, no. 3 (2001): 373-395; Richard A. Mathew, “In Defense of Environment and Security Research,” Environmental Change and Security Project Report 8 (2002): 109-124. 290 For discussion of widening and deepening security studies, see Buzan and Hansen 2009: 187. 291 Jon Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics and Policy in the New Security Era (London: Zed Books, 2001), 31.
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survival and wellbeing.292 Jon Barnett outlines such an approach in The Meaning of
Environmental Security, a watershed text in the turn towards critical environmental security. He
distinguishes between environmental security “as the threats to national security that arise from
environmental degradation” and ecological security “as the human impacts on the security of the
environment itself,” with corresponding implications for populations dependent on that
environment.293 Barnett conceives of environmental security as human security, emphasizing
the integral link between human survival and ecological systems. This reflects the post-Cold
War conceptual widening of security that has increasingly embraced a broader recognition that
security cannot be exclusively focused upon sovereign states and their interests, or upon the
threat and use of military force. Instead, human beings must be understood as experiencing
in/security at different levels of aggregation – including the local, regional, national, and global
levels – depending upon the nature of the threat, and from a variety of different sources, such as
threats in the physical, economic, societal, and environmental sectors of human life.294
The cumulative impacts of contemporary environmental issues are now widely understood to be
confronting regions, states, and peoples around the planet with significant, and increasing,
insecurity at the local, national, regional, and global levels.295 Such recognition transcends
theoretical boundaries; for instance, Buzan and Wæver, self-described “post-structural realists,”
write: “The environment, modified by human interference, sets the conditions for socio-political-
economic life. When these conditions are poor, life is poor.”296 Though certainly less common
292 For a more detailed discussion see Wilfrid Greaves, “Naturally Insecure: Critical Environmental Security and Critical Security Studies in Canada,” Critical Studies on Security 2, no. 1 (2014): 81-104. 293 Barnett 2001, 12. 294 UNDP, Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security (New York: United Nations Development Program, 1994). 295 Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now (New York: United Nations, 2003); Felix Dodds and Tim Pippard, eds, Human and Environmental Security: An Agenda for Change (Sterling: Earthscan, 2005); CNA Corporation, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change (Alexandria: CNA Corporation, 2007); Robin Leichenko and Karen L. O’Brien, Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Felix Dodds, Andrew Higham, and Richard Sherman, eds, Climate Change and Energy Insecurity: The Challenge for Peace, Security and Development (London: Earthscan, 2009); Richard A. Mathew, Jon Barnett, Bryan McDonald, and Karen L. O’Brien, eds, Global Environmental Change and Human Security (Cambridge: MIT University Press, 2010); Christian Webersik, Climate Change and Security: A Gathering Storm of Global Challenges (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010). 296 Buzan et al. 1998, 84.
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within the security and environment literature, critical dispositions towards environmental
security have become increasingly visible, especially with respect to examining the ways in
which contemporary forms of human social, economic, and organization are driving current
conditions of ecological crisis.297 Though debates persist, at a minimum, environmental issues
have been established as a valid part of International Security Studies.298
3.4.1 Securitizing Climate Change
Outside of academia, the global environment has increasingly been recognized as generating
serious security issues by states and international organizations. In particular, the current and
predicted impacts of anthropogenic climate change have been widely securitized, and
recognizing their security implications is not new. Speaking in 1990, then British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher stated: “The threat to our world comes not only from tyrants and their tanks.
It can be more insidious though less visible. The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but
real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices … Our ability to come together to stop or limit
damage to the world’s environment will be perhaps the greatest test of how far we can act as a
world community.”299 Baroness Thatcher later expressed scepticism about the regulatory
methods by which many proposed addressing climate change, but was nonetheless an early
exponent of climate change as an issue confronting humanity with existential danger. In this, she
echoed the 1988 warning of the Toronto Conference comparing climate change to nuclear war,
and foreshadowed future warnings that identified the potential for climate change “to disrupt our
297 Simon Dalby, Environmental Security (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Dennis Clark Pirages and Theresa Manley DeGeest. Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspective on Globalization (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004); Dalby 2009; Matthew A. Schnurr and Larry A. Swatuk, eds, Natural Resources and Social Conflict: Towards Critical Environmental Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 298 Alexandre S. Wilner, “The Environment-Conflict Nexus: Developing Consensus on Theory and Methodology,” International Journal 62, no. 1 (2006/07): 169-188. Numerous research projects at think tanks and universities are now dedicated to investigating environmental insecurities, including, inter alia: the Environment and Security Program of the Pacific Institute; the Environment and Security Research Group at the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California at Irvine; the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the Environmental Security and Peace Program at the U.N. University for Peace; the Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project; the Institute for Environmental Security; and the Millennium Project of the World Federation of U.N. Associations. 299 Margaret Thatcher, “Speech at 2nd World Climate Conference,” (Geneva: November 6, 1990). Accessed at http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108237 on May 5, 2014.
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way of life and to force changes in the way we keep ourselves safe and secure.”300 Earlier
studies of global environmental hazards, such as the report of the Brundtland Commission, Our
Common Future, were less dire in their language while clearly communicating a realization of
the global and existential implications of humanity’s converging environmental challenges.301
In the ensuing years, as climate change has become more acute and more widespread, powerful
actors from around the globe have contributed to its securitization: it is ubiquitously, if not
universally, regarded as a security issue, and has been widely examined as such. The United
Nations system has treated climate change as a security issue since at least 1994, when the UN
Human Development Report introduced an environmental dimension as part of its concept of
human security, and environmental issues have been a core feature of the human security
literature ever since.302 States in the Global South that are particularly vulnerable to climate
change were among the first to view climate change as a security issue, such as the Alliance of
Small Island States (AOSIS) articulating sea level rise as an existential threat to their survival.303
Island states such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and others in the South Pacific region have
increasingly sought to draw attention to the severe implications of climate change for the future
of their populations, with some even investigating possible evacuations and resettlement of their
people on neighbouring mainland territory. For these states, facing submersion and
uninhabitability, the existential quality of the threat associated with climate change is clear.304
With the increasingly alarmed assessments of climate change contained in the IPCC’s Third and
300 CNA 2007, 6. 301 World Commission on Economy and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 302 For examples see Jon Barnett, “Security and Climate Change,” Global Environmental Change 13, no. 1 (2003): 7-17; Hans Günter Brauch, “Environment and Human Security: Toward Freedom from Hazard Impacts,” Intersections No. 2 (Bonn: United Nations University Institute for Environment and Security, 2005); Karen O’Brien, “Are We Missing the Point: Global Environmental Change as an Issue of Human Security,” Global Environmental Change 16, no. 1 (2006): 1-3; Jon Barnett and W. Neil Adger, “Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict,” Political Geography 26, no. 2 (2007): 639-655. 303 Jon Barnett and John Campbell, Climate Change and Small Island States: Power, Knowledge and the South Pacific (Washington DC: Earthscan, 2010); Elaine Stratford, Carol Farbotko, and Heather Lazrus, “Tuvalu, Sovereignty and Climate Change: Considering Fenua, the Archipelago and Emigration,” Island Studies Journal 8, no. 1 (2013): 67-83. 304 Lilian Yamamoto and Miguel Esteban, “Vanishing Island States and Sovereignty,” Ocean and Coastal Management 53, no. 1 (2010): 1-9.
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Fourth Assessment Reports released in 2001 and 2007, states and organizations in the Global
North also began to incorporate climate change into their security policies and institutions.305
While attention has often focused on the climate-security related policies of Australia, France,
the United Kingdom, and the European Union, at least 17 states have constructed climate change
as some degree of security threat.306 Climate change was also repeatedly taken up at the highest
levels of the UN system in the General Assembly and the Security Council between 2007 and
2011. The language employed in these debates leaves no doubt as to the discursive construction
of climate change as threatening national, global, and human security, even if the discourse is not
matched by commensurate action to mitigate emissions or invest in climate adaptation.307
Some Northern states have rejected calls to securitize environmental change, or reversed
previous depictions of climate change as a security issue. Scholars have examined these as cases
of limited, aborted, or unsuccessful attempts to construct climate change as a security issue
within state policies.308 But these cases also highlight ongoing efforts by powerful actors to
securitize climate change even within states that have failed to do so. This is particularly the
case for the United States, one of the most complex and challenging cases for the
(non)securitization of climate change. Though climate change is divisive among the American
public, and has not been accepted as a security issue at the highest legislative level of the US
Congress, the negative implications of climate change for American national security have been
repeatedly articulated by actors including branches of the US Armed Services, federal
305 Alan Dupont, “The Strategic Implications of Climate Change,” Survival 50, no. 3 (2008): 29-54; Maria Julia Trombetta, “Environmental Security and Climate Change: Analyzing the Discourse,” Cambridge Review of International Studies 21, no. 4 (2008): 585-602. 306 Michael Brzoska, “Climate Change as a Driver of Security Policy,” in Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link, and Janpeter Schilling, eds, Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict: Challenges for Societal Stability (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2012), 168. 307 Nicole Detraz and Michele M. Betsill, “Climate Change and Environmental Security: For Whom the Discourse Shifts,” International Studies Perspectives 10, no. 3 (2009): 303-320; Matt McDonald, “Discourses of Climate Security,” Political Geography 33, no. 1 (2013): 42-51. 308 Margaret Purdy and Leanne Smythe, “From Obscurity to Action: Why Canada Must Tackle the Security Dimensions of Climate Change,” International Journal 65, no. 2 (2010): 411-433; Smith 2010; McDonald 2012; Wilfrid Greaves, “Risking Rupture: Integral Accidents and In/Security in Canada’s Bitumen Sands,” Journal of Canadian Studies 47, no. 3 (2013a): 169-199.
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government agencies, and, under both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, even the President.309
Under the Obama Administration, in particular, there has been a marked shift in rhetoric to one
more closely aligned with critical environmental security, clearly equating climate change to
traditional security issues:
The question is not whether we need to act ... The planet is warming and human activity is contributing to it. So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren ... I’m here to say we need to act. I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing … The challenge we must accept will not reward us with a clear moment of victory. There’s no gathering army to defeat. There’s no peace treaty to sign ... Our progress here will be measured differently – in crises averted, in a planet preserved.310
The discourse of climate change and security has increasingly emphasized the catastrophic, even
apocalyptic, dimensions of predicted climate impacts.311 Specific to securitization theory, Buzan
and Wæver, though sceptical of securitizing the environment, identify climate change as one of
two contemporary “macro-securitizations”: constructions of in/security with a global referent
object structuring all other understandings of global security in the 21st century.312
3.5 Why Securitize
Returning to the debate over linking the environment to in/security, some scholars have argued
309 CNA 2007; Joshua Busby, “Who Cares About the Weather? Climate Change and US National Security,” Security Studies 17, no. 3 (2008): 468-504; Floyd 2010; Naval Studies Board, National Security Implications of Climate Change for US Naval Forces (Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2011). 310 Bloomberg News, “‘We Need to Act’: Transcript of Obama’s Climate Change Speech,” (Washington, DC: June 25, 2013). Accessed at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/-we-need-to-act-transcript-of-obama-s-climate-change-speech.html on July 5, 2013. 311 Kurt M. Campbell, Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign and National Security Implications of Climate Change (Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2008); Vuori 2010; Maximilian Mayer, “Chaotic Climate Change and Security,” International Political Sociology 6, no. 2 (2012): 165-185; Chris Methmann and Delf Rothe, “Politics for the Day After Tomorrow: The Logic of Apocalypse in Global Climate Change Politics,” Security Dialogue 43, no. 4 (2012): 323-344. 312 The other macro-securitization is the ‘global war on terror’: Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, “Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation Theory,” Review of International Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 253-276.
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against securitizing environmental issues, including climate change, on the grounds that this
invites state-centric and militarized solutions to inherently transnational and non-military
problems. Responding to the security ‘wideners’ of the 1980s, Daniel Deudney provides perhaps
the most widely cited such argument, claiming: “It is analytically misleading to think of
environmental degradation as a national security threat, because the traditional focus of national
security – interstate violence – has little in common with either environmental problems or
solutions.” He goes on to wonder whether “the effort to harness the emotive power of
nationalism to help mobilise environmental awareness and action may prove counterproductive”
to resolving global environmental issues.313 Marc Levy builds on these arguments, asserting:
“The existential view … that certain aspects of the global environment are so intimately
connected to our deepest national values that they are constitutive of our security interests … has
no basis except as a rhetorical device aimed at drumming up greater support for measures to
protect the environment.” Levy explicitly analogizes strategies for defending against
environmental threats to those used by the United States to fight communism, arguing “that to
‘roll back’ global environmental change is forbiddingly costly, and that a better policy consists
of a combination of ‘containment’ and ‘co-existence’.”314 Both authors, US-based scholars
writing for a primarily American academic audience, readily accept the significant implications
of human-caused environmental changes for the American national interest, but contend that
framing environmental problems as security issues is neither conducive to their resolution nor
consistent with the logic that has structured ISS and the related policy realm.
However, these arguments suffer serious limitations and, in light of developments within ISS and
the worsened global environmental conditions from when they were first presented, they have
not aged well. As their titles make clear, Deudney and Levy focus exclusively upon national
security considerations; even some rebuttals framed their arguments in exclusively national
security terms.315 But retaining the discourse of national security results in two linked analytical
problems: residual militarism and state-centrism in security analysis. First, conflating
securitization and militarization is an anachronistic aspect of security studies that has been
313 Deudney 1990, 461. 314 Levy 1995, 36. 315 e.g. Foster 2000.
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widely disputed and largely rejected. Critical security scholars, including many identifying with
human security, have laboured for decades to defend the validity of non-military threats to
security, and non-military solutions to security threats. In the post-9/11 era, even traditional
security studies has expanded to include civilian activities such as counter-terrorism, complex
peace-building, law enforcement, and intelligence gathering. The need for a widened approach
has been argued specifically with respect to environmental security issues, whose incompatibility
with militarized solutions has no particular bearing upon their capacity to severely threaten a
range of valued referent objects and state interests.316 As discussed above, the association with
military violence is not an immutable part of the meaning of security, but emerged because of the
specific 20th century context, as well as the unique influence exerted by the United States on the
development of security studies during that time.317
Second, Deudney and Levy were responding to the widening of security, but were writing
concurrently or slightly prior to the deepening of security studies that occurred in the early and
mid-1990s, which neither engages with. Their shared view that environmental issues are not
properly viewed as national security issues may or not be accurate, but it takes no account of
environmental threats to objects above or below the state. Environmental issues may well be
more relevant to non-state referents ranging from local communities to the global biosphere.
Their state-level analysis of the relative merits of environmental threats to US national security
constrains the scope of their critique, but Levy, at least, is not arguing against the general validity
of environmental threats, simply that the United States (in the early 1990s) faced no such threats
to its core security interests. Deudney’s objections are more firmly rooted in an objection to
linking environmental issues to security, but are based on an understanding of securitization-as-
militarization that reflects the dominant Realist conception of security at the time in which he
was writing. Both articles also reflect 25-year-old perspectives on the relative severity of global
environmental issues. For instance, both authors were writing prior to the IPCC Assessment
Reports on global climate change, and the significant increase in concern over climate-related
security impacts that followed their release. Similarly, neither Deudney nor Levy is able to take
316 Barnett 2001; Daniel H. Deudney and Richard A. Matthew, eds, Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999); Richard A. Mathew, “In Defence of Environment and Security Research,” ECSP Report, Issue 8 (Summer 2002); Dalby 2009. 317 Rothschild 1995; Buzan and Hansen 2009, 21-37.
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into consideration the potential security implications of the multi-faceted ecological crisis
identified by Johan Rockström and colleagues, which shows human interference exceeding or
nearly exceeding the safe threshold of five out of seven quantifiable planetary boundaries.318
In addition to these rebuttals against arguments opposed to linking environmental issues with
in/security, two further reasons suggest the validity of securitizing environmental issues in the
contemporary period. First, the sheer gravity of the predicted impacts of climate change and
other environmental challenges recommend it. Climate change is existential: it is already
undermining conditions of sustainable human security for people in the Global South and
vulnerable parts of the Global North. In time, even citizenship of wealthy, industrialized states
and residency in areas not particularly vulnerable to environmental changes will offer scant
protection against the range of social and economic challenges that will accompany
transformative global climate change. The scope of damage caused by other anthropogenic
environmental changes – including freshwater depletion, massive deforestation, resource
extraction mega-projects, and industrial accidents such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill or
Fukushima Daiichi earthquake-tsunami-meltdown triple disaster – are similarly existential. I do
not call for an a priori securitization of environmental change everywhere or in all contexts, but
it is difficult to sustain the argument that environmental issues should be excluded from being
framed as security issues simply because they are not necessarily linked to organized violence.
The vast and growing body of literature examining the ways in which environmental changes are
undermining the capacity of people to survive in the ways and in the places that they have
historically done so is a powerful argument for their security relevance.
Deudney argues against securitizing environmental issues because he claims doing so is likely to
impede an effective political response to them. This echoes Wæver’s preference for normal
politics because it makes it easier to resolve challenging social issues. If securitization
empowers the state to take extraordinary measures to defend against a specified threat, the
argument goes, then securitizing climate change will centre political authority to respond in state
institutions, including the military. This will foreclose space for democratic engagement and
inhibiting the involvement of the very actors needed to enact the social and economic changes
318 Rockström et al. 2009.
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required to address climate change. Perhaps. But this argument relies upon a view similar to
Wæver’s of the capacity of normally functioning, non-securitized political processes and
institutions to respond effectively to climate change, which they have so far failed to
demonstrate. Looking back over 20 years of sustained efforts to implement a binding global
climate regime and mitigate the exponential growth in global GHG emissions – including the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change multilateral process, regional carbon trading
schemes, carbon taxes, and the varied assortment of sub-state, local, and individual efforts to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate global climate change – normal politics has failed
to deal effectively with the issue of climate change.319 Global carbon emissions continue to
increase at alarming rates and to unprecedented levels, exceeding the targets and expectations set
by efforts at global climate governance from the 1990s to the failure of the UNFCCC framework
to deliver a binding agreement at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009.320 The UNFCCC framework
is widely regarded as incapable of delivering a comprehensive climate change agreement,321 and
its failures are seen by some as emblematic of the political ineffectiveness of the environmental
movement’s within many democratic societies.322 Of course, the specifics of environmental
policy and regulation vary by domestic context, but recent trends in North America include
sustained focus on conventional and unconventional oil and gas extraction and transportation,
including bitumen mining and hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.323 Scandinavia is experiencing
a major new push for resource extraction across its northern regions, complementing expanding
319 For a discussion of global and domestic climate politics, see Kathryn Harrison, Global Commons, Domestic Decisions: The Comparative Politics of Climate Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010). 320 Daniel Bodansky, “The International Climate Change Regime: The Road from Copenhagen,” Policy Brief, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements (Cambridge: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, October 2010); Remi Moncel and Harro Asselt, “All Hands on Deck! Mobilizing Climate Action Beyond the UNFCCC,” Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 21, no. 3 (2012): 163-176; Tove Ryding, “Climate Protection: Between Hope and Despair,” (Greenpeace International, June 2012). 321 Jon Hovi, Tora Skodvin, and Stine Aakre, “Can Climate Change Negotiations Succeed?” Politics and Governance 1, no. 2 (2013): 138-150. 322 Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmentalism World (Oakland: Breakthrough Institute, 2004). 323 Senate of Canada, Now or Never: Canada Must Urgently Seize its Place in the New Energy World Order (Ottawa: Senate of Canada: 2012); Council on Foreign Relations, “A Conversation with Stephen Harper,” (Washington, DC: May 16, 2013) Accessed at http://www.cfr.org/canada/conversation-stephen-harper/p30723 on June 23, 2013; IEA, Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map: World Energy Outlook Special Report (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2013).
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offshore oil and gas development along the Norwegian coast. In such a business-as-usual
context, maintaining a commitment to the ability of conventional politics to effectively address
severe, compounding, and accelerating environmental threats to human and planetary wellbeing
appears both naïve and dangerous. Securitization may well be sub-optimal, but it may also be
necessary to mobilize significant action against issues that appear to elude the efforts of normal
politics.
There is a further reason why we should consider climate change as a security issue, which
relates to one of the core empirical questions of this dissertation: who has depicted
environmental change in the Arctic as an existential threat to human security and survival?
Often, the answer has been those most immediately affected by climate change or those speaking
on their behalf. Both globally and within states, those most vulnerable to environmental change
are those who are already poorest and most marginalized. In this respect, the articulation of
climate change as a security issue has most often come from those most at risk of “chronic
threats … [and] sudden and hurtful disruptions in the pattern of daily life.”324 The ability to
‘speak’ security – to claim that something endangers one’s life, livelihood, or way of living, have
that claim accepted, and suitable protection offered – is not something that should be reserved for
the elite few or those already empowered. To the contrary, making security claims and having
them acknowledged denotes membership in a political community. More than just security in
the adjectival sense (national security, food security, energy security, etc.), security is a “thick
public good”, and the process of determining how in/security is understood “is so pivotal to the
very purpose of community that at the level of self-identification it helps to construct and sustain
our ‘we-feeling’ – our very felt sense of ‘common publicness’.”325 Far from being an abstract or
ideal concept, security is a foundational aspect of the social contract that underpins the modern
conception of legitimate political order. It is the responsibility of governing authorities to
provide security to the members of their political community, and if some groups are precluded
from having the issues they perceive to affect their community addressed by the sovereign then,
in this vital way, they are effectively excluded from that community.
324 UNDP 1994, 23. 325 Ian Loader and Neil Walker, Civilizing Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 164.
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Securitization is the process through which security threats are constructed as such, but security
as a noun is a condition of safety, greater certainty, and freedom from care to which people
aspire. In an ideal form, what Floyd describes as morally just securitizations, when a material
hazard is defended against or avoided through securitization, security as a noun denoting the
protection of valued referent objects can be achieved.326 This position is consistent with the
view that security is socially constructed because distinct political communities, or groups within
those communities, will understand different conditions as rendering them secure: there remains
no given or objective definition of how security is or should be defined. Such definitions are
only established through efforts at securitization. Security is thus an essential component of
communal life, and the ability to securitize – not always to have one’s claims accepted, but at
least to receive a fair hearing – is a marker of political inclusion and an important component of
belonging within pluralistic, democratic societies.
3.6 Conclusion
This chapter has examined securitization theory, outlining the original theory proposed by the
Copenhagen School and suggesting a revised approach on the basis of two central critiques: one
analytical, one normative. The analytical critique of the CS highlights the insufficient
incorporation of identity for all actors into the process of securitization. The revised account
proposes that the identities of all actors in securitization is important because the facilitating
conditions for a securitizing move’s success partly rests in the relationship between actors and
audience. The historical relationships between them, and the power relations that result, are
fundamental to the likely success or failure of securitization. Furthermore, the identity of the
analyst matters for setting the parameters of which actors and phenomena are considered relevant
for in/security and, by extension, security studies. More fully incorporating identities into
securitization makes the theory more sensitive to the multiple vectors along which power
structures the outcome of securitizing processes. This offers an explanation for the puzzling
non-securitization of Arctic environmental change, given that the three external factors for
securitization are present and seemingly favourable. Why, given the felicitous combination of
326 Floyd 2010.
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securitizing grammar, securitizing actors with high social and political capital, and objective
material hazards with existential implications, has the securitization of environmental change in
the Arctic failed? I propose better incorporation of the identities of the actors involved in this
securitization process, and the non-dominance of securitizing actors making security claims
about the Arctic, helps offer an explanation.
As explored in the following chapters, two mechanisms through which the power of non-
dominant groups to make successful security claims is structurally limited are silenced insecurity
and subsumed insecurity. The normative critique focuses upon the unsatisfactory response of the
CS approach to objective material hazards that fail to be securitized, in this case, environmental
change in the Arctic. As discussed above, the CS framework is premised on a view of
securitization as a negative, as a failure of normal politics; it prefers desecuritization because it
supposedly allows for the more effective resolution of political issues. But the CS fails to take
adequate account of the possibility that desecuritization may not, in fact, result in effective
politicization, and the potential implications of the failure of normal politics when faced with a
material hazard to an identifiable group of people. Non-securitized objective phenomena that
endanger the survival or wellbeing of a group of people are of no further interest to their account
of in/security. Taking account of the analytical critique that securitization processes are tilted
towards the powerful, and may actually preclude some who are particularly powerless, I suggest
that securitization may actually be necessary to motivate political action on issues of existential
importance. For issues that have been ineffectively dealt with through normal politicization,
securitization may prove a more powerful discourse to employ.
As Chapters 4 and 7 demonstrate, Arctic Indigenous peoples have, in varying ways and to
varying degrees, depicted environmental change as threatening their security, but these claims
have failed to be accepted by the sovereign power of the states in which they reside. Those who
are most affected by Arctic climate change are thus least able to mobilize an adequate political
response due to their inability to successfully make security claims about issues confronting their
communities. The non-securitization of environmental issues compounds the physical hazards
Indigenous peoples are experiencing as a result of environmental changes, resulting in a double
form of insecurity as a result of their securitization non-dominance. This implicates the political
inclusion of Indigenous peoples within the settler-colonial states in which they reside, which,
after all, imposed themselves upon Indigenous peoples’ lands and lives in the first place. How
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Indigenous peoples have articulated what environmental change means for their security says
something about the severity of the environmental issues they are facing. That the in/security
claims of Indigenous peoples are structurally denied, however, says something about the
restrictions those states impose upon the voices of Indigenous peoples living within
settler/colonial societies. I suggest that current understandings of climate change within the
security policies of circumpolar states raise important questions about the values and priorities of
those states, the openness of their political systems, and ultimately the political inclusion of their
Indigenous peoples. If “to ‘securitize’ an issue … [is] to challenge society to promote it higher
in its scales of values and to commit greater resources to solving the related problems,”327 then
we should ask why the issues advocated by Indigenous peoples seem consistently unable to reach
the highest level of political priority.
327 Michael Sheehan, International Security: An Analytical Survey (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 52.
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Chapter 4
Understanding In/Security in the Canadian Arctic 4The Canadian North, and the wider circumpolar Arctic region, has experienced a surge of
interest in recent years. Motivated by changing global energy politics, ongoing territorial
disputes related to control over resources, the growing political dynamism of Arctic Indigenous
peoples, rapid regional climate change, and periodic “flashpoint events”328 that catalyze media,
public, and official attention, the Arctic re-emerged as a major political issue in 21st century
Canada. Much of the attention from analysts and policy-makers has focused on Canada’s Arctic
sovereignty, which has been described as the “zombie” issue of Canadian politics because it
keeps returning to life long after most experts feel it has been buried.329 Driven in large part by
the interaction between transformative regional climate change and unresolved questions over
Canada’s Arctic maritime boundaries and the legal status of the Northwest Passage, many
experts suggest the need for new approaches to sovereignty and security in the North.330 As the
Arctic changes, there is widespread recognition that how Canada and other states articulate and
exercise their interests in the region should also change. Running through much of this analysis
are longstanding and multifaceted critiques of how the federal government handles Arctic policy,
particularly the preoccupation with sovereignty at the expense of other issues. Prominent among
these critiques are the voices of Arctic Indigenous peoples fearing that the issues of greatest
significance to their communities will continue to be omitted from the sovereignty-as-security
framework employed by the federal government.331
328 Peter Russell, “Oka to Ipperwash: The Necessity of Flashpoint Events,” in Leanne Simpson and Kiera Ladner, eds, This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, 2010): 29-46. 329 Ken S. Coates, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, William R. Morrison, and Greg Poelzer, Arctic Front: Defending Canada in the Far North (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2008), 1. 330 See Andrea Charron, “The Northwest Passage: Is Canada’s Sovereignty Floating Away?” International Journal 60, no. 5 (2005): 831-848; Rob Huebert, “Renaissance in Canadian Arctic Security?” Canadian Military Journal 6, no. 4 (Winter 2005/2006): 17-29; Adam Lajeunesse, “The Northwest Passage in Canadian Policy: An Approach for the 21st Century,” International Journal 63, no. 4 (2008): 1037-1052; Rob Huebert, The Newly Emerging Arctic Security Environment (Calgary: CDFAI, 2010); and Bjorn Rutten, Security in Canada’s North: Looking Beyond Arctic Sovereignty (Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada, 2010). 331 Terry Fenge, “Inuit and the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement: Supporting Canada’s Arctic Sovereignty,” Policy Options 29, no. 1 (2007/2008); Inuit Circumpolar Council, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the
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This chapter examines Arctic security discourse from the perspectives of Indigenous peoples in
northern Canada and the Canadian state, focusing on the period between 2001-2011. The first
section examines how Indigenous peoples in northern Canada have articulated the meaning of
Arctic security. Drawing on data collected from organizations and individuals representing
Arctic Indigenous peoples – primarily Inuit, but also some Athabaskan peoples – this section
analyzes Indigenous understandings of security in northern Canada and how they frame the
significance of climate change. It finds that Indigenous peoples principally identify a conception
of security in the Arctic that emphasizes protection of the natural environment, preservation of
Indigenous identity, and maintenance of political autonomy within the context of the Canadian
state. Moreover, climate change underpins Indigenous peoples’ understandings of what security
means in the Canadian Arctic. The second section outlines the historical context of Canada’s
Arctic sovereignty and security policies, and examines the official policy frameworks under
recent Liberal governments and the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. It analyses
how the Conservative government, in particular, understood Arctic security principally in terms
of the military protection of Canada’s territorial sovereignty claims and the extraction of natural
resources, with little significance afforded to the effects of climate change. In government
discourse, ‘sovereignty’ functions as a rhetorical substitute for ‘security’ in the Arctic,
reinforcing a narrow and state-centric definition of security for the Canadian North. As such, the
security concerns of Indigenous peoples are virtually absent from the official framework for
understanding in/security in the Arctic employed by the Canadian state. Since Indigenous
peoples are among the most prominent actors articulating a human and environmental conception
of Arctic security, the absence of Indigenous voices from official Arctic security discourse in
Canada results in the omission of human-caused environmental change understood as a pressing
security issue.
Arctic (ICC, 2009); and Mary Simon, “Inuit and the Canadian Arctic: Sovereignty Begins at Home,” Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 2 (2009): 250-260.
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4.1 Indigenous Peoples and In/Security in the Canadian Arctic
Figure 5: Map of the Canadian North
Source: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami332
Arctic Indigenous peoples are not numerous, but form the majority of northern Canada’s
population of roughly 110,000 and are central to its social fabric and political institutions. Inuit
– the most populous of Canada’s Arctic Indigenous peoples at approximately 55,000 persons –
primarily live in 53 communities across the North and are the historical inhabitants of much of
Canada’s Arctic territory.333 As shown in Figure 5, the four Inuit regions in Canada – Nunavut,
the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Northwest Territories), Nunavik (northern Quebec), and
Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador) – are collectively known as Inuit Nunangat, which forms only
332 Accessed at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-644-x/2010001/m-c/11281/m-c/m-c1-eng.htm on March 7, 2016. 333 Statistics Canada, 2006 Census: Aboriginal Peoples in Canada in 2006: Inuit, Metis and First Nations (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2006). Accessed at https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-558/p6-eng.cfm on March 7, 2016.
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part of the broader Inuit homeland of Inuit Nunaat also comprising territories in Alaska,
Greenland, and Russia. With First Nations and Métis, Inuit are one of three constitutionally
recognized groups of Aboriginal people in Canada, and have become highly organized through
political institutions such as: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization; the Inuit
Circumpolar Council, one of the Permanent Participants at the Arctic Council; a range of local
and regional organizations and governments; and the Government of Nunavut, where Inuit make
up approximately 85% of the territorial population.334 Actors such as the Gwich’in Council
International, the Arctic Athabaskan Council, and First Nations governments provide comparable
political representation for other Indigenous peoples in northern Canada.
These Indigenous political actors have increasingly articulated their most pressing political
issues using the language of in/security. Although security is a Euro-American conception that
may not map well onto the worldviews of Indigenous peoples, it appears to have been adopted as
a tactic for mobilizing public and political support on important issues. Such use of security
language is consistent with the understanding of securitization as an extension of politics that
seeks to elevate specific issues higher in the hierarchy of political priorities.335 In addition to its
political use, the essential meaning of ‘security’ as referring to protection from danger also has
ontological relevance that can be translated into Indigenous languages, albeit imperfectly. In the
case of Inuit, Kevin Kablutsiak suggests sapummijauniq, meaning “to be protected,” as the
closest Inuktitut translation, but his explanation of the term demonstrates the extent to which this
translation affirms a conception of security most consistent with the national security discourse
associated with the sovereign state: “The meaning here refers to the Coast Guard, deep sea ports
that can accommodate naval ships, and the Canadian Rangers.”336 Other Inuit scholars have
indicated they believe sapummijauniq to also be an appropriate term for capturing the relation
between Inuit and climate change.337 It is unclear what Inuktitut word or phrase, or analogue in
334 Heather A. Smith and Gary Wilson, “Inuit Transnational Activism: Cooperation and Resistance in the Face of Global Climate Change,” in J. Marshall Beier, ed, Indigenous Diplomacies (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009); Shadian 2010; Tennberg 2010; Mary Simon, “Canadian Inuit: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going,” International Journal 66, no. 4 (Autumn 2011): 879-891. 335 Buzan et al. 1998; Chapter 2 of this dissertation. 336 Kevin Kablutsiak, “Almost Lost in Translation,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 4. 337 Rebecca Mearns, personal communication December 11, 2014.
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other Arctic Indigenous languages, best captures a conception of security that displaces the state
or emphasizes a wider array of security issues. Regardless, the basic idea underlying in/security
appears universal: survival, the defence of valued objects, the absence of immediate danger, and
some knowledge of how to respond in case of a future threat. According to one Inuit elder,
“when we were living on the land, the main meaning of security was survival,”338 and that
quality persists in current invocations of securitizing language.
What security means to Arctic Indigenous peoples varies across cultures, communities, and
regions, but in practice Indigenous efforts at securitization appear to be increasingly focused on
the growing significance of human-caused environmental change, and a critical reaction to
global political processes responding to such change.339 Until recently, the predominant use of
security language by Arctic Indigenous peoples was on maintaining the integrity and survival of
their languages and cultural identities.340 This emphasis on cultural and linguistic security was a
reaction against the historical injustices perpetrated against Indigenous peoples and concerns that
economic modernization was eroding traditional cultural practices and leading towards
assimilation, particularly among young people. The assimilation of Indigenous peoples into the
dominant social and economic system was seen to threaten the identities at the “heart and soul of
Indigenous nations: a set of values that challenge the homogenizing force of Western liberalism
and free-market capitalism; that honor the autonomy of individual conscience, non-coercive
authority, and the deep interconnection between human beings and other elements of
creation.”341 Such identities were thus positioned as the referent object to be protected in early
articulations of Indigenous in/security.
338 Nilliajut: Inuit Voices on Security. Dir. Jordan Konek, Curtis Konek, and Ian Mauro. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013. Accessed at http://www.inuitknowledge.ca/content/nilliajut-inuit-perspectives-arctic-security-1 on April 21, 2014). 339 Heather A. Smith, “Disrupting the Global Discourse of Climate Change,” in Mary Pettenger, ed, The Social Construction of Climate Change (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007). 340 George Erasmus, "Militarization of the North: Cultural Survival Threatened," Information North (Fall 1986); Mary Simon, "Security, Peace and the Native Peoples of the Arctic," in Thomas R. Berger, ed, The Arctic: Choices for Peace and Security (Vancouver: Gordon Soules, 1989). 341 Taiaiake Alfred, Power, Peace, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1999), 60.
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Culture and identity remain central to Indigenous security discourses, but have increasingly been
incorporated into a new discourse that emphasizes the threats posed not by modernization per se,
but by environmental change. Nowhere is this more acute than in the Arctic, where Indigenous
peoples are witnessing environmental changes that implicate every aspect of individual and
community life. As discussed in Chapter 1, the region is experiencing significant and worsening
ecological changes due to erratic weather patterns, increased lake temperatures, thawing
permafrost, stress on plant and animal populations, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and
disappearing sea ice.342 Across the region, but particularly in the Western Arctic, “communities
reported concern that the coasts and riverbanks in this region have been falling into the water at
an alarming rate. Homes and buildings … have already been relocated as a result, and the
communities are concerned about the possibility of the need for complete community relocation
in the future.”343 Researchers also note that greater incidence of death among hunters and other
people working on the land are associated with changing ice conditions and unpredictable
weather patterns.344
In addition to new physical hazards, environmental change affects Indigenous peoples through
the connection between cultural identity and the natural environment. Many Indigenous cultural
practices are predicated upon a close relationship between communal identity and the natural
environments of their ancestral territories: “Cultural survival, identity and the very existence of
Indigenous societies depend to a considerable degree on the maintenance of environmental
quality. The degradation of the environment is therefore inseparable from a loss of culture and
hence identity.”345 Physical changes to the land that alter how Indigenous peoples subsist, and
undermine multi-generational knowledge of weather and climate patterns, animal movements,
and methods of hunting, gathering, and survival have far-reaching implications for Indigenous
342 ACIA 2004; IPCC 2007, 2013. 343 Scot Nickels, Chris Furgal, Mark Buell, and Heather Moquin, Unikkaaqatigiit: Putting the Human Face on Climate Change – Perspectives from Inuit in Canada (Ottawa: Joint Publication of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Nasivvik Centre for Inuit Health and Changing Environments at Université Laval and the Ajunnginiq Centre at the National Aboriginal Health Organization, 2005), 83. 344 James D. Ford, Ashlee Cunsolo Wilcox, Susan Chatwood, Christopher Furgal, Sherilee Harper, Ian Mauro, and Tristan Pearce, “Adapting to the effects of climate change on Inuit health,” American Journal of Public Heath 104, no. S3 (2014): e9-e17. 345 Chris Cocklin, “Water and ‘Cultural Security’,” in Edward A. Page and Michael Redclift, eds, Human Security and the Environment: International Comparisons. (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2002), 159.
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cultures and identities. For instance, reduced quality and availability of country foods affects
food and physical security, but also contributes to the erosion of cultural practices, since “to
hunt, catch, and share these foods is the essence of Inuit culture. Thus, a decline in [country
foods] … threatens not only the dietary requirements of the Inuit, but also their very way of
life.”346 Research on food security in the North increasingly calls for recognition of the cultural
importance of traditional foods for Indigenous peoples, and the integral link between food
security and the challenges of climate change.347
Harmful social phenomena also have widespread negative implications for communities, and are
differently distributed according to both indigeneity and gender, as some hazards
disproportionately affect Indigenous men and women based on gendered divisions of labour,
exposure to environmental phenomena, or gender-based violence.348 For instance, in 2001 the
average life expectancy for all Canadian men was 77 years compared to 62.6 years for Inuit men,
while the gap between Inuit and all Canadian women’s life expectancies was more than 10
years.349 Across northern Canada, rates of suicide among Indigenous people range from 5-10
times higher than for non-Indigenous people, with widespread suicide among youth being
especially corrosive for the wellbeing of families and communities.350 Approximately
135/100,000 Inuit per year take their own lives, 11 times the national average and the highest of
any Aboriginal group in Canada. Over 85% are young men, and the rate of suicide is increasing,
346 ACIA 94. 347 See Jill Lambden, Olivier Receveur, and Harriet V. Kuhnlein, “Traditional Food Attributes Must be Included in Studies of Food Security in the Canadian Arctic,” International Journal of Circumpolar Health 66, no. 4 (2007); Elaine M. Power, “Conceptualizing Food Security for Aboriginal People in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Public Health 99, no. 2 (2008). 348 Connie Deiter and Darlene Rude, Human Security and Aboriginal Women in Canada (Ottawa: Status of Women Canada, 2005). 349 Statistics Canada, Projections of the Aboriginal Populations, Canada, Provinces and Territories 2001 to 2017 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2005). 350 Laurence J. Kirmayer, Gregory M. Brass, Tara Holton, Ken Paul, Cori Simpson, and Caroline Tait, Suicide Among Aboriginal People in Canada. (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2007); Jack Hicks, Statistical Data on Death by Suicide by Nunavut Inuit, 1920-2014 (Iqaluit: Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, September 2015). Accessed at http://www.tunngavik.com/files/2015/09/2015-09-14-Statistical-Historical-Suicide-Date-Eng.pdf on March 10, 2016.
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having more than doubled in the past decade.351 While the causes are complex, “this pattern has
been associated with a view of young males not seeing a future for themselves as hunters and
contributors to their community and at the same time not fitting into the cash employment
structures that are becoming the dominant lifestyle.”352 Practices such as hunting and traveling
on the land require traditional knowledge that is being lost as older generations die out, or is
undermined as the physical landscape is radically altered. Lack of optimism in the future is thus
driven by the interaction between coloniality, rapid cultural change, and the changing
environment that limits opportunities for subsistence and the acquisition and practice of valued
cultural skills.353 Higher rates of male suicide, in turn, place a disproportionate economic burden
on surviving female relatives to provide for their families. By further degrading the relationship
between Indigenous peoples and their traditional lands and practices, climate change fuels the
erosion of traditional knowledge and lifestyles that is considered crucial to the health and
wellbeing of Indigenous people. Worsening climate change and its impacts on methods of
subsistence and ways of life will aggravate what are already epidemic conditions of suicide in
the North. Recent environmental changes thus contribute to long-standing social and economic
problems in Northern communities, exacerbating already disproportionate levels of suffering and
hardship.
At levels ranging from the individual to families, communities, and the region as a whole,
environmental change is driving an array of challenges for Indigenous peoples. Taken together,
these changes constitute immediate and long-term challenges to human wellbeing, and have
necessitated a range of adaptation responses by local communities and other organizations.354
Adaptation, however, will likely be inadequate; the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment found “the
sum of these factors threatens to overwhelm the adaptive capacity of some Arctic populations
and ecosystems. The increasingly rapid rate of recent climate change poses new challenges to
351 ITK, “Inuit Approaches to Suicide Prevention.” Accessed at https://www.itk.ca/inuit-approaches-suicide-prevention on December 22, 2014. 352 Kirmayer et al. 2007, 157. 353 Michael J. Kral, “‘The weight on our shoulders is too much, and we are falling’: Suicide among Inuit male youth in Nunavut, Canada,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2013): 63-83. 354 Nickels et al. 2013, 157.
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the resilience of Arctic life.”355 The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report also notes that “the rapid
rate at which climate is changing in the Polar Regions will impact natural and social systems and
may exceed the rate at which some of their components can successfully adapt.”356 The fact that
environmental changes are occurring too quickly for Indigenous peoples to sufficiently adapt is a
likely driver of the increase in securitizing moves identifying the environment as the leading
threat to Arctic security. Some scholars have also noted that if the Arctic has historically been a
“regional environmental security complex” wherein security has been structured by specific
ecological conditions, then the changing environment threatens the material basis upon which
regional conditions of human survival and prosperity have been built.357 As a result, Indigenous
peoples have framed the changing environment as an issue that affects their security as
inhabitants of northern Canada.
4.1.1 Indigenous Insecurities
Since the turn of the millennium, leaders and organizations representing Indigenous peoples in
northern Canada have articulated distinct conceptions of security that broadly align with human,
as opposed to national, security discourse. Arctic Indigenous peoples behave as securitizing
actors by employing the grammar and language of in/security to identify threats to the continued
wellbeing of valued referent objects linked to their survival as indigenous peoples. Based on the
threat-referent relationships they articulate, Indigenous peoples in northern Canada primarily
understand security to mean: protecting the Arctic environment from degradation and radical
climate change; preserving their identities through the maintenance of indigenous cultural
practices; and maintaining their autonomy as self-determining political actors within the context
of the Canadian settler state. This conclusion is based on data from a variety of sources,
including: surveys; textual analysis of public statements and documents; articles and speeches by
members of northern Indigenous communities; interviews and correspondence with Indigenous
355 ACIA 2004, 5. 356 IPCC 2014, 3. 357 Exner-Pirot 2013; Chater and Greaves 2014.
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leaders; and relevant academic sources. Though not exhaustive, this section forms the first
detailed scholarly analysis of Indigenous securitizing moves pertaining to the Canadian Arctic.
This analysis suggests Indigenous peoples in northern Canada have principally operationalized
security in terms of the direct and indirect effects of human-caused environmental change. For
instance, in an earlier study I examined all of the publicly available online documents – including
declarations, press releases, speeches, journal articles and other publications – produced between
2001 and 2011 by four organizations representing Arctic Indigenous peoples in Canada.358 The
three Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council with Canadian members – the Arctic
Athabaskan Council (AAC), Gwich’in Council International (GCI), and Inuit Circumpolar
Council (ICC) – and the national Inuit organization in Canada, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK),
had a total of 538 available documents covering all manner of advocacy, awareness-raising, and
public relations topics. As shown in Appendix 1, of these, 25 documents contained securitizing
moves, invoking such referent objects as: general environmental insecurity (19); food security
(11), especially the welfare of caribou herds (4); culture, language, or traditional ways of life (9);
Indigenous people’s health (5); and Indigenous peoples’ human rights (4). All of these objects
were linked to the changing environment; in fact, none of the documents makes a securitizing
move without identifying the direct or indirect impacts of climate change as the source of the
threat. In effect, these organizations reserved ‘security talk’ for discussions of climate change,
and the multiple ways in which it is affecting, and will affect in future, the material and cultural
wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic.
Other quantitative evidence supports the importance of the environment to Indigenous
conceptions of in/security. The first Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey was conducted in
2010 for the Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, a collaboration between the Walter and
Duncan Gordon Foundation and the Munk School of Global Affairs. The survey includes
samples of Northern and Southern Canadians large enough to be statistically significant
responding to questions interrogating various aspects of security in the Arctic, including ranking
which factors are most important to respondents’ conceptions of what Arctic security means.
The survey is distinct in both its subject matter and the disaggregation of Northern and Southern
358 Wilfrid Greaves, “Turtle Island Blues: Climate Change and Failed Indigenous Securitization in the Canadian Arctic,” Working Papers on Arctic Security No. 2 (Toronto: Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, 2012a): 1-27.
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Canadian opinions, which allows for a greater degree of specificity and comparative analysis
with respect to how Northerners feel about challenges facing their own region. And while
imperfect, it also affords a sense of how in/security is understood at the community level rather
than mediated through the views and interests of elite Indigenous leaders and representatives.
The results indicate that Northerners consider the environment to be the most important issue for
Arctic security, followed closely by maintenance of Indigenous cultures. When unprompted as
to the meaning of security, a plurality of 27% of Northerners (including Indigenous and non-
Indigenous respondents) indicated the most pressing Arctic security issue to be “protecting
Canada’s borders from international threats.” By contrast, 11% identified Canada’s Arctic
sovereignty or the Northwest Passage, 5% protecting the environment against climate change,
and 2% protecting natural resources from exploitation.359 When ‘security’ was omitted,
however, and respondents were asked to simply list the most pressing Arctic issues, 33% of
Northerners listed the environment first, followed by housing and community infrastructure (9%)
and the economy, jobs and employment (7%), meaning by a ratio of more than 3:1 Northerners
consider the environment to be the most important Arctic issue.360 Moreover, when prompted
with a list of various dimensions of security, fully 91% of Northerners considered environmental
security to be important to their definition of ‘Arctic security,’ followed by 90% identifying as
important social security including basic access to health care, education, housing, and
community infrastructure. Economic security, defined as “protecting and growing northern
economies, and increasing employment rates in the North,” was important to 78% of
Northerners, followed by 66% who felt cultural and language security was important, though this
increased to 74% in Nunavut where Inuit form a large majority. Northerners were more likely
than Southerners (78% to 71%) to agree that “strengthening Canada’s climate change policies is
a critical step in ensuring the security of Arctic residents,” and that “the best way to protect
Canada’s interests in the Arctic is to have Canadians living there” (81% to 71%). By contrast,
only a slight majority of Northerners (56%) identified national security as being important at all,
359 EKOS, Rethinking the Top of the World: Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey (Toronto: Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, 2011), 13. 360 EKOS 2011, 13.
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significantly less than Southerners (69%),361 while Northerners were less likely (52% to 60%) to
agree that: “Canada should strengthen its military presence in the North in order to protect
against international threats.”362
While there are some important similarities between Northern and Southern Canadians, the
survey suggests the environment is prioritized more highly by Northerners, who are also less
inclined to see national security or sovereignty as important Arctic issues. Northerners are less
supportive of the view that increased military activity will contribute to Arctic security, while
considering stronger action on climate change to be important for security in the region.
Community and cultural issues were consistently ranked as the second most important area after
the environment, and the survey authors conclude that Northern respondents “see environmental
security and social security as key elements to protecting the Canadian Arctic. National security,
while still seen as important, does not seem to be a leading priority.”363 These findings appear
supported by the second Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey, highlights of which were
released in April 2015. In fact, even fewer Northerners identified strengthening Canada’s
military presence as an important part of Canada’s Arctic security in the second survey compared
to the first (45% to 52%).364 These findings are also similar to those for Indigenous peoples
across the circumpolar region: “On average three out of four [Arctic] indigenous people perceive
climate change to be a problem in their communities, and more than 50 per cent mention local
contaminated sites, pollution of local lakes and streams and pollution from industrial
development as problems in the region.”365 Overall, in so far as Northern Canadians think in
terms of Arctic security, it seems clear they do so with respect to the environmental, social, and
cultural challenges affecting their communities and ways of life.
361 EKOS 2011, 14-15. 362 EKOS 2011, 23 363 EKOS 2011, 13. 364 EKOS, Rethinking the Top of the World Vol. 2 (Toronto-Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program, 2015). Accessed at www.gordonfoundation.ca on June 16, 2015. 365 Birger Poppel, ed, SLiCA: Arctic Living Conditions – Living Conditions and Quality of Life Among Inuit, Saami and Indigenous Peoples of Chukotka and the Kola Peninsula (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2015), 56.
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4.1.2 Inuit Perspectives on Security and Sovereignty
These quantitative findings are supported by qualitative analysis of security claims made by
leaders and organizations representing Inuit in Canada. In addition to outlining a conception of
Arctic security emphasizing the environment, identity, and autonomy, Inuit leaders articulate the
view that the Government of Canada’s policies with respect to the Arctic are detrimental to their
interests and contrary to their security. Mary Simon, past president of both the Inuit Circumpolar
Council and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and a former federal Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs
under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, has repeatedly stated that Canada’s approach to
Arctic issues is inconsistent with Inuit values and interests. In 1989, she wrote: “Arctic security
includes environmental, economic and cultural, as well as defence, aspects,” but has been
subordinated to other understandings of Arctic security “justified by the government on the basis
of defence and military considerations … [that] too often serve to promote our insecurity.”366
Simon challenges state-centric and militaristic conceptions of Arctic security, noting that Inuit
“subscribe to the concept that security should be understood in a broad sense. Just as health is
more than the absence of disease, so, too, security is more than the absence of military
conflict.”367 Though Simon identifies several areas as crucial for the future of Inuit – including
improved education, political engagement, and shared benefits from resource development – she
invokes securitizing language to emphasize the transformative and destabilizing impacts of
Arctic climate change: “The urgency surrounding mitigating the impact of climate change grows
with the almost daily news of unprecedented developments in our Arctic environment … Arctic
ice is melting three times faster than models had earlier predicted – and the earlier predictions
were alarming. The Arctic is melting, with dramatic consequences for all of us.”368
Many Inuit views are presented in the edited volume Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security,
Patriotism, and Sovereignty, one of the few accounts to foreground the concept of security in
relation to Arctic Indigenous peoples. Published by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, it is a collection of
personal and academic essays by established and emerging Inuit leaders, and is a written
366 Simon 1989, 67, 36. Emphasis in original. 367 Simon 2011, 891. 368 Simon 2009, 256.
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companion to the documentary film, Nilliajut: Inuit Voices on Arctic Security. Both were
produced in cooperation with the Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program with the goal “to
broaden the current understanding and discourse for consideration in policy development from
the community to the international levels,” and offer “a considerable contribution to knowledge
that cannot be found elsewhere.”369 The essays discussing security are clear: Inuit
understandings of security closely align with a broad definition of human security, namely
provision of the essential goods for human life, social and cultural wellbeing, and political
inclusion and representation.370 The authors are explicit about the issues most significant to the
security of their people. Udloriak Hanson of ITK writes: “What does security mean to Inuit?
Security doesn’t come from the comfort that some find in icebreakers, sonar detectors and Arctic
military capabilities. Security from our societal perspective comes from access to the basic
essentials of life – food, shelter and water.”371 Rosemarie Kuptana, another former president of
ITK and pioneering contributor to the Arctic Council, concurs: “Security is more than about
arms build-up. Security is about ensuring that Inuit are equal members of the human family and
have the economic base to ensure a reasonable life-style as defined by contemporary Canada …
Security to Inuit was, and is, having food, clothing and shelter.”372 Several contributors
acknowledge the validity, even necessity, of military activity in the Arctic as a component of
security, but they are unanimous that it is insufficient for a complete understanding of what Inuit
require to be secure in their daily and communal lives. Nancy Karetak-Liddell, former Member
of Parliament for Nunavut, describes security for Inuit as “feeling safe on our lands, in our
communities, having the ability to freely move around, the ability to practice our own way.”373
Her description thus encompasses the ability for Inuit to practice their culture in Inuit Nunangat
as well as a conception of personal security similar to the early Roman conception of securitas as
369 Scot Nickels, “Editor’s Note,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 3. 370 For a more detailed discussion of human security see UNDP 1994 and Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now (New York: United Nations, 2003). 371 Udloriak Hanson, “Foreword,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 2. 372 Rosemarie Kuptana, “The Inuit Sea,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 11-12. 373 Interviewed in Nilliajut 2013.
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an individual’s mental freedom from care.374
Many contributors to Nilliajut juxtapose Inuit views of security with those of the Canadian state.
Several go further, directly implicating the historical and contemporary policies of Canada in the
constitution of insecurity for Inuit. Explicitly framed in the context of political domination of
Inuit by colonial institutions, the authors focus their critique on Canada’s past actions towards
Inuit, its ongoing failure to sufficiently engage them in political decisions that affect their
homeland, and the limited efforts to address the threats posed by climate change. Zebedee
Nungak condemns “the pattern of behavior of European monarchs and their successor
governments … through the centuries to assault and decimate the security and wellbeing of
indigenous people, including Inuit.”375 Rosemarie Kuptana clearly connects the actions of the
Canadian state and the insecurities facing Inuit, particularly related to food and the cultural
dislocation caused by forced permanent settlement:
The settlement of Inuit in hamlets has resulted in many people being unskilled in hunting and the ways of life on the land. This settlement was government policy … [and] resulted in a society which is resettled with some of the amenities of the south but also in a society devoid of the economy which sustained it … The on-going results of this government policy have robbed the Inuit of a viable economy. The government policy of residential schools too worked to this end: it ensured, as best it could, that the traditional ways would not be transferred to a new generation. It can be argued, therefore, that ongoing government policy and actions are working to deprive the Inuit of a basic right to life.376
Terry Audla, former president of ITK, shares these assessments of the insecurities facing Inuit,
though he is more circumspect in assigning blame to current federal policies. His analysis links
“the insecurities that Inuit face as a result of our living, over three or four generations, in what
has been a firestorm of cultural change,” with the challenges of economic modernization still
underway in the Arctic, noting that “while some insecurities have abated, new ones have arisen
374 Rothschild 1995. 375 Zebedee Nungak, “The Decimation of Inuit Security,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 14. 376 Kuptana 2013, 12.
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and some old ones have taken on new forms.”377 But Audla pays particular attention to the role
of climate change in eroding the conditions necessary for sustainable conditions of security in the
Arctic region. He first situates climate change as “a formidable threat that confronts all of
humanity, but with particularly dire challenges to Inuit,” before specifying the environmental
hazards already affecting the security of his people:
In the Arctic, our physical security has already been challenged by such things as changes to wildlife patterns, unreliable wind and temperature patterns and associated thawing and freezing cycles, rising sea levels, and shifting building foundations due to permafrost variation. Nature is never stable, and life close to nature always brings its own insecurities, as well as benefits. Climate change at a rate and of an intensity that appears unprecedented, and well outside Inuit cultural memory, creates insecurities of an entirely new nature, generating concerns about the sustainability of large aspects of our inherited and acquired patterns of life … [sic] our very sense of who and what we are as Inuit.378
Others have made similar arguments linking the changing Arctic environment and the
fundamental wellbeing of Inuit. In 2005, then Inuit Circumpolar Council President Sheila Watt-
Cloutier filed a petition against the United States before the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights extensively detailing how climate change is affecting the Arctic ecosystem and
Inuit cultural and subsistence practices that rely upon it.379 As a legal document, the argument is
laid out in terms that draw most directly from discourses of fundamental justice, international
human rights, and the collective rights of Inuit as an indigenous people. But the petition is also
replete with statements outlining the implications of climate change in the gravest terms, clearly
situating the rapid and unpredictable ecological transformation of the Inuit homeland as an
existential challenge to their collective future. In no uncertain terms, Watt-Cloutier asserts:
“climate change is threatening the lives, health, culture and livelihoods of the Inuit.”380 Next to
the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment from which it draws, the petition to the Inter-American
377 Terry Audla, “Inuit and Arctic Security,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 8. 378 Audla 2013, 8. 379 Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Seeking Relief From Violations Resulting From Global Warming Caused by Acts and Omissions of the United States (December 7, 2005). Accessed at http://inuitcircumpolar.com/index.php?ID=316&Lang=En on April 18, 2014). 380 Watt-Cloutier 2005, 7.
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Commission is probably the most comprehensive articulation of the impacts of climate change
upon the Arctic ecosystem, and the multi-dimensional ways in which such impacts affect the
current and future circumstances of Inuit and other Northerners.
These examples of how Inuit leaders understand security in the Arctic are reinforced by one of
the few academic accounts to explicitly link Inuit, security, and climate change in the Arctic.
The study by Smith and Parks inquires into the relative prevalence of key terms related to
security within the discourse of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC).381 Their conclusions
initially seem to contradict the analysis presented here; the authors find neither “security” nor
“environmental security” feature prominently in ICC discourse, leading them to conclude “the
language of environmental security or security was an inappropriate way to categorize or analyse
the case of the Inuit and climate change … Consequently … to use the language of
environmental security in the context of the Inuit and climate change is akin to putting words in
their mouths.”382 However, I suggest that methodological differences between their study and
this dissertation account for this apparent contradiction, and careful consideration of their
findings supports the argument that Inuit associate their key security considerations of wellbeing
and survival with climate change and its impacts.
Methodologically, Smith and Parks’ emphasis on “security” and “environmental security” as the
key words associated with in/security limits their conclusions. Though these terms certainly can
act as securitizing moves, they are not necessary; securitization does not require literal variations
on the word “security”. Indeed, seven of nine search words employed in their study fall within
the basket of terms often used in the construction of a threat-referent relationship.383 Specific
terminology matters less for attempts to securitize than the intended meaning; securitizing moves
exist when an object is depicted as having its survival or wellbeing endangered by a specified
381 Heather A. Smith and Brittney Parks, “Chapter 11: Climate Change, Environmental Security, and Inuit Peoples,” in Matthew A. Schnurr and Larry A. Swatuk, eds, New Issues in Security #5: Critical Environmental Security: Rethinking the Links Between Natural Resources and Political Violence (Halifax: Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, 2010), 1-18. 382 Smith and Parks 2010, 13. Emphases in original. This study undertook textual analysis of ICC speeches and academic case studies of climate change in the Arctic looking for nine key words: security, environmental security, threat, harm, conflict, vulnerability, fear, rights, and justice. 383 Chapter 3 of this dissertation.
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hazard. The move does not require specific language to be used for this meaning to be
conveyed; language is employed contextually with the goal of increasing the likelihood that a
security claim will be recognized by the authoritative audience. As such, Smith and Parks
employ a restrictive method for identifying securitizing moves that overly privileges the use of
terms derived from the word “security”.
Their study also examines a narrower sample and type of speech act by Inuit political actors. In
examining Inuit political discourse, Smith and Parks focus exclusively on speeches made by
individuals representing the ICC. But limiting their study to this single source is also unduly
restrictive; by contrast, in this section I draw on speeches, articles, official declarations, survey
data, parliamentary testimony, and a wider variety of outputs from organizations including the
ICC, representing a more comprehensive analysis of Inuit understandings of in/security in the
Arctic. While respecting Smith and Parks’ call “to be mindful of who and what we are
securitizing and whether or not our scholarship contributes to or disrupts colonial practices,” the
analysis in this section does not (re)produce a colonial discourse “akin to putting words in [Inuit]
mouths.”384 To the contrary, the analysis in this section is based on claims made by Inuit in
which they depict hazards threatening referent objects valued by their own people. This section
highlights how Inuit articulate their own understanding of in/security in their Arctic homeland;
the securitizing moves are not mine, but those of Inuit and other Indigenous leaders.
Moreover, when one examines Smith and Parks’ findings they support the argument presented
here. Using terms such as “threat”, “vulnerability”, and “rights”, the ICC depicts climate change
as a major challenge to Inuit collective ways of living precisely because it affects so many other
areas of concern, such as culture, language, livelihoods, and Indigenous rights. Seen through the
lens of securitization theory, many statements, though not all, constitute securitizing moves that
invoke an urgent need to defend a specific referent object from ongoing or impending harm.
Examples include statements by Sheila Watt-Cloutier that “human-induced climate change is
undermining the ecosystem upon which Inuit depend for their cultural survival … Emission of
greenhouse gases from cars and factories threatens our ability far to the North to live as we have
always done in harmony with a fragile, vulnerable, and sensitive environment,” and that “the
384 Smith and Parks 2010, 13.
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changes to our climate and our environment will bring about the end of the Inuit culture.”385
Understanding such statements as pertaining to Arctic in/security involves analyzing them
through a securitization theoretical lens that is non-Indigenous, but does not entail changing or
distorting the meaning or impacts that Inuit leaders associate with climate change. To the
contrary, highlighting Indigenous constructions of in/security that emphasize the importance of
social and environmental factors may contribute to processes of decolonization by pushing back
against the ongoing, dominant association of in/security with military violence, territorial
borders, and the national interests of the sovereign state.
4.1.3 In/Security, Resources, and Climate Change
Environmental change is central to Inuit understandings of security, but this is in tension with the
priority many regional actors place on the extraction of Arctic resources. There is contestation
over how Arctic Indigenous peoples feel about extractive resource activities in their homeland.
Canada identified “development for the people of the North” as the theme of its Arctic Council
chairmanship from 2013-2015, and former Environment Minister and Member of Parliament for
Nunavut Leona Aglukkaq loudly insisted: “People in the North want development. We want
it!”386 However, dozens of Northern organizations, including some representing Indigenous
peoples, have signed the “Joint Statement of Indigenous Solidarity for Arctic Protection” calling
for a moratorium on Arctic oil drilling.387 On the other hand, leading Inuit groups have rejected
this statement as an example of voice-appropriation by Southern-based NGOs that do not speak
on their behalf.388 Inuit leaders point instead to the Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource
Development Principles, which reserves the right of Inuit to benefit from the development of
385 Quoted in Smith and Parks 2010, 7, 8. 386 Randy Boswell, “Aglukkaq of the Arctic: Can federal minister set a vision for international council?” Montreal Gazette (May 12, 2013). Accessed at http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/environment/Aglukkaq+Arctic +federal+minister+vision/8373742/story.html on May 31, 2013. 387 Greenpeace International (2013). Statement available at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/ releases/Indigenous-Peoples-put-Arctic-Council-on-alert-on-eve-of-foreign-ministers-meeting (Accessed April 16, 2014). 388 Nunatsiaq News, “Indigenous Statement Calls for Arctic Oil Development Moratorium,” Nunatsiaq Online (May 14, 2013). Accessed at http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674Indigenous_statement_calls_for_ban _on_all_arctic_oil_development/ on May 31, 2013.
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natural resources on their traditional territories while stipulating that “Inuit and others – through
their institutions and international instruments – have a shared responsibility to evaluate the risks
and benefits of their actions through the prism of global environmental security.”389
Ambivalence towards natural resource extraction and its relationship to climate change is
reflected in several places in the Declaration: “Resource development in Inuit Nunaat must
contribute to, and not detract from, global, national and regional efforts to curb greenhouse gas
emissions and should always be seen through the reality of climate change … To minimize the
risk to global environmental security, the pace of resource development in the Arctic must be
carefully considered.”390 The Declaration further indicates that the highest priority for revenues
generated for Inuit by resource development must be “providing security against unplanned or
unintended environmental consequences.”391 It also refers to reducing threats to Arctic wildlife,
Inuit food security, and maintenance of Inuit culture, all of which are linked to “the scope and
depth of climate change and other environmental pressures and challenges facing the Arctic.”392
Environment security is depicted as the context within which decisions about resource extraction
should occur, problematizing forms of economic development that will contribute to global
climate change.
The prospect of expanded Arctic resource development places Indigenous peoples in the
unenviable position of demanding to benefit from extractive activities they do not necessarily
support but which may nonetheless occur, as some governments have appeared determined to
encourage. Ownership and distribution of natural resource wealth is a central point, with
Indigenous leaders insisting “those resources are ours, and they're to be shared based on Inuit
values and beliefs on sharing, and in response to the Inuit land claims as well, and that we have a
right to those resources, and that this right flows from our right to self-determination under the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other self-government arrangements.”393
389 ICC, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat (Nuuk: Inuit Circumpolar Council, 2011): s. 5.1. Emphasis added. 390 ICC 2011, s. 5.2, s. 5.5. 391 ICC 2011, s. 9.5. 392 ICC 2011, preamble. 393 Violet Ford, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 40-03-17 (May 13, 2010).
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But while claiming ownership over resources, Inuit worry over the potential impacts of
extraction, especially as related to contamination from mining activities and the risk of a spill
caused by offshore drilling for oil and gas. Duane Smith, former president of ICC, told
Parliament:
The Inuit view in the past has been that, yes, we welcome development, but at a pace that can be managed in such a way that it has minimal effect on the environment and the ecosystem within that area, and at the same time remediating as it proceeds … There is support for it. But people also want development to proceed so that it minimizes the negative impacts on the communities themselves. Development affects the social fabric of the community as well as the cultural practices. There is a concern about all-year shipping and how it might affect the ice conditions that the people rely on for transportation during the winter months to get their nutrition.394
Inuit leaders acknowledge the possible benefits of resource development, but also identify the
objects of value threatened by extractive activities or the prospect of an environmental accident.
As one elder put it: “The circumpolar North is increasingly opening up very quickly now, and
coming with that is offshore oil and gas development. To me, the greatest risk to our security is
these companies that operate offshore could do major damage to our marine biology.”395
Though many believe development may be inevitable, many Inuit remain deeply concerned over
the potential impacts for their territories and subsistence practices on the land.
The willingness to identify threats posed by natural resource extraction and consumption,
particularly fossil fuels, places Inuit in opposition to many of the policy preferences of the
federal government. Not only does this reinforce the view of government as contributing to,
rather than defending against, insecurity for Indigenous peoples, it links environmental change in
the circumpolar region to industrial activities located elsewhere in Canada. As climate change
worsens while government encourages extractive industries across Canada, Indigenous leaders
have increasingly voiced concerns linking non-Arctic resource development, local ecological
damage, and climate change. One example is the ICC petition to the Inter-American
Commission, which identifies the United States as the primary agent responsible for the
greenhouse gas emissions causing harm to the Arctic ecology and Inuit who depend on it.
394 Duane Smith, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41-01-69 (March 5, 2013). 395 William Barbour, interviewed in Nilliajut 2013.
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Another is parliamentary testimony by Bill Erasmus, Assembly of First Nations regional chief
for the Northwest Territories and National Chief of the Dene Nation, that addressing
environmental change in the Arctic requires revising attitudes towards hydrocarbon extraction in
the South:
If you want to work on infrastructure and do something about permafrost melting and all the difficulties we see in the north, you have to deal with that reality. It means turning the policies around. It means dealing with the big corporations that are affecting us in northern Alberta … We are downstream from Fort McMurray. And we all know what's happening there, but Canada allows it to happen. You are in a position to do something, and if you don't do something, this is going to continue. We can put money into infrastructure and so on, but if you don't deal with those big companies, if you don't say, ‘Listen you guys, we have to get rid of the emissions, we have to be real with these targets, and we have to quit playing games’, then as people, we're not going to survive very long.396
Chief Erasmus continued his critique, directly refuting the popular conception of environmental
change as leading to a commercially accessible Arctic. Having linked environmental insecurity
in the Arctic to energy extraction in Alberta, he invoked the contrast between Southern views of
the Arctic as an economic frontier to be developed and the Northern sense of the Arctic as a
home to be protected: “We need to step back and look at the big picture. We need to ask the
people what they want. We have to quit having these big dreams about having pipelines and
having ships going through the Northwest Passage and all of these things that don't make sense
to people who were brought up in the north and who are not going to leave.” He concluded with
one of the core ecological security arguments against hydrocarbon extraction in the context of
human-caused environmental change: “To me, it doesn't make sense to be looking for oil if oil is
not the future.”397 With that statement, Chief Erasmus underscores the central tension between
different accounts of in/security in the Arctic region: what kind of security is possible in the
context of transformative climate change, and what kind of security can be achieved while
continuing to pursue the very activities causing such change in the first place?
396 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009). 397 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009).
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4.1.4 Security and Self-Determination
Finally, Inuit leaders identify their political autonomy as a self-determining Indigenous people as
vital both to their security and to ensuring the agency necessary to provide for their security. In
this respect, the central challenge is reconciling the Arctic sovereignty claims of the Canadian
settler state with the prior claims of Indigenous peoples over the same territory. The federal
government’s Northern Strategy acknowledges the contribution of Indigenous claims to
Canada’s, noting “Canada’s Arctic sovereignty is longstanding, well-established and based on
historic title, founded in part on the presence of Inuit and other Aboriginal peoples since time
immemorial,”398 with similar language repeated in Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy.399 Inuit
leaders, in particular, emphasize that if Canada invokes Inuit as part of the basis for its Arctic
sovereignty, then it must also respect legal instruments such as the Circumpolar Inuit
Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic, Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource
Development Principles, and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that afford
Inuit rights over their territories, natural resources, and self-determination. Inuit and non-Inuit
analysts note that since Canada’s Arctic sovereignty partly draws upon prior Inuit occupation, it
raises complicated legal and normative questions if the state continually fails to reflect Inuit
political views in the execution of its Arctic policies.400
Many Inuit thus identify Canada’s limited implementation of Inuit land claim agreements –
including the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, Nunavik Inuit Land Claims
Agreement, Labrador Inuit Land Claim Agreement, and especially the Nunavut Land Claims
Agreement (NLCA) – as affecting their rights and security. Rosemarie Kuptana argues that
Canada’s “failure to consult Inuit on all matters affecting Inuit, including sovereignty and
security,” is illegal under domestic and international law, and claims that “Inuit are suffering
from a want of dialogue even though this dialogue is constitutionally mandated … This manner
of governing is not working for Inuit in Canada, particularly on the issue of arctic [sic]
398 Canada, Canada’s Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2009b), 9. 399 Canada, Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy: Exercising Sovereignty and Promoting Canada’s Northern Strategy Abroad (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2010). 400 Fenge 2007/2008; Natalia Loukacheva, “Nunavut and Canadian Arctic Sovereignty,” Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 2 (2009); Simon 2009.
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sovereignty and security.”401 James Arreak, CEO of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, the Inuit
organization mandated to implement the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, also identifies the
link between colonialism, the NLCA, and Canadian sovereignty over its Arctic territory:
“Notwithstanding the colonialism that marred the historic interaction of Inuit and the Canadian
state, Inuit are proud Canadians. For years we have been holding up the Canadian flag over
disputed waters of the Northwest Passage. Full and fair implementation of the NLCA must be
part of our continuing to do so.”402 As the principal instrument for Inuit self-determination, land
claims are seen as crucial for maintaining political autonomy in a manner consistent with
protecting Inuit identity. Focus group respondents to the Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey
tied security to the capacity to ensure political goals in the future. One respondent explained
“security – in a broad way, [means] we want to protect ourselves and our wishes and our goals
for the future,” while another emphasized the importance of self-determination because “security
in the Arctic, for me that would be like that my culture is still being alive and being able to stay
alive.”403 Kirt Ejesiak, a former official with ITK and the Government of Nunavut, also
identified the link between autonomy and security by noting that, for Inuit, “the security part
comes in when our governments don’t respect our way of life.”404 Inuit leaders thus view land
claim agreements as a crucial bulwark for maintaining Inuit autonomy and defending against
Southern pressures for social change, economic modernization, and cultural assimilation.
A central point of contention has therefore been the approach of the Conservative Government
towards articulating and asserting Canada’s Arctic interests. As discussed Section 4.2, the
Conservative Government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlined a vision of Arctic security
that emphasizes militarism and natural resource extraction,405 pursuing policies contrary to Inuit
understandings of their own security. Mary Simon has repeatedly criticized the Government’s
401 Kuptana 2013, 10-11. 402 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41-01-73 (March 26, 2013). 403 EKOS 2011, 14. 404 Nilliajut 2013. 405 See Beauchamp and Huebert 2008; Klaus Dodds, “We are a Northern Country: Stephen Harper and the Canadian Arctic,” Polar Record 47, no. 4 (2011): 371-374; and Wilfrid Greaves, “For Whom, From What? Canada’s Arctic Policy and the Narrowing of Human Security,” International Journal 67, no. 1 (2012b): 219-240.
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approach to the Arctic as an “outdated model” inappropriate for contemporary realities, and
dismisses the government maxim that when it comes to its Arctic sovereignty Canada must “use
it or lose it”.406 Simon notes the implication that Canada’s Arctic sovereignty is threatened if it
is not exercised through military or industrial activities is met by Inuit “with a certain level of
irony,” because “Inuit have been living in … and using … [sic] the Arctic for millennia, and we
have no intention of ‘losing it’.”407 Similarly, John Amagoalik of Qikiqtani Inuit Association
told Parliament that:
We were disappointed with the first two or three times [Prime Minister Harper] was up there [in the Arctic]. He never met with Inuit leaders. He never mentioned the Inuit in his speeches. We were curious as to why that was happening. Then he came out with this line of “use it or lose it”. That to us was very painful. It was a hurtful thing. It was insulting. We do use and occupy the Arctic every day, and we have been doing that for thousands of years. We feel that the Government of Canada has to stop using that line. It doesn't work.408
James Arreak reiterated the point four years later after the government maintained its use it or
lose it rhetoric: “Whatever its political appeal, this statement does not accurately reflect or
respect the history or demography of the Arctic or relevant Canadian and international laws.”409
As a result of the failure to acknowledge Inuit use and occupancy, Rosemarie Kuptana argues
“the current discussion of arctic [sic] sovereignty and security lies in the realm of mythology and
the exclusion of Inuit … [and] is not only an immoral and shameful exercise of out-dated and
discredited colonialism but also illegal in light of the contemporary developments in law.”410
Many individuals emphasize that, in various respects, the security of Inuit has been negatively
affected by subordination to first colonial, later federal, authorities. Zebedee Nungak describes
the “decimation of Inuit security” that resulted from the imposition of Southern policies on
406 Simon 2009, 258. 407 Simon 2009, 252. 408 John Amagoalik, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009). 409 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41-01-73 (March 26, 2013). 410 Kuptana 2013, 11.
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Inuit.411 Key historical episodes in the relationship between Inuit and Canada indicate a pattern
of Indigenous peoples’ wellbeing being undermined by the policies pursued by the colonial state.
Such episodes are often documented as instances of colonial insensitivity, arrogance, oppression,
and attempted assimilation, but they also profoundly affected the individual and collective
security of Indigenous people. For Inuit, this includes the mass slaughter of Inuit sled dogs by
RCMP and provincial police forces in the 1950s and 1960s,412 and the forced relocation of Inuit
families from Nunavik to Ellesmere Island in the 1950s to serve as “human flagpoles” in support
of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.413 In these instances, the security of Inuit was directly harmed
by actions taken by Canada in the assertion of its own claims to Arctic sovereignty. As a result,
“the whole of Inuit society suffered the harmful and damaging consequences of the actions,
attitudes and mistakes of civil servants, agents and representatives of both the Canadian and
Quebec governments.”414 If Inuit view autonomy as integral to their security, then historical and
contemporary government policies have undermined security for Inuit and subordinated it to the
interests of the Canadian state.
4.1.5 Synthesizing Indigenous Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic
Based on the preceding analysis, there is ample evidence to support the argument that Indigenous
peoples understand security in the Arctic as a holistic concept encompassing threats to human
beings, the natural environment, and the relationships between them. For Inuit, in particular,
security is expressly linked to protecting the Arctic environment from degradation and radical
climate change; preserving their identity through the maintenance of Indigenous cultural
411 Nungak 2013,14. 412 Jean-Jacques Croteau, Final Report of the Honourable Jean-Jacques Croteau, Retired Judge of the Superior Court, Regarding the Allegations Concerning the Slaughter of Inuit Sled Dogs in Nunavik (1950−1970) (2010). Accessed November 24, 2014. http://thefanhitch.org/officialreports/Final%20Report.pdf; QIA, Qikiqtani Truth Commission Final Report: Achieving Saimaqatigiingniq (Iqaluit: Qikiqtani Inuit Association, 2010). 413 Frank Tester and Peter Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939−63 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1994); Romani Makkik, “The High Arctic Relocations,” Naniiliqpita (Iqaluit: Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, 2009). Accessed at http://www.tunngavik.com/documents/publications/Naniiliqpita%20Fall%202009.pdf on November 25, 2014. 414 Croteau 2010, 137.
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practices; and asserting and maintaining Inuit autonomy as self-determining political actors
within the context of the Canadian settler state. In this respect, Indigenous peoples in northern
Canada function as securitizing actors employing the grammar and language of in/security with
respect to perceived threats from the compounding effects of rapid cultural change, political
disempowerment, and unpredictable ecological transformation.
However, for all three of the referent objects of the environment, identity, and autonomy, human-
caused environmental change is the threat that permeates Inuit articulations of Arctic security.
For securitization analysis, security issues supersede others in their relative significance because,
“if we [the political community] do not tackle this problem, everything else will be irrelevant
(because we will not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way).”415 This is an
apt summation of the impact of climate change in the Arctic, where Indigenous peoples have
linked disparate referent objects of security to fears over climate change precisely because the
changing environment worsens longstanding concerns over cultural preservation, community
subsistence, and political self-determination. Because it exacerbates existing challenges and
causes new hazards, environmental change is the backdrop against which Indigenous peoples
articulate other insecurities in the Arctic. While their frequency has increased, such securitizing
moves are not entirely new; Indigenous understandings of security as tied to human wellbeing
and the negative impacts of government policy on that security have existed at least since Mary
Simon first articulated them in the 1980s. While much has changed since that time, security for
Indigenous peoples has not, and on their own terms it seems that “Inuit have yet to find true
security in Canada.”416
4.2 State Understandings of In/Security in the Canadian Arctic
How Indigenous peoples articulate the meaning of in/security contrasts sharply with how the
Canadian government understands security in the Arctic. The longstanding goal of Canada’s
Arctic policy has been establishing and enforcing its own legal sovereignty over the Arctic.
415 Buzan et al. 1998, 24. 416 Nungak 2013, 15.
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Federal preoccupation with Arctic sovereignty historically centred on the fact that not only were
Canada’s legal claims initially somewhat weak, the country also lacked significant state capacity
to enforce those claims against potential state rivals. Great Britain transferred sovereignty over
the Arctic Archipelago to Canada in 1880, but the federal government at the time had little
capacity to assert this claim. The region was only modestly explored over the following decades,
often-by non-Canadians; by 1900, the extent of the Arctic islands which Canada claimed as its
own was still unclear, and the country asserted little control over the territory that now formed its
hinterland. Spurred by events such as the purchase of Alaska by the United States from Russia,
the Klondike Gold Rush, and the Alaska Boundary Dispute, the young Dominion of Canada
developed a Northern policy whose primary goal was to establish sovereignty against potential
American expansion. But beyond settling basic questions of juridical sovereignty and legal
recognition, Canada had little interest in the North; it remained remote, inaccessible, dangerous,
and of little apparent value.417 Governments of the day knew the Arctic was “there and
theirs,”418 and that was enough.
Canada’s approach to Arctic sovereignty changed fundamentally during the Second World War,
when the region experienced significant militarization. Fear of a Japanese invasion catalyzed the
American military to build the Alaska Highway connecting that state to the lower 48 US states
through Canadian territory.419 The project opened the western Arctic to expanded settlement
and natural resource exploration, but also reignited concerns over the latent American threat to
Canada’s Arctic sovereignty.420 The United States and Canada had negotiated the Alaska
Highway to defend against an external threat, but the mass presence of US military personnel on
remote and sparsely populated Canadian soil reflected an ongoing challenge in Canada-US
defence relations later characterized as “defence against help.”421 The idea is the United States
417 Coates et al. 2008, 42. 418 Franklyn Griffiths, “Beyond the Arctic Sublime,” in Franklyn Griffiths, ed, Politics of the Northwest Passage (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 266. 419 Martha Cone, The Alaska Highway in World War II: The American Occupation in Canada’s Northwest (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). 420 P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Mathew Farish, “The Cold War on Canadian Soil: Militarizing a Northern Environment,” Journal of Environmental History 12, no. 4 (2007): 920-950. 421 Coates et al. 2008, 64.
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expects Canada to meet certain expectations in the joint defence of North America, and if
America’s strategic needs are unsatisfied it may intervene to assist Canada in securing the
northern part of the continent. Given the unequal power relationship between the two countries,
such assistance from the United States might inadvertently pose a threat to Canadian sovereignty
and territorial control. Thus, the defence policy imperative for Canadian leaders has been doing
enough that Canada is defended against the need for unwarranted American assistance.422 The
combination of American military might and territorial acquisitiveness had long worried some
politicians and segments of the Canadian public, and post-WWII these fears focused on the
presence of American soldiers in Canada’s North. Longstanding differences between Canada
and the United States pertaining to Arctic interests, boundaries, and the legal principles
according to which the region should be governed have placed the Arctic at the forefront of
debates around defence against help, not least because periodic efforts by the United States to
assert its own interests have been perceived as the gravest challenges to Canada’s Arctic
sovereignty.
The onset of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR changed the Arctic from a
marginal periphery to a strategic buffer zone separating the superpower spheres of influence.
Bipolar struggle had a transformative effect on the Canadian North, turning it “first into a
military flank, then a military front or even a ‘military theatre’ [of the Cold War].”423 The
prevalence of bomber aircraft carrying nuclear weapons, and later nuclear submarines with inter-
continental ballistic missiles, all of which would traverse the Arctic Ocean and Canadian North
en route towards the rival superpower, placed the Arctic at the literal centre of strategic
considerations between the East and West blocs. As a US ally and NATO member, Canada was
actively involved in Western military efforts to deter the Soviet Union, which in the late 1950s
included construction of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar line across the North. The
DEW line, also built in close cooperation with the US military, was a feat of engineering, a key
piece of strategic infrastructure, and “an extraordinary intervention that likely did more to alter
422 See Donald Barry and Duane Bratt, “Defence Against Help: Explaining Canada-U.S. Security Relations,” American Review of Canadian Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 63-89; Philippe Lagassé, “Nils Ørvik’s ‘Defence Against Help’: The Descriptive Appeal of a Prescriptive Strategy.” International Journal 65, no. 2 (2010): 463-474. 423 AHDR 2004, 218.
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the lives of northern inhabitants than any other Cold War initiative.”424 Though obsolete by the
late 1960s, the DEW line endures as a symbol of the strategic importance of the Arctic,
environmental degradation caused by southern expansion into the North, and the central role that
military considerations have played in the establishment, maintenance, and exercise of Canadian
sovereignty over its Arctic territory.
Post-WWII, various governments expressed interest in civilian development in the North,
notably Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s Northern Vision, but such interest
rarely lasted. The extraordinary costs of construction, maintenance, and operation of military
and civilian infrastructure in the region proved an effective deterrent to visionary projects or
significant new government investment. Conversely, the strategic protection afforded by
Canada’s defensive alliances with the United States through NATO and NORAD ensured that its
North was militarily secure even without major expenditure by the federal government. Prime
Minister Louis St. Laurent once said that Canada’s Arctic was, thus, “governed in a fit of
absence of mind.”425 As a result, government interest in the North was usually reactive, spurred
by domestic or external events that periodically forced Canada to re-examine its Arctic policy.
Most prominent among these external factors were challenges to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty
posed by the United States through its repeated authorization of maritime voyages through the
Northwest Passage without requesting permission from Canadian authorities.426 The 1969
voyage of the Exxon oil tanker Manhattan, seeking a shorter energy supply route from Alaska to
the east coast, precipitated major changes in Canada’s Arctic policy, including passage of the
1970 Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act (AWPPA) that unilaterally expanded Canada’s
Arctic territory up to 100 nautical miles from its coastline. When the US Coast Guard icebreaker
Polar Sea undertook a similar voyage in 1985, the result was the 1988 Canada-US Northwest
Passage Agreement in which the United States agreed to request Canadian permission before
entering the passage in exchange for Canadian assurance that permission would always be
424 Lackenbauer and Farish 2007, 928. 425 Quoted in Coates et al. 2008, 10. 426 For detailed discussions of the Northwest Passage see Griffiths 1987; Charron 2005; and Lajeunesse 2008.
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granted. In managing the dispute over the Northwest Passage, neither state compromised its
legal position but essentially agreed to disagree, a status quo that persists to the present day.
The construction of the Alaska Highway and the DEW line demonstrate that security in the mid-
20th century Canadian Arctic was officially understood in terms of the military defence of
Canada, its allies, and their strategic interests. Canada’s Cold War security and defence policy
viewed the Arctic as a buffer insulating southern Canada and the continental United States from
the threat of nuclear attack. This view paid little mind to the North itself, nor the people living
there; the prospect of aircraft or nuclear missiles being shot down over the Arctic was considered
simply necessary in the event of superpower conflict. Arctic security thus meant using the Arctic
to help secure the North American heartland. This view of security as the military defence of a
state’s territory reflects traditional understandings of state-centric national security, as discussed
in Chapter 3. By contrast, the Northwest Passage illustrates that Arctic sovereignty has largely
meant protecting Canada’s territorial claims against its close friend and ally, the United States.
Through issues such as the Alaska Highway, DEW Line, and Northwest Passage, Canada’s
Arctic security and sovereignty interests became closely linked. In pursuing national security
vis-à-vis external enemies, Canada’s Arctic sovereignty risked being undermined by its
American ally, since US assistance was necessary to maintain continental defence, and
sovereignty was directly challenged when the United States disregarded Canada’s claim to the
Northwest Passage. During the Cold War, sovereignty thus became fused with national security
discourse because gains with respect to one could compromise Canada’s pursuit of the other.
The strategic significance of the Arctic diminished after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
end of the superpower struggle. During the 1990s, military activity decreased sharply as
circumpolar states revised their strategic priorities; drastic reductions occurred in domestic and
NATO military activities in the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic as the focus of Arctic policy
shifted to the environment.427 While there appeared to be little justification for Arctic military
activities, across the region there was growing concern over pollution and environmental
427 For a detailed discussion see Andrew Wylie, Environmental Security and the Canadian Arctic. MA Thesis (Calgary: University of Calgary, 2002).
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contaminants.428 Military security declined in relevance as Western states normalized relations
with their Russian neighbour, and the Arctic region experienced rapid de-securitization as states
initiated discussions on a range of issues precluded during the Cold War.429 The environment
emerged as a key area for inter-state cooperation, and the establishment in 1991 of the Arctic
Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), which led to the formation of the Arctic Council in
1996 with strong Canadian support, signified the emergence of a cooperative regional
governance regime involving all eight circumpolar states.430 The normalization of Arctic
relations drove resurgent optimism about the future of the Arctic as a “polar Mediterranean”,
“global commons”, and essential component of the “common heritage of mankind”.431 Such
visions, in turn, called into question the sovereign interests of states surrounding the Arctic
Ocean, and tensions between those interests and the region’s growing internationalization. For
Canada, the end of the Cold War meant that national security was briefly eclipsed by government
emphasis on human security in the region. But it was not long before sovereignty concerns were
back on the agenda, and government discourse re-adopted many features that had defined
security in the Cold War Canadian Arctic.
4.2.1 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Liberal Years
As an area of foreign policy, the Arctic received relatively little attention during the Liberal
governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin (1993-2006). The 1990s were a dynamic decade
for northern Canada, with multiple issues taking centre stage including: cleaning up
environmental contamination caused by Cold War military activities, persistent social and
community ills, devolution and Aboriginal self-government, and the establishment of Nunavut as
428 David Leonard Downie and Terry Fenge, eds, Northern Lights Against POPs: Combatting Toxic Threats in the Arctic (Mongreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). 429 Åtland 2008. 430 Evan T. Bloom, “Establishment of the Arctic Council,” American Journal of International Law 93, no. 3 (1999): 712-722; English 2013. 431 Such characterizations are not entirely new. Lord Kelvin is supposed to have predicted the emergence of a ‘polar Mediterranean’ as early as 1877. For discussion of the various visions of the Arctic, see Elizabeth Mendenhall, “The Social Construction of the New Arctic,” Paper presented at the 55th Meeting of the International Studies Association. Toronto, ON (April 2014).
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a new territory within Canadian Confederation. As a result, political emphasis on the North
during this decade was primarily domestic, and with the notable exception of the establishment
of the Arctic Council, the region was not seen as a foreign policy issue. However, precisely
because the Chrétien government pursued a foreign policy agenda centred on human security, the
changing Arctic was briefly framed in terms of human and environmental security.432
Published in 2000, The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy is the only major
document that directly links the Arctic to the Chrétien government’s foreign policy. It identifies
the Arctic as a space of emergent challenges requiring international engagement and cooperation,
and frames regional challenges as human and environmental security issues requiring civilian
policy intervention and inter-state cooperation. The Northern Dimension identifies four
objectives of Canada’s foreign policy in the North: “to enhance the security and prosperity of
Canadians, especially northerners and Aboriginal peoples; to assert and ensure the preservation
of Canada’s sovereignty in the North; to establish the circumpolar region as a vibrant
geopolitical entity integrated into a rules-based international system; and to promote the human
security of northerners and the sustainable development of the Arctic.”433 Although recognizing
the distinctive nature of Arctic policy, as the title suggests the government viewed the Arctic as
another place in which to extend the general tenets of Canada’s foreign policy, rather than one
requiring unique policy solutions. This involved bringing the circumpolar Arctic, and Northern
Canada in particular, more fully into the international system through: greater investment in
Northern economies; better political representation and support for political institutions,
particularly the Arctic Council; consultation with Northerners; and international cooperation to
manage regional challenges related to transboundary pollutants, sustainable resource
management, transportation, and post-Soviet Russia. Canada’s approach to the Arctic was thus
similar to its broader foreign policy, and echoed the discourse expressed in other Liberal foreign
policy documents.434
432 Lloyd Axworthy, “Canada and Human Security: The Need for Leadership,” International Journal 52, no. 2 (1997): 183-196; Joe Jockel and Joel Sokolsky, “Lloyd Axworthy’s Legacy: Human Security and the Rescue of Canadian Defence Policy,” International Journal 56, no. 1 (2001): 1-18. 433 Canada, The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 2000), 2. 434 Greaves 2012b.
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In so far as The Northern Dimension focuses on in/security it emphasizes the environment, citing
how “northerners from across the circumpolar region have begun to press for action to address
the serious environmental, economic, social and cultural threats facing their communities.”435
The document states that current challenges “mostly take the shape of transboundary
environmental threats – persistent organic pollutants, climate change, and nuclear waste – that
are having dangerously increasing impacts on the health and vitality of human beings, northern
lands, waters, and animal life.”436 It specifies that “the peoples of the circumpolar region are
particularly vulnerable” to environmentally driven human security threats, but environmental
change is also mentioned in terms of expected economic opportunities made possible by
increasingly navigable Arctic waters, primarily related to trans-Arctic shipping.437 Notably, The
Northern Dimension lacks any concern over sovereignty threats or territorial rivalry with other
states. Indeed, sovereignty threats are downplayed as anachronistic, replaced with an emphasis
on interstate cooperation and issue management.438
While The Northern Dimension frames the Arctic in terms of human security, this was not
substantively supported by the Liberal government’s policies. Understanding the Arctic in terms
of human and environmental security deviates from the implementation of the human security
agenda in Canadian foreign policy around the turn of the millennium. Despite initially
conceiving human security broadly as including the requirements for human wellbeing –
including factors in the social, economic, environmental, and cultural domains – in practice the
‘Canadian approach’ was narrowly focused on preventing physical violence to civilians in the
Global South. Canada thus viewed human security as relevant in genocidal contexts like the
Great Lakes region of Africa and the former Yugoslavia, while constructing the Global North,
including Canada’s own polar backyard, as spaces characterized by a general lack of
insecurity.439 The social and economic problems affecting the North, particularly Indigenous
435 Canada 2000, 4. 436 Canada 2000, 1. 437 Canada 2000, 5. 438 Canada 2000, 5. 439 Axworthy 1997; David Bosold and Wilfried von Bredow, “Human Security: A Radical or Rhetorical Shift in Canada’s Foreign Policy,” International Journal 61, no. 4 (2006): 829-844; and Nik Hynek and David Bosold, “A History and Genealogy of the Freedom-From-Fear Doctrine,” International Journal 64, no. 3 (2009): 735-750.
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communities, were viewed as domestic issues, and were not considered human security issues in
government policy since they fell within a broad conception of human security, not the violence-
centric approach employed by Canada.440 Despite its emphasis on environmental security,
sustainability, and call for better integration between the foreign and domestic components of
Arctic policy, The Northern Dimension lacks discussion of Canada’s policies on natural resource
extraction, the recently signed Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC), or climate adaptation measures for Arctic communities. Liberal foreign
policy thus generally excluded the Arctic from consideration through a human security lens, and
substantively ignored the challenges facing many Indigenous people across Canada, particularly
Aboriginal women.441
Even this limited focus on Arctic human security shifted when Paul Martin succeeded Chrétien
as prime minister in December 2003. The catalyst for this shift was Hans Island, an uninhabited
1 km2 rock in the Nares Strait that separates Canada’s Ellesmere Island from Greenland. Though
otherwise insignificant, Hans Island straddles the maritime boundary between the two countries,
and since 1974 has been the object of quiet disagreement over whether it is under Canadian or
Danish sovereignty. It is the only disputed land territory in the entire circumpolar Arctic.442 The
issue appeared periodically in the media during the 1980s and 1990s, but in March 2004 it
became a major flashpoint in the Arctic sovereignty debate.443 The Conservative opposition
questioned the Martin government over reports that Danish naval vessels had stopped at Hans
Island in 2002 and 2003. The questions were intended to highlight the small increase in military
spending in the recent federal budget, but, drawing on a Globe and Mail article by Arctic expert
Rob Huebert,444 generated widespread media attention over the supposed threat to Canada’s
Arctic sovereignty. Despite exchanges of diplomatic notes between Canada and Denmark for
440 Greaves 2012b. 441 Deiter and Rude 2005. 442 Michael Byers, Who Owns the Arctic: Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 24. 443 For more detailed discussion see Rob Huebert, “'Return of the Vikings,' The Canadian-Danish dispute over Hans Island: New Challenges for the Control of the Canadian North," in Fikret Berkes, Rob Huebert, Helen Fast, Micheline Manseau and Alan Diduk, eds, Breaking Ice: Renewable Resource and Ocean Management in the Canadian North (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), 337-362. 444 Rob Huebert, “The Return of the Vikings,” The Globe and Mail (December 28, 2002).
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decades, the Martin government was put on the defensive for having allegedly failed to protect
Canada’s Arctic claims. As a result, “Canada responded in 2005 with an inukshuk-raising and
flag-planting visit by a small group of Canadian Rangers and other land force personnel,
followed by a highly publicized visit by then-Defence Minister Bill Graham.”445 The issue
continued to play out in Parliament and the media, leading the government to formally affirm its
commitment “to protect the northern portion of our continent and to preserve our sovereignty,
including that of the Arctic”446 in its 2005 International Policy Statement, in clear contrast to the
de-emphasis on sovereignty disputes in The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy.
Occurring in the months before the Liberals were defeated in the 2006 federal election, the Hans
Island issue helped reoriented Arctic discourse towards the military assertion of Canada’s
sovereignty, laying the groundwork for the renewed focus on sovereignty and security that would
occur under the new Conservative government.
4.2.2 Canada’s Arctic Security Policy – The Harper Conservatives
The Conservative government led by Stephen Harper quickly indicated its intention to make the
Arctic a signature policy area. Drawing on the Arctic legacy of Conservative prime minister
John Diefenbaker, the new Government felt the Arctic provided fertile ground on which to
distinguish their national vision from their predecessors. The Conservatives perceived the
Liberals as having been both weak and ineffectual in asserting Canada’s Arctic interests, and
worried about the perceived dilution of Canada’s commitment to asserting sovereignty over its
Arctic territory.447 The Arctic was also seen as a policy area the Liberals did not effectively
‘own’, affording the Conservatives an opportunity to develop a distinctive brand of Canadian
nationalism centred on support for the Canadian Armed Forces, assertion of Canada’s national
445 P. Whitney Lackenbauer, From Polar Race to Polar Saga (Toronto: Canadian International Council, 2009), 36. 446 Canada, Canada’s International Policy Statement: A Role of Pride and Influence in the World (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 2005), ii. 447 Steven Chase, “Q & A with Harper: No previous government has ‘delivered more in the North’,” The Globe and Mail (January 17, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-north/qa-with-harper-no-previous-government-has-delivered-more-in-the-north/article16387286/?page=5 on October 7, 2014.
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interests, and economic growth through natural resource extraction.448 Given the recent
attention to Hans Island, the timing was opportune for the Conservatives to emphasize Arctic
sovereignty and show it being enacted. Sovereignty, and by extension Canada’s identity as an
Arctic nation and Canadians’ as a Northern people, were recurring themes in Arctic discourse
during the Conservatives’ tenure.
The Conservative government detailed its Arctic policy in three documents outlining Canada’s
approach to the circumpolar North. The Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS), Canada’s
Northern Strategy, and Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy were released between 2008-2010, and
together formed the framework for federal economic, military, political, and environmental
policy in the region. The CFDS addresses the Arctic more peripherally than the others, though it
identifies several investments in Arctic infrastructure and materiel by the Department of National
Defence.449 However, both the Northern Strategy and Arctic Foreign Policy outline the same
four priority areas of government action: exercising Arctic sovereignty, promoting social and
economic development, protecting the North’s environmental heritage, and improving and
devolving Northern governance. The Northern Strategy indicates that all four areas are “equally
important and mutually reinforcing,”450 whereas the Arctic Foreign Policy states “the first and
most important pillar towards recognizing the potential of Canada’s Arctic is the exercise of our
sovereignty over the Far North.”451
But when the record of government expenditure and activity in the North is examined,
sovereignty – understood as the military defence of Canadian territory – has clear priority over
the other pillars. The list of signature Arctic initiatives promised or undertaken by the
government between 2006-2011 largely consists of defence and military expenditures, including:
construction of a Canadian Forces Arctic Training Centre at Resolute Bay; a deepwater berthing
and fuelling facility at Nanisivik; expansion of the Canadian Rangers; establishment of an Army
reserve company in Yellowknife; a new polar icebreaker, the John G. Diefenbaker; a new fleet
448 Dodds 2011. 449 Canada, Canada First Defence Strategy (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 2008). 450 Canada 2009, 2. 451 Canada 2010, 5.
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of Arctic offshore patrol ships; increased radar and satellite capacity, including unmanned aerial
vehicles and both land-based and underwater sensors; and a proposed fleet of up to 60 F-35 Joint
Strike Fighters.452 The total cost of these expenditures was nearly CAD$9 billion in 2011, not
including CAD$45 billion for the F-35s, with costs increasing since due to inflation and the
decline in value of the Canadian dollar.453 As the Northern Strategy states: “we are putting more
boots on the Arctic tundra, more ships in the icy water and a better eye-in-the-sky.”454 Though
“Canada had ceased almost all of its [military] activities in its north at the end of the Cold
War,”455 this was reversed under the Conservatives. Since 2007, the Canadian Forces have held
multiple annual Arctic exercises, including Operation Nanook consisting of 650-1250 military
personnel, as well as smaller operations Nunalivut, Nevus, and Nunakput.456 Attended annually
by Prime Minister Harper, Operation Nanook became the hallmark of the Conservatives’
“assertive and dogmatic”457 approach to asserting sovereignty and providing security in the
Arctic.
The defence of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty has been the primary aspect of government policy
towards the North despite the fact that all three Arctic policy documents explicitly state that no
military threats exist. Notwithstanding the government’s sometimes bellicose rhetoric,458 the
Arctic Foreign Policy stipulates: “All disagreements are well managed, neither posing defence
challenges for Canada nor diminishing Canada’s ability to collaborate and cooperate with its
Arctic neighbours.”459 The Northern Strategy goes further, reiterating that “these disagreements
are well-managed and pose no sovereignty or defence challenges for Canada,” indicating that
disputes have “had no impact on Canada’s ability to work collaboratively and cooperatively with
452 Huebert et al. 2012, 19, 27-28. 453 Jacqueline Medalye and Ryan Foster, “Climate Change and the Capitalist State in the Canadian Arctic: Interrogating Canada’s ‘Northern Strategy’,” Studies in Political Economy 90 (2012): 98. 454 Canada 2009, 9. 455 Huebert et al. 2012, 19. 456 Department of National Defence, “Defend Canada,” (Accessed at http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/operations-how/defend-canada.page? on April 18, 2014). 457 Dodds 2011, 371. 458 Lackenbauer 2010. 459 Canada 2010, 8.
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… [its] Arctic neighbours on issues of real significance and importance.”460 The CFDS only
briefly mentions sovereignty challenges in the Arctic: once in the vague context of emerging
security challenges as a result of “illegal activity” enabled by climate change, and once in
reference to employing military force to secure resources in the North.461 The prospect of
Russian aircraft encroaching upon Canadian airspace, a central trope in government efforts to
justify purchase of the F-35 jet fighters,462 goes unmentioned except for one oblique reference to
needing to replace the existing CF-18s in order to protect the sovereignty of Canadian
airspace.463 The commitment of all five coastal Arctic states to resolving disputes peacefully
and in accordance with international law was also reiterated in the Ilulissat Declaration
following their first meeting in 2008, and is repeated in their respective Arctic policy
statements.464 The government also expressed concern over unconventional security issues
being driven by the changing environment. Prospective risks such as illegal shipping,
smuggling, irregular migration, even terrorism, in increasingly accessible Arctic waters have
460 Canada 2009, 13. 461 Canada 2008, 6-8. 462 The Conservative government vigorously argued the much-debated proposal to purchase 65 new F-35 Lightning II jet fighters was necessary to defend Canada’s Arctic airspace, among other reasons. Soaring cost estimates and questionable operational utility in the Arctic finally forced the Conservatives to put the project under review in 2012. Though dismissed as too expensive and controversial, the F-35 re-emerged as the jet aircraft of choice for the government to replace the aging CF-18s. The range of pricing for the new F-35s is due to disputed price estimates released by the Conservative Government and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Expert opinion in the U.S. places the likely price even higher. Even following the election of the new Liberal Government in October 2015, the F-35s remain in contention to replace the CF-18s. See Michael Byers, “Russian Bombers a Make-Believe Threat,” The Toronto Star (August 30, 2010). Accessed at http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2010/08/30/russian_bombers_a_makebelieve_threat.html on September 8, 2015; Steven Chase, “Ottawa Rebukes Russia for Military Flights in the Arctic,” The Globe and Mail (February 28, 2009). Accessed at http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090227.wrussia0227/BNStory/undefined/STEVEN+CHASE on September 8, 2015; Meagan Fitzpatrick, “Ottawa’s F-35 jet cost figures way off: U.S. analyst,” CBC News (April 5, 2011). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-s-f-35-jet-cost-figures-way-off-u-s-analyst-1.1066417 on September 8, 2015; and Daniel Leblanc and Steven Chase, “F-35 remains top military replacement option,” The Globe and Mail (April 17, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/f-35-remains-top-military-replacement-option/article18063309/ on September 8, 2015. 463 Canada 2008, 18. 464 Arctic Ocean Conference, The Ilulissat Declaration (Ilulissat, Greenland: May 28, 2008); Lassi Heininen, “State of the Arctic Strategies and Policies – A Summary,” Arctic Yearbook 2012 (Akureyri: Northern Research Forum, 2012): 2-47.
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attracted high-level concern and informed training scenarios for some armed forces, though such
risks have yet to actually materialize.465
A significant theme of Canada’s Arctic policy under the Conservative government was a
renewed emphasis on the antagonistic role of Russia, particularly depicting President Vladimir
Putin as expansionary, hostile, and threatening to Canada’s Arctic interests. This narrative dates
from August 2007, when a privately funded expedition led by an eccentric Russian
parliamentarian and explorer planted a titanium flag on the Arctic Ocean seafloor at the
geographic North Pole. While neither state-sanctioned nor legally meaningful, this action
precipitated a sharp reaction from the Canadian government, with Foreign Minister Peter
Mackay indignantly telling reporters “this isn’t the fifteenth century. You can’t go around the
world and just plant flags and say ‘we're claiming territory’.”466 Echoing statements from Prime
Minister Harper, Mackay went on to say there was “no question over Canadian sovereignty in
the Arctic … We’ve established a long time ago that these are Canadian waters and this is
Canadian property.”467 This flag planting launched a period of “finger pointing”,468 in which
Canada portrayed Russia’s efforts to determine the limit of its extended continental shelf under
the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as part of a strategy of post-Cold War
revanchism. The appearance of conflict has been fuelled by conflicting Canadian, Danish, and
Russian claims that the North Pole forms part of their respective continental shelves, and thus
each enjoys exclusive rights to its seabed resources, though the symbolic significance of the
North Pole is greater than its economic value.469 However, despite Minister Mackay’s statement
to the contrary, the North Pole is not Canadian territory, and it will likely be many years before
the expert body responsible for adjudicating such disputes under UNCLOS assesses the scientific
465 Byers 2009, 16-18; Meagan Fitzpatrick, “Arctic military exercise targets human-smuggling ‘ecotourists’,” CBC News (August 24, 2012). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/arctic-military-exercise-targets-human-smuggling-ecotourists-1.1166215 on July 6, 2014. 466 Quoted in Dodds 2010, 63. 467 “Canada Must be Vigilant about Arctic: Harper,” The Toronto Star (August 2, 2007). Accessed at http://www.thestar.com/news/2007/08/02/canada_must_be_vigilant_about_arctic_harper_says.html on September 3, 2015. 468 Dodds 2010. 469 Mazo 2014.
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merits of the competing state claims.470 While there are no Russian claims to actual Canadian
territory, increased Russian military activity from its post-Cold War nadir, particularly the
resumption of long range strategic bomber flights, have led to instances of public reaction, and
over-reaction, by the federal government. Notably, in early 2009 the Canadian government
alleged that Russian aircraft had violated Canada’s Arctic airspace during a visit by US President
Barack Obama. Shortly after the incident, Prime Minister Harper told reporters:
I have expressed at various times the deep concern our government has with increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe and Russian intrusions into our airspace … We will defend our airspace, we also have obligations of continental defence with the United States. We will fulfil those obligations to defend our continental airspace, and we will defend our sovereignty and we will respond every time the Russians make any kind of intrusion on the sovereignty in Canada’s Arctic.471
Similar incidents have occurred in which the federal government stated that Russian military
flights “challenging” or “probing” Canadian airspace were intercepted by Canadian military
aircraft.472 But the government’s use of such terms has prompted NORAD to clarify that no
Russian aircraft has, in fact, violated North American airspace, and that such flights by the
Russian military have occurred dozens of times since they resumed in recent years. Indeed,
following an incident in 2010, a NORAD spokesman explicitly noted: “Both Russia and
NORAD routinely exercise their capability to operate in the North. These exercises are
important to both NORAD and Russia and are not cause for alarm."473 However, government
statements on these incidents routinely implied that Russian aircraft were prevented from
entering Canadian airspace only by the swift response of the Royal Canadian Air Force,
470 Riddell-Dixon 2008. 471 “Russia Denies Plane Approached Canadian Airspace,” CBC News (February 27, 2009). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russia-denies-plane-approached-canadian-airspace-1.796007 on September 3, 2015. 472 “Russian planes intercepted near N.L.,” CBC News (July 30, 2010). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/russian-planes-intercepted-near-n-l-1.971551 on September 3, 2015; “Canadian fighter jets intercept Russian bombers in Arctic,” CBC News (September 19, 2014). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-fighter-jets-intercept-russian-bombers-in-arctic-1.2772440 on September 3, 2015. 473 “NORAD Downplays Russian Bomber Interception,” CBC News (August 25, 2010). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/norad-downplays-russian-bomber-interception-1.929222 on September 3, 2015.
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prompting strong criticism from Russia and discreet clarification from NORAD.474 As a result,
some Arctic scholars suggest Canada is as belligerent as Russia, if not more so, with respect to
its Arctic sovereignty and security discourse.475 Moreover, despite the allegations of Russian
aggression, cooperative exercises and other military activities between Russia and the Western
Arctic states have continued, including joint exercises with multiple Arctic states and several
meetings of all Arctic military chiefs. Although outside the main scope of this dissertation, it is
unclear how regional relations will be affected by new tensions related to non-Arctic phenomena,
particularly the forcible Russian annexation of Crimea in spring 2014 and its on-going support
for armed separatist groups in eastern Ukraine. For Canada, however, such developments have
fuelled the discourse of Russia as Arctic antagonist, and Conservative officials explicitly tied
strong Canadian support for the post-revolutionary government in Ukraine to heightened
aggression by Russian in the circumpolar region.476
In addition to military defence of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, there is a second, less-discussed
dimension of the Conservative government’s approach to security in the Arctic. Complementing
militarized sovereignty-as-security, it views security as tied to economic growth and natural
resource extraction, particularly the development of hydrocarbon resources to establish Canada
as an “energy superpower”.477 Not exclusive to the Arctic, this conception links the extraction
and export of Canada’s natural resource wealth with the maintenance of domestic economic
prosperity and high standard of living: the extraction and sale of hydrocarbons, framed as energy
security, is tied to the maintenance of a prosperous national economy, framed as economic
security.478 This reflects a “liberal problematic of security” wherein it is the material lifestyle of
474 “Russia hits back at Canada abut bomber flights,” CTV News (February 27, 2009). Accessed at http://www.ctvnews.ca/russia-hits-back-at-canada-about-bomber-flights-1.374461 on September 3, 2015; “Russia Denies Plane Approached Canadian Airspace,” CBC News (February 27, 2009). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russia-denies-plane-approached-canadian-airspace-1.796007 on September 3, 2015. 475 Lackenbauer 2010. 476 “Canadian fighter jets intercept Russian bombers in Arctic,” CBC News (September 19, 2014). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-fighter-jets-intercept-russian-bombers-in-arctic-1.2772440 on September 3, 2015. 477 Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), “Minister Oliver Calls Canada a 21st Century Energy Superpower at Energy Conference,” March 13, 2014. Accessed at https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/media-room/news-release/2014/15695 on April 18, 2014). 478 Greaves 2013.
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citizens in advanced industrialized societies, and maintenance of their privileged place within the
international system, that is the referent object of security.479 In public statements, Prime
Minister Harper was explicit in his formulation of the liberal problematic of security as it relates
to his government’s economic priorities. For instance, in spring 2013 Harper commented:
“There really is … an unprecedented shift of power and wealth away from the Western world …
[and] if these trends continue, they will be a real threat to our standards of living. And what we
keep telling Canadians … is we can maintain and increase our standard of living and opportunity
for our children and grandchildren, but we have to govern ourselves responsibly,” finally
asserting that “we’re prepared as government to make the investments and decisions necessary to
grab that future.”480 Implicit in this formulation was the claim that failing to support natural
resource extraction would hamper Canada’s economic success in an increasingly competitive
world, imperilling the quality of life Canadians have come to expect.
To this end, when confronted with social protest related to climate change and the extraction of
natural resources, the Conservative Government vilified such actions as illegitimate, criminal, or
terrorist, and surveilled many groups and individuals who participated.481 Canada’s first
Counter-Terrorism Strategy identifies environmentalists alongside animal rights, anti-capitalist,
and white supremacist groups as the likeliest perpetrators of “domestic issue-based extremism”,
equating their violent potential to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the politically motivated
terror attacks in Oslo in 2011.482 Indigenous groups have also been specifically targeted by
Canadian law enforcement for their anti-extractive activism and organizing activities.483 The
479 Michael Dillon, “The State of Emergency of Biopolitical Emergence,” International Political Sociology 1, no. 1 (2007): 7-28; Mark Duffield, Development, Security, and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). 480 Council on Foreign Relations, “A Conversation with Stephen Harper,” (Washington, DC: May 16, 2013). Accessed at http://www.cfr.org/canada/conversation-stephen-harper/p30723 on June 23, 2013. 481 Philippe Le Billon and Angela Carter, “Securing Alberta’s Tar Sands: Resistance and Criminalization on a New Energy Frontier,” in Matthew A. Schnurr and Larry A. Swatuk, eds, Natural Resources and Social Conflict: Towards Critical Environmental Security (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 170-192; Greaves 2013, 183-184. 482 Public Safety Canada. 2012. Building Resilience Against Terrorism: Canada’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Ottawa: Government of Canada. Accessed at http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rslnc-gnst-trrrsm/index-eng.aspx on September 9, 2015. 483 Crosby and Monaghan 2012; Shiri Pasternak, Sue Collis, and Tia Dafnos, “Criminalization at Tyendinaga: Securing Canada’s Colonial Property Regime through Specific Land Claims,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 28, no. 1 (2013): 65-81; Tina Dafnos, “First Nations in the Crosshairs,” Canadian Dimension 49, no. 2 (2015).
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Conservative Government thus depicted those opposed to natural resource extraction, in the
Arctic and elsewhere, as unpatriotic, criminal, dangerous, and threatening to Canada’s national
security interests.
The securitization of natural resources is also seen in the extent to which it is partly for the
development of natural resources that Canada places such emphasis on defending its Arctic
sovereignty.484 As Prime Minister Harper repeatedly stated, in spite of widespread criticism,
Canada must “use it or lose it” when it comes to sovereignty over the Arctic. Northern Canada’s
resource potential has attracted growing attention from analysts and investors as environmental
change renders the region increasingly accessible, and the federal government has strongly
supported growth in extractive industries.485 Natural resources are lauded in the Northern
Strategy as “the cornerstones of sustained economic activity in the North and the key to building
prosperous Aboriginal and Northern communities,” and minerals and oil and gas receive separate
full-page maps identifying current extraction sites and suspected deposits.486 Under the
Northern Strategy, the government directed hundreds of millions of dollars towards resource
extraction through the Geo-Mapping for Energy and Minerals program (GEM), whose aim is “to
map the Arctic and identify the potential of energy and mineral resources [thereby] guiding
effective private sector investment.”487 Although encompassing the entire North, the majority of
GEM’s efforts were on mapping the islands and seabed of the high Arctic Archipelago for
offshore hydrocarbons.488 According to some analyses, GEM more than doubled the number of
offshore mapping projects between 2007-2010, with hydrocarbons, rather than minerals, being
Accessed at https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/first-nations-in-the-crosshairs on August 19, 2015. 484 Byers 2009; Medalye and Foster 2012. 485 Conference Board of Canada, Mapping the Economic Potential of Canada’s North (Ottawa: Conference Board of Canada, 2010); Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (2010). Accessed at http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gem/index_e.php on February 15, 2011; Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (2014). Accessed at http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/resources/federal-programs/geomapping-energy-minerals/10904 on April 18, 2014. 486 Canada 2009, 15-20. 487 Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals (2010). Accessed at http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gem/index_e.php on February 15, 2011. 488 NRCAN 2010.
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the focus of more than three quarters of its projects.489 Beauchamp and Huebert claim that
“Canada’s sovereignty [is] linked to energy development in the Arctic,” citing the importance of
a range of unresolved issues, including: the legal status of the Northwest Passage, the disputed
maritime boundary with the United States in the Beaufort Sea, the undetermined extent of
Canada’s Arctic continental shelf, and aggressive expansionism from a resurgent Russia.490
They argue the growing accessibility of Arctic resources is what has driven government interest
in Arctic sovereignty: “It is obvious that issues of Arctic energy and development and Arctic
sovereignty are linked … When no one was talking about actually developing Arctic resources,
the many sovereignty issues could be and were ignored.”491 According to the Conservative
vision, the Arctic’s underdevelopment in terms of resource exploitation was deleterious to
Canada’s national interest, so emphasis was placed on promoting industrialization of the
Northern economy through revision of the environmental regulatory regime.492 This mirrors
controversial changes made to Canada’s national environmental regulations introduced in the
2012 federal budget, and passed into law over significant popular and political opposition.493
Environment Minister and Minister for the Arctic Council Leona Aglukkaq emphasized that the
Conservatives’ Arctic vision places economic development, primarily non-renewable resource
extraction, as its highest priority. This vision is premised on the acceleration of private sector
industrial activity in the region, including a greater role for corporations in Arctic governance,
and the need for scientific research conducted by the Arctic Council to enable commercialization
489 Medalye and Foster 2012, 106; Jacqueline Medalye, “Geo-Mapping the Canadian Arctic: The Role and Implications of Non-Arctic Actors in Northern Development.” Unpublished paper presented at the DFAIT Arctic Foreign Policy Graduate Fellowship Symposium, University of Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: March 17, 2011. 490 Beauchamp and Huebert 2008. 491 Beauchamp and Huebert 2008, 342. 492 Leona Aglukkaq, “Northern Vision: Realizing the North’s Economic Potential,” Northern Public Affairs 1, no. 2 (2012): 31-33. 493 Gloria Galloway and Daniel Leblanc, “The tale of 2012’s omnibus budget bill,” The Globe and Mail (June 12, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/the-tale-of-2012s-omnibus-budget-bill/article4249856/ on December 21, 2014; James Munson, “The quick and dirty on the budget bill and environmental assessments,” iPolitics (April 27, 2012). Accessed at http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/04/27/the-quick-and-dirty-on-the-budget-bill-and-environmental-assessments/ on December 21, 2014.
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of the region.494 During its term as Chair from 2013-2015, Canada initiated a shift away from
the Arctic Council’s historical role of studying and protecting the Arctic environment towards
enabling resource extraction.495 Aglukkaq was clear that the Council’s scientific work should be
made more relevant to private industry, and to the Government’s agenda of Arctic economic
development, stating “we talk of … Canada’s North developing, the Arctic region of every
country developing. But it’s the private sector that’s actually going to develop those regions, not
scientists.”496 The centrepiece of Canada’s chairmanship was the establishment of the new
Arctic Economic Council, mandated to promote economic growth and allow major corporate
actors a greater role in governing the development of Arctic resources. In Canada’s Northern
vision, understanding and preserving the Arctic environment through scientific investigation was
thus subordinated to the goal of using science to enable faster and greater access to the region’s
resource base. Government policy sees the Arctic as contributing to the economic security of the
Canadian state, and views military assertions of Canadian Arctic sovereignty as ensuring the
uncontested juridical standing required to promote private sector investor confidence and
develop the economic potential of the North’s natural resources.
4.3 Summarizing State Insecurity in the Canadian Arctic
Taken overall, the official Canadian understanding of security in the Arctic is based on two
related pillars. The first, inspired by Cold War scripts of the Russian Other and the need to
militarily defend Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, sees Canadian claims in the Arctic as challenged
by potential rivals. It implies that Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic lands and waters is not
settled under international law, and that Canada must use its sovereignty or it may be lost to
494 Aglukkaq 2012, 31-33. 495 Wilfrid Greaves, “When the Ice is Gone: Climate Change, Hydrocarbons, and Security in the Arctic,” OpenCanada.org. (Canadian International Council: December 11, 2013b). Accessed at http://opencanada.org/features/the-think-tank/essays/when-the-ice-is-gone/ on September 3, 2015; Sneh Duggal, “US appears set to differ Arctic Council agenda from Canada,” Embassy (November 6, 2014). Accessed at http://www.embassynews.ca/news/2014/11/05/us-appears-set-to-differ-arctic-council-agenda-from-canada/46341 on December 22, 2014. 496 Randy Boswell, “Aglukkaq of the Arctic: Can federal minister set a vision for international council?” Montreal Gazette (May 12, 2013). Accessed at http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/environment/Aglukkaq+Arctic +federal+minister+vision/8373742/story.html on May 31, 2013.
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unspecified challengers. Paradoxically, this pillar asserts the need for a strengthened military
presence in the North, and increased investment in military resources and capabilities, despite the
insistence in all official policy documents that Canada faces no conventional threats in the
Arctic, and that all boundary disputes are peaceful and well managed. In fact, both of Canada’s
disputed Arctic boundaries – with Denmark over Hans Island and the maritime boundary in the
Nares Strait, and the United States over the delimitation of the Beaufort Sea – are with close
friends. Canada has no disputed boundaries or substantive Arctic disagreement with Russia, and
armed conflict with either Denmark or the United States – both NATO allies and the latter
Canada’s largest trading partner, only land neighbour, closest friend, and the world’s foremost
military power – is unthinkable. There is thus a contradiction within Canada’s recent Arctic
policy: the government strenuously emphasized the absence of traditional military threats to
Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, and stressed the cooperative relations Canada shares with its
neighbours, at the same time that it pursued a policy of militarization on the grounds of asserting
and protecting Arctic sovereignty. In the current context, ‘sovereignty’ assumes many of the
characteristics previously associated with Arctic ‘security’: an emphasis on military defence of
Canadian territorial and maritime claims, investment in military infrastructure as key to
defending the North, and depiction of Russia as Canada’s primary Arctic antagonist. Canada’s
official understanding of Arctic security thus relies upon a misleading representation of
conventional threats to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, when, “in truth, Canada’s claim on Arctic
lands and maritime areas are as solid as international law provides. There is no question about
Canadian ownership: neither Canadian lands nor our maritime area are in question.”497
Regardless, this prospect has featured prominently in the federal government’s understanding of
security in the Arctic.
The second pillar is less visible but equally significant, because it provided part of the impetus
for the government’s emphasis on militarization; the view that natural resource extraction in the
North is central to Canada’s economic security animated the renewed discourse on Arctic
sovereignty-as-security. The extension of the Conservative government’s resource-driven
economic agenda into the Arctic motivated claims of unspecified threats to Canada’s Arctic
sovereignty. Using public concern over Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, the government justified
497 Coates et al. 2008, 163.
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the need to do more to assert Canada’s Arctic interests, including greater private sector
investment, resource extraction, and military activity. Indeed, this link was explicitly referred to
in the Canada First Defence Strategy, which notes: “The military will play an increasingly vital
role in demonstrating a visible Canadian presence in this potentially resource-rich region.”498
Thus, when the federal government speaks of Arctic sovereignty, what it refers to is the latent
economic potential of its Arctic territory. Under the Conservative vision for the North, the
development of Arctic resources was clearly linked with the military assertion of Arctic
sovereignty, and received growing emphasis from the beginning of the government’s tenure.499
In this sense, “security is not a pillar or priority in the government documents, but realist
constructions of security are deeply embedded in the Arctic discourse as sovereignty claims are
used in ways that prop up and reinforce the securitization of the Arctic.”500 Only by assuming
that there are rivals or competitors seeking to deprive Canada of its Arctic territory and
prospective resource wealth is official Canadian Arctic security discourse comprehensible.
Taken together, the Conservative “focus on sovereignty and territorial integrity reinforces
militarised understandings of security, with due emphasis given to the role of the military …
surveillance and monitoring, resource nationalism and limited co-operation.”501 While it is clear
what security in the Arctic means to the Government of Canada, it is equally clear this discourse
does not reflect understandings of in/security articulated by Indigenous peoples.
4.4 Conclusion
Two main conclusions can be drawn from this chapter’s assessment of in/security in the Arctic
as constructed through the discourses of the Canadian state and Indigenous peoples in the
Canadian Arctic. First, these actors possess fundamentally different conceptions of what security
means and how it should be pursued. This chapter provides evidence to support for the argument
that Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic understand security as primarily concerned with
498 Canada 2008, 8. 499 Dodds 2011, 371. 500 Smith 2010, 934. 501 Dodds 2011, 373.
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protecting the Arctic ecosystem from pollution and radical climate change; preserving
Indigenous identity through the maintenance of language, culture, and traditional practices, most
of which are physically and spiritually linked to the land; and asserting the political autonomy of
Indigenous peoples as self-determining, inherent and constitutional rights-holding actors whose
sovereignty over their territory precedes and underpins the sovereignty of contemporary Canada.
Such a conception of security contrasts significantly with the two pillars of Canadian federal
Arctic policy: militarized sovereignty and natural resource extraction. For the past decade, as
climate change has accelerated and securitizing moves by Indigenous peoples have increased, the
Canadian government instead embraced an understanding of Arctic security that emphasizes the
legal-juridical claims of Canada and the northward expansion of an extraction-based natural
resource economy.
Second, Canada and Arctic Indigenous peoples differ in their understanding of the relationship
between in/security and human-caused environmental change. The Government of Canada does
not view climate change or its effects as security threats, nor Indigenous peoples or northern
communities as referent objects to be protected. Issues pertaining to human or environmental
security are almost entirely absent from official Arctic security discourse. At most, government
policy demonstrates concern that the increasingly ice-free Arctic will pose sovereignty risks for
Canada’s claim to the Northwest Passage, but overwhelmingly emphasizes the economic
opportunities afforded by an increasingly accessible Arctic region. The prospective benefits of
natural resource development in the North are depicted in positive terms as opportunities to
improve the economic security of the Canadian state and local communities. This is the inverse
of most Indigenous peoples, who note that while there may be positive benefits associated with
the warming climate these are eclipsed by the unpredictable impacts of the changing
environment, which “are currently seen to be affecting communities and individuals negatively
and in ways that require significant efforts, and in some cases, investments, to respond.”502
While Canada sees climate change as a source of economic opportunity, Indigenous
understandings of Arctic security thus see climate change as driving a wide range of challenges
to Northern communities, economies, and cultures, including foreclosing their continued ability
to exist as Indigenous peoples on their traditional territories. How the exclusion of Indigenous
502 Nickels et al. 2013, 89.
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understandings of Arctic in/security from official security discourse in Canada operates is
discussed in the next chapter.
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Chapter 5
Non-Dominance and Securitization in the Canadian 5Arctic
It is clear that Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state differ significantly in their
understanding of in/security in the Arctic. This chapter argues the divergence between
Indigenous and government accounts of Arctic in/security is both reflective of and attributable to
the non-dominance of Indigenous peoples in Canada. As outlined in Chapter 3, I argue that
securitization non-dominance structurally excludes the securitizing moves of non-dominant
groups from being accepted by the authoritative audience with the power to transform those
moves into a complete or successful securitization. As such, the identities of non-dominant
groups intervene to inhibit their success as securitizing actors. I argue Indigenous peoples in
northern Canada are securitization non-dominant, resulting in the exclusion of their views from
the official Arctic security discourse of the Canadian state. Specifically, this exclusion operates
through the mechanisms of silencing insecurity, whereby particular securitizing moves are
prevented from being expressed or go systematically ignored, and the subsuming of Indigenous
claims of in/security within the preferred security discourse of settler Canada.
While only one form of non-dominance experienced by Indigenous peoples in Canadian society,
securitization non-dominance reflects the limitations imposed on certain groups’ abilities to
define the conditions of their own in/security and mobilize an effective political response by the
state. Securitization non-dominance allows the articulated security interests of many inhabitants
of northern Canada, a majority of whom are Indigenous, to go largely unrecognized within the
official security policies of settler-colonial political institutions. As discussed in Chapter 3,
securitization theory asserts that the likely success or failure of a securitizing move hinges on
three “facilitating conditions”: use of the grammar and vocabulary of in/security, the social
capital and authority of the securitizing actor, and the features of the object held to be
threatening.503 Since established, legitimate representatives of Arctic Indigenous peoples
employ the language of in/security to articulate threats posed by an object with a clear material
503 Buzan et al. 1998, 33.
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basis, there is a seemingly felicitous combination of factors for the issue of environmental
change to be successfully constructed as a security threat. The failure of Indigenous efforts to
securitize environmental change in the Arctic despite such favourable conditions highlights the
limitations on certain groups’ ability to securitize. The existence of such limitations is
particularly significant because of the relatively high degree of political agency enjoyed by
Indigenous peoples in Canada. While there remain many areas for improvement in Canadian-
Indigenous relations, given their constitutional legitimacy as rights-holders over vast swaths of
Canada’s North, Arctic Indigenous peoples – particularly Inuit in Nunavut – should be among
the most likely cases for Indigenous securitization success. Yet, Inuit and other Indigenous
peoples have been unable to have their understandings of in/security accepted within Canada’s
official policies, with severe consequences for their ability to effectively address the challenges
posed by climate change.
5.1 Non-Dominance in the Canadian Arctic
The limited power, and ensuing non-dominance, of indigenous peoples vis-à-vis settler-colonial
states and the majority society are integral to much Indigenous scholarship, and are the operative
context for many discussions of Indigenous politics.504 In this respect, Arctic Indigenous
peoples share experiences of non-dominance with other Aboriginal peoples across Canada.505
Joyce Green notes that whereas citizenship, constitutionalism, and human rights perform an
emancipatory role for most Canadians, “Aboriginal peoples are likely to understand the state as
an oppressor that has become economically and politically strong at the direct expense of
Aboriginal nations … Canada rests on the foundation of Indigenous immiseration through
colonization.”506 Aboriginal non-dominance has been institutionalized in the architecture of the
Canadian state, since the capacity of Indigenous groups to pursue their rights and assert their
interests against federal and provincial governments is circumscribed by their legal and
504 Maaka and Fleras 2005. 505 The term ‘Aboriginal’ is a Canadian construct referring to the three constitutional recognizing groups of Indigenous people: First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. 506 Joyce Green, “Canaries in the Coal Mines of Citizenship: Indian Women in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 34, no. 4 (2001): 716.
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constitutional status. The Indian Act 1876 and subsequent legislation establish a fiduciary
relationship between the federal government and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples that
makes so-called “Indians a special class of persons, legal dependents on the crown [sic], [and]
children in the eyes of the law.”507 This legislation informed more than a century of overtly
racist, exclusionary, and assimilationist practices directed by the Canadian state against
Indigenous peoples, characterized most notably by the policy of forcibly separating Indigenous
children from their families by sending them to government-supported, church-run residential
schools in order to, in an infamous turn of phrase, “kill the Indian in the child.”508 Other
examples of structural violence and colonial imposition abound, leading one expert on Canadian-
Indigenous relations to summarize: “The past is a historical storehouse of maltreatment,
duplicity, arrogance, coercion, and abuses of power by the majority society.”509
Efforts by the Canadian state to mitigate structural conditions of Indigenous non-dominance have
proven generally ineffective. For instance, the Constitution Act 1982 stipulates that Indigenous
peoples possess a set of unspecified rights vis-à-vis the state, which has been interpreted such
that government and Indigenous political efforts have been directed towards land claims and
“self-government”. Self-government, however, as a limited interpretation of self-determination,
essentially means limited self-administration on recognized “Indian” lands. This applies to a
minority of Indigenous peoples in Canada, ignoring Métis, off-reserve, and non-status Indians,
and is filtered through patrilineal determination of legal Indian status that was only partly
remedied through amending legislation passed in 1985.510 Most peoples of indigenous descent
are thus unable to access even the limited opportunities for self-determination provided by the
state. The power deficit between Indigenous peoples and the state is a constitutive factor of
indigeneity in Canada: “Prior occupation to the settler society and political non-dominance both
507 Sidney L. Harring, White Man’s Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 263. 508 Though often attributed to Duncan Campbell Scott, an official with the Department of Indian Affairs, the provenance of this phrase is now disputed. Scott’s role in the development of the Indian Residential School system is discussed in David B. MacDonald and Graham Hudson, “The Genocide Question and Indian Residential Schools in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 45, no. 2 (2012): 427-449. 509 Alan Cairns, Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001), 118. For details of the history and issues affecting Aboriginal peoples in Canada see Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1996). 510 Green 2001, 723-727.
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define Aboriginality and underwrite its claim for justice against the imposed socio-political
order.”511 As an expression of self-determination, self-government is limited because it
struggles to overcome “the very configurations of colonial power that Indigenous peoples’
demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend.”512 Recent developments in the
federal-Indigenous relationship have taken the form of “affirmative” changes that offer “cultural
and symbolic change”513 rather than substantive rectification of colonially imposed privation and
inequality. These include two official apologies to Indigenous peoples on behalf of Canada, one
for Indian residential schools and one for the relocation of Inuit families to the High Arctic in the
1950s and 1960s.
These dynamics are particularly potent in the Canadian Arctic, where sparse population,
scattered communities, inhospitable climate, and vast distance from the rest of Canada
accentuate the challenges facing Indigenous peoples. Though European settlers and their
descendants colonized all of Canada, the North was administered as an actual colony of the
federal government until quite recently in its history. As recently as the 1980s, “the North …
[could] only be understood as a colony … to the extent that major decisions affecting it are made
outside it … The North [was] totally dependent constitutionally on Ottawa.”514 Though self-
government has become the watchword of federal-territorial relations, “direct rule from Ottawa
denie[d] [Northerners] the regional political representation and authority enjoyed by the majority
in the south.”515 Relations of dominance have existed on multiple levels; settlers within the
territories became akin to a colonial elite, dominating the Indigenous population while
themselves feeling dominated by the federal government and Southern Canadian society.516 The
situation is even more complicated because, although the Indian Act still provides the legal
511 Green 2001, 720. 512 Glen S. Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6, no. 4 (2007), 439. 513 Quoted in Coulthard 2007, 446. 514 Gurston Dacks, A Choice of Futures (Toronto: Methuen, 1981), 208. 515 Peter Burnet, “Environmental Politics and Inuit Self-Government,” in Franklyn Griffiths, ed, Politics of the Northwest Passage (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1987), 185. 516 Jerald Sabin, “Contested Colonialism: Responsible Government and Political Development in Yukon,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 47, no. 2 (2014): 375-396.
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framework for most federal-Indigenous relations in Canada, it does not apply to Inuit or to parts
of northern Canada where self-government agreements have been implemented.517
By the second decade of the 21st century, the colonial nature of federal-territorial relations had
changed significantly. While the creation of Nunavut in 1999 signified a major change in the
possibilities for Inuit political agency, since then all three territories have become more
autonomous and have received varying devolved powers from Ottawa. But these changes have
not altered the basic non-dominance of Indigenous peoples within Canada. In addition to the
ongoing impositions of the Indian Act on Canadian Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous non-
dominance in the Arctic remains structured by the inferior constitutional status of Yukon, the
Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Unlike provincial powers that derive from the constitution,
territorial governments have no inherent jurisdiction; their powers are delegated by the federal
government. The territories also have unequal degrees of political autonomy, with Yukon and
the Northwest Territories signing devolution agreements with Ottawa that permit greater control
over land and water use, revenue-sharing from natural resource extraction, and control over
territorial laws and policies, while Nunavut has been denied further powers on the basis of its
limited administrative capacity.518 While they have the highest per capita representation in
Parliament, in absolute terms the territories are the least significant jurisdictions, with only a
single seat per territory in each of the House of Commons and Senate. Since the territories have
the highest proportion of Indigenous residents of any Canadian jurisdictions, with Nunavut and
the Northwest Territories both possessing Indigenous majorities, representation in Parliament of
the most indigenous polities in the Canadian federation remains limited.
Social conditions among the territories vary, but for all three they are among the worst in
Canada, with Nunavut last in almost every national measure. With its large Inuit majority and
political origins as part of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, Nunavut reflects the wide gap
517 Sarah Bonesteel, Canada’s Relationship with Inuit: A History of Policy and Program Development (Ottawa: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 2006). Accessed at https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016900/1100100016908#chp14 on March 7, 2016. 518 Kirk Cameron and Alastair Campbell, “The Devolution of Natural Resources and Nunavut’s Constitutional Status,” Journal of Canadian Studies 43, no. 2 (2009): 198-219; Christopher Alcantara, Kirk Cameron and Steven Kennedy, “Assessing Devolution in the Canadian North: A Case Study of the Yukon Territory,” Arctic 65, no. 3 (2012): 328-338.
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between aspiration and reality that separates Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. Its rate
of violent crime is seven times the national average, with a homicide rate nearly ten times higher.
The number of reported crimes also doubled in the 12 years following Nunavut's creation in
1999. In 2001, the average life expectancy gap between Inuit and all Canadian men was 15
years, and more than 10 years between Inuit and all Canadian women.519 The suicide rate
among Nunavummiut is 13 times the Canadian average, with the rate among Inuit men
particularly extreme at 40 times the national male average. Rates of child abuse are 10 times the
national average. More than half Nunavut’s population is under 25 years old, but secondary
education drop out rates exceed 75 per cent, and unemployment is over 20 per cent. Overall, the
Government of Nunavut generates less than 15 per cent of its own revenue; the remainder of its
budget comes from Ottawa, amounting to over $40,000 per Nunavummiuq (Nunavut resident)
per year.520 While the causes are complex, it is clear that its significant problems and reliance
upon federal resources limit the autonomy of the Government of Nunavut vis-à-vis Ottawa.
These social indicators are the worst in Canada, but they are only somewhat worse for Inuit than
for other Indigenous peoples across the country; relative to the dominant society, “security
remains an aspiration for too many First Nations people in Canada.”521
5.2 Securitization Non-Dominance: Silenced Insecurity
Indigenous peoples in Canada continue to experience various forms of non-dominance across the
political, economic, and social spheres of daily life, but one specific aspect of that non-
dominance relates to their constrained capacity to succeed as securitizing actors. I argue that
official security discourse in Canada omits Indigenous views of in/security because Indigenous
securitizing moves are excluded from the securitization process. Through the mechanism of
silenced insecurity, securitizing moves are either impeded from being made or systematically
519 Statistics Canada, Projections of the Aboriginal Populations, Canada, Provinces and Territories 2001 to 2017 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2005). 520 Nunavut Bureau of Statistics. Accessed at http://www.stats.gov.nu.ca/en/home.aspx on December 24, 2014. 521 Heather Smith, “Diminishing Human Security: The Canadian Case,” in Sandra J. MacLean, David R. Black, and Timothy M. Shaw, eds, A Decade of Human Security: Global Governance and the New Multilateralisms (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 80-81.
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ignored to prevent them from being heard. There are three ways in which securitizing moves by
Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic are silenced: their voices and views are marginalized
or omitted; certain groups are excluded through the imposition of settler-colonial territorial
definitions on how the Canadian Arctic is defined; and whole issues that are central to
Indigenous security claims are omitted or marginalized in state discourse, denying the basis upon
which their securitizing moves are made. Since the consistent failure of a group’s securitizing
moves renders them securitization non-dominant, these are manifestations of institutional and
structural power exercised by the Canadian state over Indigenous peoples. Securitization non-
dominance is only one aspect of Indigenous non-dominance in Canada, but it contributes to the
reproduction of their broader social non-dominance because it makes it impossible for
Indigenous peoples to successfully make security claims pertaining to the political, social,
economic, and ecological challenges that they face.
5.2.1 Marginalized Voices
The first of the ways through which Indigenous securitizing moves are silenced is the limited
consultation with Arctic Indigenous peoples on the subjects of climate change, sovereignty, and
security, and the correspondingly few opportunities to express their views to the authoritative
audience for securitization in Canada: Parliament. For instance, since the release of Canada’s
Northern Strategy in 2009, four House of Commons committees have held hearings pertaining to
either Arctic climate change or Arctic sovereignty and security: the Standing Committee on
National Defence, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development,
the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development; and the Standing
Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.522 All four heard from Indigenous
witnesses, but, with the predictable exception of the Aboriginal Affairs committee, they were a
small minority of the total witnesses heard by each. During the periods before and after the
release of the Conservative government’s Arctic policy documents – encompassing the 39th and
40th Parliaments lasting from April 2006 to March 2011, and the 1st session of the 41st Parliament
lasting until September 2013 – the National Defence committee heard from 8 witnesses
522 Data in this section is drawn from the website of the Parliament of Canada: (http://www.parl.gc.ca).
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representing Indigenous organizations out of 30; the Foreign Affairs committee 6 of 41; the
Environment committee 2 of 17; and the Aboriginal Affairs committee 25 of 33. These
witnesses generally represented prominent Northern Indigenous organizations, including those
mandated through various land claim agreements and legislation, such as: Inuit Tapiriit
Kanatami (ITK), Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated (NTI), Makivik Corporation, regional Inuit
organizations, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), as well as the Inuit Circumpolar Council
(ICC). So, while every committee heard testimony on behalf of Indigenous peoples, these were a
small proportion of the total.
Substantively, however, all four committees heard testimony that noted the limited consultation
with Indigenous peoples and lack of their views being incorporated into Arctic policy. Despite
their presence before these parliamentary committees, numerous witnesses observed that views
of Inuit and other Indigenous peoples had not been consulted prior to the release of the Northern
Strategy or Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy, and were not reflected in the government’s policies.
Examples of these testimonies are instructive. John Merritt, legal counsel for ITK and ICC,
expressed scepticism to the National Defence committee about the lack of Inuit consultation in
the formulation of the government’s Arctic policy: “ITK has minimal input into the Arctic
strategy, and that was a major disappointment … In the absence of the Inuit having a central role
in the development of Arctic strategy, it's hard for the Inuit to believe that the strategy will
reflect Inuit priorities.”523 James Arreak, CEO of NTI, told the Foreign Affairs committee that
his organization “assumed the Government of Canada would, as matter of urgency, work with
Inuit. This has not been the case.”524 Joe Tulurialik, representing Kitikmeot Inuit Association,
and Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus concurred during their testimonies to the Environment
and Sustainability committee that their communities were not meaningfully consulted on
Canada’s Arctic policies. Tulurialik noted: “We feel very strongly that we have been left out for
a long time. Now it's time for the Aboriginal and Arctic voices to be heard.”525 Chief Erasmus,
specifying that he spoke for Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories, went even further.
523 John Merritt, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009). 524 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41-01-73 (March 26, 2013). 525 Joe Tulurialik, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009).
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He observed that his people had a range of interests to represent to the federal government, but
had not been adequately consulted on any of them, despite government claims to the contrary:
“We have concerns. In fact, we want to appear before you on other matters, but we certainly
haven't been consulted. If [Prime Minister Harper]’s telling Canadians and the world that he has
consulted us, then that’s not true … The problem is that the system is not designed to hear our
people. It’s not designed to accept the science we have … Many of our people don’t see how the
country brings their issues together.”526 Such testimonies are supported by community level
academic research; drawing on primary interviews, one researcher noted that “at the community
level … residents were not aware of any local consultations or meetings that have been
undertaken to discuss sovereignty issues.”527 Overall, Indigenous peoples form a small minority
of voices heard with respect to Arctic issues, and their parliamentary testimonies highlight the
exclusion of their views in the formulation of government policy due to limited, or non-existent,
consultation with Northern communities.
These testimonies also suggest that silencing Indigenous securitizing moves operates through the
omission of references to Indigenous peoples themselves, particularly Inuit, within Canadian
Arctic policy. Speaking to the Aboriginal Affairs committee, Natan Obed of NTI referred to an
August 2006 speech by Prime Minister Harper in Iqaluit in which “not once did he mention
Inuit; not once did he mention the strong role that Inuit have played in cementing Canada's
sovereignty in the Arctic, and the potential role that Inuit can play on a global scale in linking the
Canadian Arctic with Canada.”528 In the same speech, the Prime Minister foreshadowed the
pillars of militarism and resource extraction that would inform his government’s Arctic strategy
by noting that in addition to Iqaluit his Northern itinerary only included stops at the Canadian
Forces base at Alert and a new diamond mine in western Nunavut.529 Harper made this speech
526 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009). Emphasis added. 527 Karen Kelley, “Inuit Involvement in the Canadian Arctic Sovereignty Debate: Perspectives from Cape Dorset, Nunavut,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 59. 528 Natan Obed, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 39-01-14 (September 19, 2006). 529 Stephen Harper, “Securing Canadian Sovereignty in the Arctic,” (Iqaluit: August 12, 2006). Accessed at http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2006/08/12/securing-canadian-sovereignty-arctic on November 11, 2014.
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on the first of his annual summer visits to the North, but it reflected a rhetorical pattern that
would persist throughout subsequent trips and his entire time in office.
As described in Chapter 4, many Inuit leaders have critiqued the inherent omission of their
people in the formulation that Canada must “use it or lose it” with respect to its Arctic
sovereignty. To rectify this omission, Mary Simon has recommended that “in all its key
assertions as to sovereignty and sovereign rights in relation to Arctic lands and waters, the
Government of Canada should acknowledge the central importance of Inuit use and occupation
of the lands and waters of Inuit Nunangat since time immemorial.”530 Simon represented all
Inuit in Canada as president of ITK when she made this recommendation in 2009, but the federal
government did not follow her advice, and references to Inuit remained sporadic and selective.
Other witnesses noted that while Inuit were overlooked, the government’s Arctic policy depicted
other objects as requiring protection. George Eckalook of NTI indirectly referred to the idea of
referent objects of security while testifying before the National Defence committee: “They talk
about Lancaster Sound and the Northwest Passage. They talk about animals. They want to
protect them really good, just like a soft pillow. But they never mention anything about us, the
Inuit people. They relocate us … We don’t even know what we’re doing up there, what we’re
protecting up there.”531 Indigenous testimonies before Parliament are clear that they do not feel
their people had been consulted prior to the implementation of the federal government’s Arctic
policy, and that policy does not reflect their interests, values, or occupation of the Arctic region
claimed by Canada.
Many witnesses linked the marginalization of Indigenous voices with a broader lack of respect
for the inherent and negotiated rights of Indigenous peoples, particularly Inuit, over their Arctic
territories. While Indigenous sovereignty was legally extinguished with the signing of federal
land claims agreements, many witnesses identified incomplete implementation of such
agreements, particularly the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA), with limiting Indigenous
peoples’ abilities to effectively pursue their own interests. Many expressed frustration over the
official preoccupation with Canada’s Arctic sovereignty in the absence of parallel discussions of
530 Mary Simon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009). 531 George Eckalook, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009).
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Indigenous sovereignty, especially given explicit acknowledgement that Canada’s sovereignty in
the Arctic is based on the prior sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. For instance, John
Amagoalik told the National Defence committee that: “Questions about sovereignty and about
development always come back to the implementation of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement.
In important issues like sovereignty, we hope that the Government of Canada will recognize that
implementing the land claims agreement is the best way to assert Canadian sovereignty.”532
Similarly, James Arreak testified that: “In the pursuit of all domestic and international Arctic
policies, it’s important that all Canadian political leaders give appropriate attention and weight to
the status of Inuit as the aboriginal people of the Canadian Arctic and ensure that Inuit rights and
well-being are effectively respected and served.”533 Rosemarie Kuptana emphasizes the
limitations imposed on Indigenous voices: “Hush! Quiet! Canadians are not to be critical of the
government of Canada,” and alludes to the fiscal tools through which the federal government
exercises influence over them: “Threats to funding agreements often impose the silence of the
Inuit accentuating the current deep-freeze of today’s political climate.”534 The testimonies and
written accounts of Amagoalik, Arreak, Kuptana, and others explicitly link the related sovereign
rights of Inuit and Canada, even, occasionally, alluding to the prospect of Inuit revoking the
sovereignty over Arctic territory granted by them to the Canadian state.535 Terry Fenge, long-
time advisor to Inuit organizations and a negotiator of the NLCA, has written that federal
violations “might prompt onlookers to suggest that the Government of Canada has effectively
repudiated the [NLCA] agreement perhaps stimulating a debate on the at least theoretical ability
and/or advisability of Inuit, in response, to rescind it, and reassert their aboriginal title.”536 Such
a prospect is seldom discussed openly, but the implication lurks behind many assertions that
Inuit sovereignty in the Arctic underpins Canada’s, and thus the federal government cannot
532 John Amagoalik, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009). 533 James Arreak, testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, 41-01-73 (March 26, 2013). 534 Kuptana 2013, 11. 535 Kirt Ejesiak, “An Arctic Inuit Union: A Case of the Inuit of Canada, Greenland, the United States and Russia,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 66-71. 536 Terry Fenge, “Asserting Inuit Sovereignty in the Arctic: Inuit and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 51. See also Fenge 2007/2008.
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continue to deny the political claims made by Inuit pertaining to their traditional territories.
More often, Inuit leaders emphasize the patriotism of their people and the desire of Inuit to
simply have their land claim agreements implemented and their rights respected by the federal
government. Speaking to the Aboriginal Affairs committee, Natan Obed asserted: “Inuit are
Canadians. We embrace Canada. Look at Nunavut; it’s a public government that’s run through
a land claims agreement. [But] for Canada to then not talk about the importance of investing in
its people in an area it wants to ensure it has jurisdiction over doesn’t make much sense to us.”537
Responding to a question from a member of the National Defence committee, Chester Reimer of
ICC acknowledged the importance of federal respect for Inuit self-determination but dismissed
the prospect of territorial secession: “You asked whether further strengthening of self-
determination for Inuit or other indigenous peoples assists Canadian sovereignty. Absolutely. A
lot of Canadian sovereignty claims are based on land use and occupancy by Inuit, so it’s logical
that self-determination for Inuit – who are not advocating a declaration of independence – is a
declaration of working together. That means the rights have to be respected.”538 Mary Simon
also views the exclusion of Inuit from Arctic policymaking as an issue of rights and respect:
“Consistency in acknowledging Inuit use and occupation isn’t just a matter of effective advocacy
before an international audience; it is also a matter of fundamental respect owed to Inuit …
Coherent Government of Canada policy-making for the Arctic must be built around the idea of a
core partnership relationship with Inuit.” Later in her testimony, however, Simon implicitly
refers to the contingent nature of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty vis-à-vis Inuit: “The Government
of Canada cannot expect the world to give full respect to arguments built on Inuit use and
occupation of Arctic lands and waters when Inuit continue to lag so far behind other Canadians
in relation to such things as minimum education, health, and housing standards … Sovereignty
will not be enhanced if it ignores or understates the basic material needs of the permanent
residents of the Arctic.”539 These testimonies suggest a tension underlying the divergent
priorities of the federal government and Indigenous peoples in northern Canada: that the
537 Natan Obed, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 39-01-14 (September 19, 2006). 538 Chester Reimer, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-18 (May 11, 2009). 539 Mary Simon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009).
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sovereignty of the Canadian settler-state is built upon the legal and normative justification of
Indigenous peoples who are excluded from federal policymaking and have their interests
passively ignored or undermined by government policy.
While most witnesses emphasize cooperation and conciliation with Canada, many insist that
Indigenous peoples are de facto veto holders on the basis of their inherent rights as prior
occupants of Canada’s Arctic territory. Chief Bill Erasmus engaged in a lengthy and heated
exchange with parliamentarians during which he stated:
You can't make decisions in Ottawa without speaking to people like me, and especially to people who are on the land every day. They have to have the opportunity to include their knowledge, especially the opportunity to voice their opinions where we are still landowners. We have never given up our jurisdiction over our area up here. And Canada acts as if the land belongs to it. That’s a big problem … But our concern goes beyond consultation. Because we are at the table talking about the issue of who in fact owns the land, we believe our consent is necessary. So it goes beyond consultation.540
Overall, a recurring theme in Indigenous testimony to Parliament is that federal policy fails to
acknowledge their longstanding occupation of the Arctic, or respect their rights to sovereignty
over it and self-determination within it.
5.2.2 Boundaries and Definitions
The second way in which Indigenous securitizing moves are silenced is through the imposition
of settler-colonial definitions of what the Arctic is and who lives there. The federal
government’s imposition of arbitrary divisions over which territory it considers to be Arctic
significantly curtails the capacity of some Indigenous peoples to articulate their interests within
the framework of Canada’s Arctic policy. The effects of this colonial demarcation are twofold: it
reproduces political and policy distinctions between the territorial Arctic and the provincial
Arctic regions, most notably in Quebec; and it divides and differentiates Inuit into different
groups, despite their insistence that they are a single people. In a basic sense, ‘the Arctic’ is
entirely a colonial construction, since it is only in reference to southern metropoles and centres of
540 Bill Erasmus, testimony before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, 40-02-37 (November 17, 2009).
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population, government, and capital that a single Arctic exists, and the division of circumpolar
territory into exclusive national regions is an entirely colonial process. Kirt Ejesiak is blunt in
his assessment that “the international borders that separate the Inuit were imposed by the
conquerors without any input from [Inuit].”541 Leanne Broadhead similarly observes the
colonial nature of the Arctic, including the widespread substitution of English place names: “The
concept of the Canadian Arctic is a colonial construction, about which Canadians are neither
taught nor curious. A cursory look at a map of the region demonstrates the colonial nature of the
state’s sovereignty claims … The names covering the area are thoroughly English … the Queen
Elizabeth Islands, the Victoria and Albert Mountains, or … the British Empire Range at the tip of
Ellesmere Island.”542 The ongoing reproduction of a federally defined and colonial Canadian
Arctic highlights the current disposition of the Canadian state towards ignoring the taxonomic
preferences of Indigenous peoples who actually live in the North, and the continual structural
power colonialism exercises over Indigenous epistemologies, identities, and lands.
There are various inconsistencies in how the Government of Canada defines its Arctic region, or
“Canada’s North”. A map published in the Northern Strategy identifies the North as
coterminous with the three federal territories, although seven communities located outside the
territories in the northern regions of three different provinces are also included in the “populated
places” listed in the Strategy.543 A second map identifying “modern treaties in the North”
includes provincial areas covered by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, Nunavik
Inuit Land Claims Agreement, and Labrador Inuit Land Claim Agreement alongside land claim
areas in the three territories. Despite these anomalies, however, it is quite clear the federal
government defines the North in terms of the three territories. The emphasis throughout
Government of Canada documents is firmly on the territories; maps of the Arctic or “the North”
routinely highlight only the territories; the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency
(CanNor), established as part of the Northern Strategy, makes no mention of the provincial
North, and its website begins a section titled “About the North” with reference to “Canada’s
541 Ejesiak 2013, 68. 542 Broadhead 2010, 922. 543 Canada 2009, 7.
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three territories.”544 The government’s list of achievements under the Northern Strategy
highlights a range of federal-territorial programs and agreements, and omits any mention of
policy achievements or programming funds located outside the territories.545 Canada effectively
defines its Arctic as restricted to the three federal territories; the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of
seven provinces are excluded.
One effect of this definition is to separate the territorial from the provincial Arctic regions, which
artificially divides the territories and their inhabitants from their neighbours in ecologically and
socially similar circumstances often located only short distances away. Fundamentally,
conflation of the territories and the Arctic is derived from the production of social meaning for
the area located north of 60 degrees latitude (which forms the southern boundary between the
territories and the western provinces); and to the preference of the federal government for not
having to negotiate with provincial governments over areas within their jurisdiction located north
of 60 (in Quebec), or in the sub-Arctic latitudes between 55 and 59 degrees (all provinces except
for the Maritimes). According to Ken Coates and Greg Poelzer: “The oddity of a massive federal
presence in the territorial North and minimal on-the-ground activities just a few miles to the
south is one of the most surprising and little discussed realities of Canadian political life.”546
The separation of the territories from the provincial North is a determining feature of the
Canadian Arctic, because these areas are solely distinguishable on this socially constructed basis:
there is no other meaningful distinction between the spaces located immediately above or below
60 degrees latitude besides their continued political differentiation.
The inclusion of the territories and exclusion of the provincial North in the Northern Strategy has
significant ramifications for the allocation of federal programming funds and the inclusion of
various groups in partnership and consultation with the federal government. In its achievements
under the Northern Strategy, the federal government lists significant sums spent on social and
economic development: $2.9 billion “to fund programs and services such as hospitals, schools,
544 CanNor, “About the North,” Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. Accessed at http://www.cannor.gc.ca/eng/1368816431440/1368816444319 on November 18, 2014. 545 Canada, Achievements Under Canada’s Northern Strategy, 2007-2011 (Ottawa: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 2011). Accessed at http://www.northernstrategy.gc.ca/cns/au-eng.pdf on November 18, 2014. 546 Ken Coates and Greg Poelzer, “The Next Northern Challenge: The Reality of the Provincial North,” MLI Commentary (Ottawa: MacDonald-Laurier Institute, April 2014)
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infrastructure and social services”; $80.4 million “to help strengthen and diversify the Northern
economy and to create business and job opportunities for people living in Northern
communities”; $23 million for Aboriginal businesses and entrepreneurs; $60 million for the
Nutrition North program to subsidize the high cost of foods in Northern communities; and over
$450 million in infrastructure spending on housing, harbours, power generation, highways, and
communities.547 With the exception of Nutrition North, these funds were exclusively allocated
for the territories; residents of the provincial North, a majority of whom are Indigenous, were
excluded from accessing them.
If areas comprising the provincial North were included in federal Arctic policy, it would
significantly increase the number of political actors affected by, and thus legitimately able to
speak to, Arctic policy. As Coates and Poelzer note, “the vast sub-Arctic expanse [of the
provincial North] has close to 1.5 million residents, holds enormous resource potential in oil and
gas, forestry, mining, and hydro-electric development, is home to dozens of culturally-distinct
First Nations, Métis, and Inuit groups, and is facing enormous pressures for change.”548 Among
other possible reasons for its exclusion, including very real constitutional limitations on the
federal government’s ability to make policy in areas of provincial jurisdiction, the inclusion of
the provincial North in Canadian Arctic policymaking would greatly increase the number of
actors able to make political claims, including security claims, against the federal government.
The current policy framework and its delineation of the Arctic thus excludes millions of people,
including many Indigenous peoples, from being considered within, or able to contribute to,
Canadian Arctic policy.
This division of the Arctic also differentiates among Inuit on the basis of colonial geography,
despite the insistence of Inuit leaders that they are a single unified people. There are four
recognized Inuit land claim areas in Canada: the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest
Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and Nunatsiavut in northern Labrador. Of
these, the former two are territorial and thus included in the federal definition of the Arctic, while
the latter two are excluded. In parliamentary testimony, witnesses decried this division of Inuit
547 Canada 2011, 3-6. 548 Coates and Poelzer 2014, 2.
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Nunangat and exclusion of Inuit located within the provincial North from Canada’s Arctic
policy. Most of these included explicit requests, or references to past requests, for the
Government of Canada to reconsider its discrimination against some Inuit for living within
provinces. Michael Gordon, an executive with Makivik Corporation that administers the land
claim agreement in Nunavik on behalf of Inuit, told the National Defence committee:
We are not second-class Inuit. Nunavik’s exclusion from the Northern Strategy is based on artificial boundaries, not geographical or social ones. We are Inuit, just like our cousins in Nunavut, and we want the Canadian government to recognize this simple reality … We request that the Canadian government clearly acknowledge that the Northern Strategy applies to Nunavik to the same extent as to other regions in Canada’s Arctic … Make it a Northern Strategy for the northern population and the geography – the people and the land. Don’t exclude us just because we happen to be in the province of Quebec.549
John Merritt emphasized past efforts by Inuit organizations to encourage government to alter its
definition of the Arctic, telling the same committee that “ITK has said before this committee, and
publicly in other places, that it believes the federal government’s current Northern Strategy
should be a genuine Arctic strategy that includes all four Inuit regions, including Nunatsiavut in
northern Labrador and Nunavik.”550 Mary Simon also emphasized the unity of the Inuit people,
and noted that she had attempted to communicate Inuit concerns directly to the prime minister
and the minister then responsible for the Northern Strategy, but was ignored:
When the Strategy was announced, we did write to the Prime Minister and to Minister [Chuck] Strahl about the need to be comprehensive in terms of encompassing all Inuit regions. Whether or not we live below the 55th parallel or the 60th parallel, we face the same living conditions as people face above the 60th parallel, so it’s necessary for us to work together as Inuit … We have asked the Prime Minister, and when I met with him Iqaluit I also raised that issue with him. We haven’t had a response as to whether Nunavik and Nunatsiavut are going to be included.551
549 Michael Gordon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-38 (November 5, 2009). 550 John Merritt, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-37 (November 3, 2009). 551 Mary Simon, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-30 (October 1, 2009).
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Chester Reimer noted that such domestic political decisions also have repercussions for
organizations representing Inuit internationally, since it denies some Inuit legitimacy because of
their perceived lack of domestic political standing: “The Inuit Circumpolar Council is not in
agreement with defining the north in that way. It creates problems at the Arctic Council. It
creates problems domestically when the Inuit of Nunavik are left out. They live on tundra. They
live on areas that are very much Arctic, and they’re left out of research, of politics, of
everything.”552 Nor were such calls limited to Inuit. In 2010, three years after the government
introduced the Northern Strategy, Grand Chief Ron Evans of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs
told the Aboriginal Affairs committee: “It causes us some concern that the announcement …
reinforces the Government of Canada’s commitment to the Northern Strategy, which is focused
on the Arctic. We urge this committee and this government to involve the remote and isolated
communities of Manitoba in further design and implementation of this new program.”553 His
recommendation, like those of the other witnesses, was not heeded. Despite the clear, repeated,
and insistent objections of the peoples in question, the federal government has maintained its
policy of defining the Arctic along territorial-provincial boundaries, such that some Indigenous
peoples are effectively excluded. In effect, the very way in which Canada has defined its Arctic
according to settler-colonial boundaries operates as a mechanism to silence Indigenous voices.
5.2.3 Foundational Issues
The third way in which security claims made by Indigenous peoples are silenced is through the
power of the federal government to set the terms of public debate by acknowledging, or not,
particular issues as valid or worthy of official consideration. The federal government has
silenced Indigenous securitizing moves by ignoring the two central issues that shape Indigenous
articulations of their own insecurity: climate change and settler-colonialism. Without actually
denying it as a scientific fact, climate change was largely ignored by federal policymakers and
members of government, including Prime Minister Harper. While the Conservative government
552 Chester Reimer, testimony before the Standing Committee on National Defence, 40-02-18 (May 11, 2009). 553 Ron Evans, testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 40-03-32 (November 1, 2010).
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never made climate change a significant priority, its absence in the context of Arctic policy-
making is particularly noticeable given the transformative nature of environmental change in the
region. Accordingly, Harper received widespread criticism in 2014 for failing to mention
climate change a single time over the course of six days spent on his annual Arctic tour.554 As
Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson noted, “the surreal disjunction between ubiquitous
evidence and prime ministerial silence has never been more apparent than during this particular
visit, which coincided with news of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s draft
report ahead of the next international conference on climate change.”555
This omission followed closely on repeated examples of the government curtailing discussion of
climate change in the context of the Arctic. Only weeks earlier, documents obtained by the
media through access to information revealed the Canadian Ice Service had been denied
permission to even hold press briefings on the diminished state of sea ice in the far North. The
request was denied by the ministerial services section of Environment Canada, whose minister,
Leona Aglukkaq, was also responsible for the Arctic.556 In December 2013, Aglukkaq also
overruled advice from her senior civil servants that she mention in a public statement that the
government “takes climate change seriously, and recognizes the scientific findings that conclude
that human activities are mostly responsible for this change.”557 Instead, the minister made
comments criticizing her government’s predecessors and incorrectly stated that the Conservative
government had successfully reduced Canada’s level of GHG emissions. And despite frequent
claims to support Arctic science, in its 2012 budget the government cancelled funding for the
Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), a world-leading climate
554 Michael Den Tandt, “Harper cements northern legacy despite glaring policy omissions,” Postmedia News (August 26, 2014). Accessed at http://www.canada.com/technology/Tandt+Harper+cements+northern+legacy+ despite+glaring+policy+omissions/10151115/story.html on November 18, 2014. 555 Jeffrey Simpson, “The PM can’t see the climate for the slush,” The Globe and Mail (August 30, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail. com/globe-debate/the-pm-cant-see-the-climate-for-the-slush/article20259976/#dashboard/follows/ on November 18, 2014. 556 Margaret Munro, “Federal government puts polar briefings on ice,” Postmedia News (August 18, 2014). Accessed at http://www.canada.com/news/Federal+government+puts+polar+briefings/10128511/story.html on November 18, 2014. 557 Mike De Souza, “Stephen Harper’s government edited message about taking climate change seriously,” Postmedia News (December 30, 2013). Accessed at http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/stephen-harpers-government-edited-message-about-taking-climate-change-seriously on November 18, 2014.
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research facility located on Ellesmere Island, forcing it to cease operations before having partial
funding temporarily restored.558 Together, these actions emphasize Heather Smith’s conclusion
that Canada is simply “choosing not to see” the reality of climate change in the Arctic, its
impacts on Arctic residents, or what such changes augur for the health and stability of the global
climate system.559
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Harper also explicitly denied the enduring relevance of Canada’s
colonial legacy towards Indigenous peoples. At the 2009 G20 leaders summit in Pittsburgh, in
response to a question about Canada’s declining status in an increasingly diffuse international
system, Harper replied he remained confident because Canada has “no history of colonialism.
So we have all the things that many admire about the great powers, but none of the things that
threaten or bother them about the great powers.” He then characterized Canada as a bicultural,
immigrant-based society since “we are also a country, obviously beginning with our two major
cultures, but also a country formed by people from all over the world.”560 His comments elicited
a torrent of criticism, particularly from Indigenous leaders who decried the total omission of
prior occupation of modern Canada by Indigenous peoples or the contemporary relevance of that
history for federal-Aboriginal relations. Then-AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo responded:
The effects of colonialism remain today. It is the attitude that fuelled residential schools, the colonial Indian Act that displaces traditional forms of First Nations governance; the theft of Indian lands and forced relocations of First Nations communities; the criminalization and suppression of First Nations languages and cultural practices, the chronic under-funding of First Nations communities and programs; and the denial of Treaty and Aboriginal rights, even though they are recognized in Canada’s Constitution.561
558 Ivan Semeniuk, “How Canada’s Arctic lab keeps a watchful eye on climate change,” The Globe and Mail (January 21, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-north/how-canadas-arctic-lab-keeps-a-watchful-eye-on-climate-change/article16423612/?page=all#dashboard/follows/ on November 18, 2014. 559 Smith 2010. 560 Quoted in Aaron Wherry, “What he was talking about when he talked about colonialism,” Maclean’s (October 1, 2009). Accessed at http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/what-he-was-talking-about-when-he-talked-about-colonialism/ on November 24, 2014. 561 AFN, “AFN National Chief Responds to Prime Minister’s Statements on Colonialism,” (October 1, 2009). Accessed at http://64.26.129.156/article.asp?id=4609 on November 24, 2014.
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Atleo’s statement highlights the fact that, in effect, the issues Indigenous peoples in Canada
identify as being of greatest importance, including those often characterized as affecting the
security of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, are linked to Canada’s colonial past and ongoing
colonial practices. Consequently, the prime minister’s statement that Canada lacks a colonial
history amounts to a “particularly remarkable form of erasure.”562 Indeed, only the year before
Harper had offered a formal apology on behalf of the Government of Canada for its past policy
of separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to attend residential
schools. That apology, applauded as an essential step towards reconciliation while also critiqued
for being insufficient, also failed to mention colonialism, or that Indian residential schools were
but one facet of a broader system of Indigenous non-dominance within the settler-colonial
Canadian state. Thus, critics charge that “the state’s previous attempts to address the legacy of
the residential schools system … have not been accompanied by and/or have not brought about
substantive change in either the lives of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples or in the
relationship between Indigenous and Metis peoples and the Canadian people and state.”563 As a
result, the ongoing material circumstances of Indigenous peoples in Canada are separated from
the current and historical colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Like
climate change, the federal government denies colonialism as legitimate terrain on which to
articulate grievances against Canada or the dominant Canadian society, which impedes
securitizing moves that identify climate change or colonialism as sources of insecurity for
Indigenous peoples, and perpetuates the subordinate power relations that contribute to the
material hazards confronting Indigenous peoples.
5.3 Subsumed Insecurity
In addition to, and sometimes as a result of, the silencing of their securitizing moves, Indigenous
understandings of security in the Arctic are subsumed within the official discourse of Arctic
security supported by the Canadian state. As described in Chapter 3, subsumed insecurity entails
562 Jennifer Henderson and Pauline Wakeham, “Colonial Reckoning, National Reconciliation? Aboriginal Peoples and the Culture of Redress in Canada,” ESC: English Studies in Canada 35, no. 1 (2009), 1. 563 Matthew Dorrell, “From Reconciliation to Reconciling: Reading What “We Now Recognize” in the Government of Canada’s 2008 Residential Schools Apology,” ESC: English Studies in Canada 35, no. 1 (2009), 29.
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incorporating a given referent object within a broader referent object with which it is linked, but
distinct. In so doing, the initial referent object is “not clearly delineated” such that the original
security claim is swallowed up within the successful securitization.564 I argue that Indigenous
peoples’ security claims have been subsumed within the government discourse of Arctic
sovereignty-as-security, despite the differences between how they understand their security
compared to settler-colonial Canada. Indeed, having their security subsumed within that of the
Canadian state worsens security for Northern Indigenous peoples because current state policy
contributes to the very phenomena Indigenous peoples identify as endangering them. Leanne
Broadhead reflects this tension in her discussion of “Canadian sovereignty versus northern
security,” which highlights how the contradiction between “viewing security solely in terms of
military control and sovereign borders … is destined to exacerbate the effects of climate change
and dramatically worsen an already precarious situation, thereby increasing the level of
insecurity of the inhabitants of the area and beyond.”565 Indigenous peoples in the Canadian
Arctic are encompassed within federal claims that the government is acting on behalf and in the
best interests of Northerners, even though, as described above and in Chapter 4, their specific
claims are obscured, ignored, denied, or delegitimized by the state.
The subsuming of Indigenous in/security within sovereignty-as-security Canadian discourse is
evident in the gap between Indigenous and governmental understandings of security in the
Arctic, described above and in Chapter 4, and in the problematic relationship between
Indigenous and colonial sovereignties over territory in northern Canada, described below.
Various episodes between Arctic peoples and Canada during the 20th century can also be
interpreted as part of a pattern of subordinating the security interests of Indigenous peoples to the
sovereignty requirements of the colonial state. Many such episodes are documented, including
Inuit perceptions of the mass slaughter of sled dogs by RCMP and provincial police in the 1950s
and 1960s, and the forced relocation of Inuit families from northern Quebec to Ellesmere Island
in the 1950s. In the former case, estimates suggest that, over two decades, government agents
564 Hansen 2000, 297-299. 565 Broadhead 2010, 914.
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killed as many as 20,000 dogs across the North.566 Though the decision was driven by a
confluence of government policies nominally defending policy objectives related to agriculture,
public health, and public order, an inquiry concluded the motivations for “these operations were
likely to prevent Inuit from practicing their traditional activities.”567 The slaughter had a
devastating effect on many communities, and was undertaken without meaningful consultation
with Inuit or consideration of their rights, and without regard for the symbolic, cultural, or
subsistence implications of killing animals essential for land-based livelihoods, hunting,
companionship, and spirituality.568
While there have been numerous instances involving the forced relocation of Indigenous peoples
in Canada,569 the High Arctic relocations refers to 21 Inuit families who between 1953-1955
were relocated from northern Quebec to hitherto uninhabited islands in the Arctic Archipelago,
establishing the first permanent civilian settlements in the High Arctic at the present-day
communities of Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay.570 Officials involved in the decision maintain the
government desired to help the families re-establish viable subsistence lifestyles, and that they
consented to the move.571 For decades, the federal government insisted that public services,
including health care, could be provided more readily in the new locations than the communities
the families had left, and opportunities for hunting and subsistence would be better in their new
locations.572 A federal investigation in the late 1980s “absolved the government of any
wrongdoing,” and “argued that … Inuit had been relocated for humanitarian purposes and had
566 CBC News, “Inuit dog killings no conspiracy: report,” (October 20, 2010). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/inuit-dog-killings-no-conspiracy-report-1.971888 on November 24, 2014. 567 Croteau 2010, 121. 568 QIA, Qikiqtani Truth Commission Final Report: Achieving Saimaqatigiingniq (Iqaluit: Qikiqtani Inuit Association, 2010); Qikiqtani Truth Commission, “Inuit Sled Dogs in the Baffin Region, 1950 to 1975.” Accessed at http://www.qtcommission.com/actions/GetPage.php?pageId=39 on November 24, 2014. 569 See Canada, “Relocation of Aboriginal Communities,” Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Volume I, Part II, Chapter 11 (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1996). Accessed at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071211055119/http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sg34_e.html#107 on March 9, 2016. 570 Makkik 2009, 8. 571 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 103; David Damas, Arctic Migrants/Arctic Villagers: The Transformation of Inuit Settlement in the Central Arctic (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004), 54. 572 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 102-103.
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volunteered to move.”573 A second investigation also “concluded that the relocation had been
carried out with humane intentions based on the government’s desire to help Inuit remain self-
sufficient by hunting and trapping.”574 In 1992, then-Minister of Indian Affairs Tom Siddon told
the House of Commons the decision “appears to have been solely related to improving the harsh
social and economic conditions facing the Inuit at Inukjuak [Nunavik] at that time.”575
However, relocatees and their descendants insist the RCMP employed coercive recruitment
practices and deceived families into believing the federal government would provide adequate
supplies for their survival and welfare, and that they would be able to hunt and sustain
themselves in their new homes.576 But upon arrival to an area 2000 kilometres north that bore
few similarities to the one they had left, “the promised equipment and resources were nowhere to
be found.”577 Because their traditional skills and knowledge were unsuited to their new
environment, people were unprepared to subsist. The daughter of one of the original relocatees
recalled: “According to the RCMP, we were going to a place similar to [home], where there was
an abundance of plants and all kinds of wildlife and animals. We were relocated to a place
where there was none of that. Not a thing, just bare rock.”578 Unsurprisingly, “the first years in
the High Arctic were a desperate time for Inuit … and it took many more years for Inuit to learn
how to live in the High Arctic without a daily struggle for survival.”579 The federal
government’s insistence that it was motivated by the wellbeing of the Inuit families also appears
dubious at best; Tester and Kulchyski note the government’s “preposterous” claims that health
services could be provided more easily in the High Arctic than in existing communities and that
hunting above the Arctic Circle was superior to northern Quebec “generated considerable
573 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 102. 574 Tester and Kulchyski 1994 103. 575 Quoted in Tester and Kulchyski 1994 102. 576 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP], The High Arctic Relocation: A Report on the 1953-55 Relocation (Ottawa: Supply and Services, 1994), 7. 577 Makkik 2009, 10. 578 Lizzie Amagoalik, “The Hardships We Endured,” Naniiliqpita (Iqaluit: Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, 2009), 35. Accessed at http://www.tunngavik.com/documents/publications/Naniiliqpita%20Fall%202009.pdf on November 25, 2014. 579 Makkik 2009, 10.
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controversy, fuelling the idea that … the real reasons for the relocation were indeed sinister.”580
The official justification for why Canada relocated Inuit to the High Arctic also contradicts most
historical research on the subject.581 According to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Peoples, the government’s motive was to establish a permanent human presence in order to
reinforce Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claims.582 Historian Shelagh Grant argues that “concern
for sovereignty was the primary motive in determining when and where resettlement should
occur,”583 and several other studies also indicate that sovereignty, rather than Inuit wellbeing,
was the driving force behind the relocations.584 A report for the Canadian Human Rights
Commission notes the federal government regarded the two High Arctic colonies as contributing
to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty,585 and in its 2010 apology for the “hardship, suffering, and loss”
suffered by relocatees and their descendants, the Government of Canada’s acknowledged that
“these communities [Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay] have contributed to a strong Canadian
presence in the High Arctic.”586 On balance, it appears that Inuit were relocated to the High
Arctic in order to demonstrate the presence of the Canadian state and act as “human flagpoles”
substantiating Canadian claims.587 Notably, the discrepancy between government accounts and
those of independent researchers is largely attributable to the absence of Inuit voices in
580 Tester and Kulchyski 1994 115. 581 Coates et al. 2008, 63-79. 582 Dussault and Erasmus 1994, 162. 583 Shelagh Grant, “A Case of Compounded Error: The Inuit Resettlement Project, 1953, and the Government Response, 1990,” Northern Perspectives 19, no. 1 (Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, 1991), 3-29. 584 Keith Lowther, “An Exercise in Sovereignty: The Canadian Government and the Relocation of Inuit to the High Arctic in 1953,” in W. Peter Adams and Peter G. Johnson, eds, Student Research in Canada’s North, Proceedings of the National Student Conference on Northern Studies (Ottawa: Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies, 1986), 517-522; Alan R. Marcus, “Out in the Cold: Canada’s Experimental Inuit Relocation to Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay,” Polar Record 27, no. 163 (1991): 285-296. 585 Daniel Soberman, Report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission on the Complaints of the Inuit People Relocated from Inukjuak and Pond Inlet, to Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay in 1953 and 1955 (Ottawa: Canadian Human Rights Commission, 1991). 586 John Duncan, “Apology for the Inuit High Arctic Relocation,” (Ottawa: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, 2010). Accessed at https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016115/1100100016116 on November 27, 2014. 587 The term ‘human flagpoles’ is widely employed in reference to the High Arctic relocation, though its origins are unclear.
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government investigations.588 In this case, silencing Indigenous perspectives enabled the
subsuming of Inuit perspectives on the High Arctic relocations within that of the Canadian state.
The relocation of Inuit may indeed have bolstered Canada’s sovereignty claims by establishing a
permanent civilian population in the High Arctic. But whatever the relevance to Canadian
sovereignty, the High Arctic relocations illustrate the prioritization of Canadian Arctic
sovereignty over the security of Arctic inhabitants. The sovereignty of Canada over its Arctic
territories was placed above concern for the human security, survival, and wellbeing of the Inuit
people whose presence was used to support those very sovereignty claims. It seems reasonable
to conclude that the interests of the Inuit people as related to their physical survival, culture,
identity, and rights – namely the very factors identified in subsequent speech acts as those factors
central to Inuit conceptions of security in the Arctic – were not considered by government actors
in the face of the state’s interest in asserting its legal authority over remote Arctic territory.
The High Arctic relocations may be the earliest modern example of Canadian Arctic sovereignty
subsuming Inuit security, but it is not the only one. Given that Inuit leaders and organizations
link autonomy and self-determination to their security as Indigenous people, this subsumption is
also inherent in the subordination of Inuit sovereignty over their Arctic territory to that of the
Canadian state. Following the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decision recognizing
Aboriginal rights in the 1973 Calder case, the Crown initiated a process of negotiating
comprehensive land claim agreements with Aboriginal peoples, the first of which, the James Bay
and Northern Quebec Agreement, was signed in 1975 with Cree and Inuit in northern Quebec.
Since 1979, when the Federal Court overturned a lower court ruling and affirmed Inuit title over
part of their traditional territory in the Northwest Territories, Canada has increasingly
acknowledged Inuit as rights-holders and landowners over much of the territory that now
comprises northern Canada.589 Moreover, since Secretary of State for External Affairs Joe Clark
declared to the House of Commons in 1985 that “Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic is
indivisible … embraces land, sea and ice … [and] from time immemorial Canada’s Inuit people
588 Tester and Kulchyski 1994, 103. 589 David W. Elliott, “Baker Lake and the Concept of Aboriginal Title,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 18, no. 4 (1980): 653-663; Alastair Campbell, “Sovereignty and Citizenship: Inuit and Canada, 1670-2012,” in Scot Nickels, ed, Nilliajut: Inuit Perspectives on Security, Patriotism, and Sovereignty (Ottawa: Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 2013), 35-42.
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have used and occupied the ice as they have used and occupied the land … Full sovereignty is
vital to Canada’s security. It is vital to the Inuit people. And it is vital to Canada’s national
identity,”590 Canada has premised its Arctic sovereignty in part on the prior sovereignty of Inuit.
Inuit title over Inuit Nunangat is legally and constitutionally enshrined in the Constitution Act
1982 [s. 35 (1), (3)], Inuvialuit Final Agreement (1985), James Bay and Northern Quebec
Agreement (1975), Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement (2005), Nunavik Inuit Land Claims
Agreement (2006), and Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (1993). Together, these “modern
treaties have reshaped the political landscape in the Arctic … [and] marked the first time that an
Aboriginal people was able to restructure the basic political configuration of the country.”591
Certainly, Inuit stress their unceded sovereignty over their traditional territories. Land claim
agreements and Inuit’s own political documents clearly articulate the view that their status as a
self-determining Indigenous people with legal title and inherent rights must be respected by their
respective states. For instance, A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic
observes:
Old ideas of sovereignty are breaking down as different governance models [evolve]. Sovereignties overlap and are frequently divided in federations within creative ways to recognize the right of peoples. For Inuit living within the states of Russia, Canada, the USA and Denmark/Greenland, issues of sovereignty and sovereign rights must be examined and assessed in the context of our long history of struggle to gain recognition and respect as an Arctic indigenous people having the right to exercise self-determination over [their] lives, territories, cultures and languages.592
Scholars have also looked to the example of Inuit as charting new and innovative approaches to
overlapping sovereignty and multi-level governance, particularly with respect to Indigenous
peoples and contested sovereignties within settler-colonial states.593 And the pursuit and
enactment of five comprehensive land claim agreements resulting in regional governments in
four separate Inuit territories across northern Canada illustrate the determination of Inuit to
realize political autonomy within the context of the Canadian federation.
590 House of Commons, Debates (September 10, 1985): 6462-6464. 591 Campbell 2013, 39. 592 ICC 2009, s.2(1). 593 Abele and Rodon 2007; Loukacheva 2007; Wilson 2007; Shadian 2010, 2014.
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If Inuit view self-determination as integral to their security, namely their survival as an
Indigenous people, the failure of the Government of Canada to live up to its commitments under
these land claim agreements further demonstrates how Inuit security claims are subsumed within
the interests of the Canadian state. As detailed above, Inuit leaders assert the federal government
has violated Inuit political autonomy and failed to act in accordance with their inherent and
constitutional rights, particularly with respect to the inadequate implementation of the Nunavut
Land Claims Agreement. In December 2006, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated filed a lawsuit
against the Government of Canada that identified 16 contractual and additional fiduciary
breaches relating to the alleged failure to implement the NLCA. In 2012, “the Nunavut Court of
Justice issued summary judgement in favour of NTI vis-à-vis the federal government’s refusal
for many years to implement the general monitoring provisions of the agreement … [and]
characterized as ‘indifferent’ the Government of Canada’s attitude to implementation of this
provision of the agreement.”594 The case was settled in May 2015 when the federal government
agreed to pay $255 million in compensation for the breaches of the NLCA, but the charge of
indifference by Canada reflects the fact that it has been content to utilize prior use and occupancy
of the Arctic region by Inuit and other Indigenous peoples to support its sovereignty, but has
been unwilling to substantiate Indigenous sovereignty by respecting and enacting their specific
political claims.
Indeed, some analysts have increasingly wondered why successive federal governments have
chosen not to explicitly marshal Inuit sovereignty to support the assertion of Canadian
sovereignty with respect to the Northwest Passage.595 One answer is because doing so is
impossible without also enacting the explicit claims of Arctic Indigenous peoples with respect to
climate change and the conditions necessary to provide security for inhabitants of the Canadian
North. Currently, such claims are subsumed within the construction of Arctic sovereignty-as-
security preferred by the Canadian state; to fully acknowledge Indigenous sovereignty would
empower the securitizing moves of Inuit and other peoples that directly challenge the settler-
colonial construction of securitization currently enacted by Canada in its Arctic territory.
594 Fenge 2013, 51. 595 Fenge 2007/2008, 2013; Michael Mifflin, “Canada’s Arctic Sovereignty and Nunavut’s Place in the Federation,” Policy Options (Montreal: IRPP, July-August 2008); Byers 2009.
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5.4 Conclusion
To the extent that the federal government has not accepted Indigenous articulations of in/security
in the Arctic, it suggests there exist important limitations upon the extent of the political
emancipation that has occurred for Indigenous peoples in contemporary Canada. Self-
determination for Indigenous peoples may extend, at most, only to the point where their political
preferences directly challenge the core interests of the federal government, and may omit the
capacity to successfully act as securitizing actors articulating existential threats to the sovereign.
In light of the material hazards posed by climate change, and the other threats to their survival
identified by Arctic Indigenous peoples, the constraints imposed by the federal-Indigenous
relationship and the implications of Indigenous non-dominance for the ability to catalyze state
action to address climate change raise serious concerns about the future security of Indigenous
and non-Indigenous inhabitants of Arctic Canada.
Moreover, the exclusion of Indigenous views suggests that the official conception of in/security
reflected in Canada’s Arctic policy framework remain fundamentally colonial. The views of
Indigenous peoples are clearly, repeatedly, and forcefully expressed in various fora, by
authoritative and legitimate political actors, and invoke the highest possible stakes: the survival
and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in the face of serious material hazards. These claims, often
made using the language and grammar of in/security, appear to be consistently rejected by the
Canadian state in favour of a conception of Arctic in/security challenged by Indigenous peoples
because it both undermines their rights and interests, and appears certain to worsen the very
hazards they are facing. Thus, reproducing a longstanding pattern of Indigenous security
interests being silenced or subsumed to the interests of the settler-colonial state, it is the very
actions and goals of Canada that are identified as threats to the survival and interests of
Indigenous peoples, such that the greatest threat to the security of Indigenous peoples originates
from or is exacerbated by their own government. This is the very essence of settler-colonialism,
and it lies at the heart of contemporary security policy in the Canadian Arctic.
The slaughter of Inuit sled dogs and the High Arctic relocation demonstrate the tendency of the
federal government to subsume arguments over Indigenous peoples’ wellbeing within policy
decisions inimical to that wellbeing undertaken for the interests of the settler-colonial state.
While these episodes are taken from Canada’s colonial history, they foreshadow a pattern that
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persists to the present day. In contemporary Canadian Arctic policy, the security interests of
Inuit and other Arctic Indigenous peoples are still subsumed within the sovereignty interests of
the Canadian state. The evidence lies in how Indigenous peoples have articulated their
understanding of security in the Arctic, and the absence of those views within Canada’s official
policies. Canada employs security language in articulating its interests and priorities in the
Arctic, particularly the securitization of sovereignty over its Arctic territories and the resources
located there. Inuit also employ security language, emphasizing in particular concern over the
protection and survival of the Arctic ecosystem, including flora and fauna, in the context of
human-caused environmental changes; Indigenous rights, self-determination, and political
autonomy; and the preservation of Indigenous culture, language, and traditional practices. But
these claims by Inuit receive little purchase within official discourse; indeed, the Canadian state
tends to prioritize expansion of the very practices Indigenous people identify as threatening them
in the first place.
Unlike previous eras, however, the implications of Indigenous peoples’ understandings of
security being subsumed to that of the Canadian state extend far beyond northern Canada.
Whereas once events that occurred in the Canadian Arctic had little impact on southern societies
or distant places in the world, today the context of global environmental change and the
geological Anthropocene is such that decisions pertaining to what constitutes in/security in the
Arctic have global repercussions. As discussed in Chapter 1, recent interest in the Arctic has
been driven in large part by estimates of the region’s massive undeveloped resource potential,
particularly offshore oil and gas, the extraction of which also features prominently in the Arctic
security policies of Canada and other circumpolar states. Whether those estimated resources are
actually extracted and burned, and to a lesser extent the growth in the Arctic of other fossil-fuel
intensive and locally damaging industries such as mining and transnational shipping, have
significant negative implications for the Arctic and global ecosystems. Conversely, adoption and
implementation of a conception of Arctic in/security that prioritized the maintenance of healthy
northern communities and ecosystems, and the cultural and subsistence systems that support
their indigenous inhabitants, in particular, would require radically different policies to be taken.
Such policies would protect the human security of Northerners, but, by extension, also that of
disparate peoples and ultimately the global biosphere by not contributing to human civilization’s
ongoing reliance on fossil fuels. Thus, the exclusion of Indigenous understandings of in/security
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from official Arctic security discourses are of broader significance than simply to the Arctic, and
raise substantial normative questions that are explored further in Chapter 8.
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Chapter 6
Understanding In/Security in Northern Norway 6Norway has a long history as an Arctic state, but, as with Inuit in northern Canada, for the
indigenous Sámi that history is even older. As with Canada, discourse around the Norwegian
Arctic has also become more securitized as new phenomena, such as environmental change,
interact with longstanding state interests and national security concerns. There are similarities
between how Norway and Canada have constructed their Arctic security interests: both
emphasize territorial sovereignty and effective control over their distant and sparsely populated
northern regions; both have been fundamentally shaped by proximity to a far more powerful
neighbour; and both identify the extraction of northern resources as key to their national interests
and central to their economic security. There are also differences, notably the Norwegian
emphasis on desecuritizing relations with Russia and maintaining stability in the Euro-Arctic
region following the Soviet collapse and subsequent weakening of civil order in northwestern
Russia. How in/security has been constructed in these two national contexts reflects their
divergent histories and distinct patterns of political and social development, and provides
indications of the facilitating conditions for securitization to succeed.
This chapter examines Norwegian state understandings of in/security in the context of the “High
North”. Given that Norway has experienced historical relationships of political domination by
both Denmark and Sweden, Scandinavian colonialism informs how the meaning of security has
been constructed in northern Norway. While Scandinavian colonialism provides the context for
how Sámi living in the High North understand security, which is discussed in Chapter 7, Sámi
were also integral to the historical construction of national security in northern Norway. The
first section of this chapter provides an overview of Scandinavian and Norwegian colonialism as
they relate to the traditional Sámi homeland of Sápmi, which includes the area typically
understood as the High North with the exception of the Svalbard archipelago. This section
outlines the importance of colonialism to the establishment of the modern Norwegian state,
including the role of Sámi in Scandinavian state formation. The second section describes the
widening and deepening of Norway’s foreign and security policy following the end of the Cold
War, culminating in a new High North initiative in 2006. The third section identifies the
meaning of Arctic security for the Norwegian state, which in both its contemporary and
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historical forms is based on two core pillars: geographic proximity to Russia, with associated
concerns over potential Russian aggression, and securing sovereign territoriality in order to
facilitate natural resource extraction. Paradoxically, while Norway emphasized desecuritizing
European-Russian relations as central for its Arctic security interests following the Cold War,
under the new High North Initiative the Arctic has become heavily securitized within Norwegian
national security discourse. Consequently, today both Russia and hydrocarbon energy resources
are routinely constructed as core national security concerns for Norway, and have led to a
renewed securitization of the High North.
6.1 Scandinavian Colonialism
The focus of this chapter is Norway and Sámi living in Norway, but it is impossible to examine
Sámi-Norwegian relations in a strictly Norwegian context.596 The social and political histories
of the Nordic states and the transnational nature of the Sámi people problematize such a tidy
distinction.597 For example, the contemporary political geography of northern Europe obscures
the fact that political entities with the same names as those in existence today exercised
sovereignty over significantly different geographic spaces.598 Modern Norway is itself a product
of colonial systems of power and political authority, having existed for centuries with limited
autonomy and independence from its larger and more powerful Scandinavian neighbours. Until
the early 16th century, Norway was part of the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Sweden, before
becoming the junior partner in Denmark-Norway, a polity governed as a personal union with a
single sovereign under Danish hegemony. The inland border separating Norway and Sweden
was only settled in 1751 following centuries of conflict. Though it had existed as a political
entity since medieval times, from 1524-1814 Norway was essentially administered as a Danish
province. In 1814, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden as punishment for its
596 The term ‘Sámi’ is sometimes spelled as ‘Saami’ depending on whether the writer is influenced by Norwegian or Swedish usage, but both refer to the same ethno-linguistic group originating in the Sápmi region of northern Scandinavia. 597 ‘Scandinavia’ refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, whereas ‘Nordic’ refers to the Scandinavian states in addition to Iceland and Finland. 598 Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2006), 18.
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wartime support of Napoleonic France. Norway briefly declared independence, but was unable
to sustain its claim against the Swedish Crown, which was keen to expand its territory due to the
seizure of Finland by imperial Russia in 1809, which deprived Sweden of one third of its area
and ended its aspirations to Great Power status. Sweden invaded, and established another dual
monarchy in which Norway enjoyed significant autonomy but was ultimately subordinate to
royal authority in Stockholm. The loss of Finland to Russia also had significant implications for
future inter-state relations, because it created Finnish-speaking minorities on all sides of the
newly established Swedish-Norwegian-Russian borders.599 The settlement of the Norwegian-
Russian boundary in 1826 was the final move in establishing the modern political divisions of
Fennoscandia, though Norway only became a fully sovereign and independent state in 1905 after
more than 500 years under Danish or Swedish rule. By that time, the Sámi homeland of Sápmi –
which covers much of the Fennoscandian interior – was colonized and divided, and Sámi were
living across the borders of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Thus, Norway inherited
Danish and Swedish legacies of colonial expansion in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of
Sápmi, in addition to its own legacy of Norse-Viking conquest and colonization around the
North Sea and North Atlantic.
6.1.1 Stuck in the Middle: Sámi and the Modern State
Since the consolidation of the Scandinavian kingdoms into their current modern forms, Sámi
have been implicated in questions of sovereign authority fundamental to these states’ national
interests. Acquisition of Sámi lands was seen as essential to establish the prosperity and
defensibility of Denmark-Norway and Sweden, respectively, while control over Sámi themselves
was a crucial marker of status and territorial control. The most obvious way in which such
control could be demonstrated was through taxation and the collection of duties. Indeed,
taxation of Sámi became an important indicator of which among Denmark-Norway, Sweden, or
Russia-Finland exercised sovereign authority over the Scandinavian interior, and by extension
jurisdiction north to the Arctic coast. Some Sámi villages were taxed two or three times a year
599 Roald Berg, “Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 1814: A Geopolitical and Contemporary Perspective,” Scandinavian Journal of History 39, no. 3 (2014): 265-286.
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by different states, and “the question of where Saamis should pay tax was a point of argument
throughout the seventeenth century since Swedes, Norwegians, and Russians all considered
taxation as proof of sovereignty over the area.”600 Sámi were forced to pay a significant portion
of their goods in taxes, often in the form of furs, but also derived certain benefits, since “taxation
policies and claims of sovereignty did not entail a denial of Saami land possession. On the
contrary, taxes and strategic needs ensured that Saami possession of land was both accepted as a
fact and relied upon in legal interpretation” of which state controlled what area along the
disputed boundary.601 Aware of their unique situation as permanent inhabitants of the contested
borderlands, Sámi used their position to extract concessions from Swedish and Danish-
Norwegian authorities, effectively playing one against the other.
Sámi sometimes proved pivotal to state claims over territory and their associated natural resource
wealth. For instance, the discovery of silver deposits at Nasafjäll in 1634 – in the disputed
border region between Norway and Sweden – resulted in prolonged dispute between the two
countries. Having elicited Sámi support for its claim that the mine was located in its territory,
Sweden began to extract ore despite the disputed border. But the mine remained contested, and
was burned to the ground by Norwegian soldiers in 1659. The political economy of resource
extraction, particularly mining, had major impacts on Sámi, whose subsistence economies and
property rights were disrupted when they and their reindeer were indentured to provide labour
for the mines. Many Sámi resisted these infringements on their livelihoods, including
threatening to revoke their support for Sweden’s sovereignty over the area. As “the conflict
between the Saamis and the mine operators grew,” and Sweden’s position vis-à-vis Norway grew
increasingly weak, the governor “suggested that it caused such a crisis situation in the lappmarks
[northern counties] that the Saamis must be left alone or they would entirely abandon the
country, with grave consequences for the defence of the border.”602 Thus, from early in the
modern period of Scandinavian politics control over natural resources in the High North, state
security, and the wellbeing and distinctiveness of Sámi have been closely linked.
600 Fur 2006, 52. 601 Fur 2006, 53. 602 Fur 2006, 62
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Figure 6: Map of Sápmi
Source: Nordiska Museet603
As shown in Figure 6, Sápmi is located in the more remote northern part of Scandinavia and
transects the boundaries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, and Sámi were liminal to
these states as each was being consolidated. Until the early 20th century, in fact, Sámi moved
with relative freedom across the region’s borders to trade and graze their reindeer herds, and
Sámi were critical for effective control over the region prior to widespread settlement by
Scandinavians in the late 1700s. While taxes extracted from Sápmi were substantial, more
important by far was the contribution that control over Sámi made to states’ claims of territorial
sovereignty. As early as the 17th century, Scandinavian rulers feared Sámi could pose a threat if
they offered their loyalty to rival neighbours. In the 1670s, for instance, the Swedish governor of
Västerbotten province “expressed great concern that the mountain Saamis would desert to
Norway. He saw it as a security risk, since the Saamis could divulge military secrets to
603 Accessed at http://www.nordiskamuseet.se/en/utstallningar/sapmi on March 8, 2016.
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Denmark-Norway.”604 Especially prior to the settlement of the Norwegian-Swedish border,
Sámi could also threaten to relocate and throw their support for the delineation of territorial
boundaries to each state’s rival if concessions on issues such as taxation were not granted.
Nor was this an idle threat; historical documents record whole villages packing up and moving
across the border area to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the neighbouring kingdom.
Historian Gunlög Fur notes “the effectiveness of this threat grew out of disputes over sovereignty
between Sweden, Denmark-Norway, and Russia. Until 1751, the entire region called
Finnmarken in reality belonged to no nation and remained contested grounds. All three powers
made opposing demands on the area and used the taxation of the Saamis as grounds for claiming
sovereignty.”605 The permanent settlement of the border between Denmark-Norway and
Sweden in 1751 was thus a pivotal moment in Scandinavian political history and for Sámi as a
people, because it established an enduring division of territory into sovereign spaces and
removed the most powerful political tool at the disposal of the Sámi. With the border
established, Norway and Sweden could assert control over Sámi along national lines with little
fear of Sámi undermining the national interest. Consequently, “after the border settlement in
1751, Saamis began to experience an erosion of their rights” as jurisdiction over land shifted to
local authorities and the Scandinavian states felt less need to maintain support of Sámi
communities in the border areas.606
This diminution of Sámi rights occurred in spite of the inclusion of the so-called Lapp Codicil
into the 1751 Danish-Norwegian-Swedish border treaty, which specifically carved out provisions
for continued cross-border land use for Sámi reindeer herding activities. The Lapp Codicil was
included due to a recognition that, “as a result of the boundary, Saami on both the Swedish and
Norwegian sides risked losing time-honoured historic grazing rights in the countries where they
were not regarded as citizens.”607 The Codicil thus allowed for cross-border grazing in line with
604 Fur 2006, 57. 605 Fur 2006, 56. 606 Fur 2006, 53. 607 Else Grete Broderstad, “Cross-Border Reindeer Husbandry: Between Ancient Usage Rights and State Sovereignty,” in Nigel Bankes and Timo Koivurova, eds, The Proposed Nordic Saami Convention: National and International Dimensions of Indigenous Property Rights (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2013): 156-157.
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established custom, and an option for nomadic Sámi in the border regions to select whether they
preferred citizenship of Denmark-Norway or Sweden. Criteria for citizenship were also partly
determined by which sovereign Sámi had previously paid taxes, which, in turn, was often
negotiated between Sámi villages and government officials seeking their support for a favourable
determination of the border question. By the late 19th century, however,
it was not universally accepted that culturally and ethnically foreign groups, such as the Sámi, should be allowed to cross international borders and utilize natural resources in neighbouring territories … The indigenous Sámi were neither Norwegian nor Swedish by culture or by identity … thus the Sámi were caught between Swedish and Norwegian cultural and economic penetration into [Sápmi] and the western coast during the nation-building process.608
Sámi were essential to the initial establishment of sovereign power in the Scandinavian interior,
but were subjected to that power following the establishment of permanent boundaries and state-
consolidation.
In addition to taxation, Sámi religious affiliation was also implicated in the national interests of
the states in which they lived. While they traditionally engaged in shamanistic spiritual
practices, religious conflicts in Europe caused Sámi conversion to become a growing priority for
their Scandinavian rulers. In the mid-18th century, for instance, “the government was appalled to
hear reports that Saami shamanistic rites were still being conducted, which it saw as a threat to
national stability. According to the orthodox, Lutheran theory of governing, unity in religion
was the necessary prerequisite to a functional social order.”609 Sweden and Denmark-Norway
outlawed traditional practices such as use of drums and other spiritual artefacts, and launched
religious and educational programs for Sámi youth intended to reduce the perceived pagan
danger within their midst. Though partly motivated over concern for saving Sámi souls,
religious conversion also closely aligned with the national interest, as Christian sects associated
with competing European states sought to bring Sámi into their respective faiths. By the 19th
century, Sámi were at the centre of a highly political struggle over religious conversion between
608 Roald Berg, “From ‘Spitsbergen’ to ‘Svalbard’. The Norwegianization in Norway and the ‘Norwegian Sea’, 1820-1925,” Acta Borealia 30, no. 2 (2013): 158. 609 Daniel Lindmark, “Colonial Encounter in Early Modern Sápmi,” in Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, eds, Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2013), 133-134.
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the Lutheran Scandinavian states and the Orthodox Russian empire. Religious affiliation was
regarded as an important symbol of status and sovereign authority due to the roles of the
Swedish-Norwegian and Russian monarchs as heads of their respective state churches, and was
also closely linked to control over territory. For instance, the Russian effort in the 1870s and
1880s to promote Sámi conversion by constructing Orthodox religious institutions in the border
region “was considered as part of the strategy to secure the Russian Arctic Sea coast.”610 In
asserting sovereign authority over Sápmi, states laid claim not only to Sámis’ lands and worldly
goods through taxation, but also the political benefits of their spiritual affiliation.
Significantly, Sámi were only seen as threatening for their potential ability to affect the territorial
ambitions of different states, not due to any direct violence they might inflict. There is a
longstanding perception, often crossing into stereotype, of the non-violent and non-martial Sámi
nature, which diffused concern among the Scandinavian rulers “who did not fear Saami hostility.
Saamis were not an alien group as they had accepted status as royal subjects. There is no
evidence that the Saamis ever organized forceful resistance against [state] encroachment.”611
The virtual absence of armed resistance to Scandinavian colonization is a defining feature of the
incorporation of Sápmi into the Scandinavian kingdoms, and illustrates how Sámi were
important for securing state’s external national security without posing an internal security threat
themselves. The sole exception on the Norwegian side of the border was the Kautokeino
uprising of 1852, in which a small group of Sámi killed a merchant and local sheriff before
burning down the merchant’s house and kidnapping a priest and members of his family and
household. These acts resulted in conflict between Sámi and non-Sámi residents of the area,
leading to the combat deaths of two rebels and the subsequent sentencing of five to execution.612
Although a significant event in Sámi-Norwegian history, the Kautokeino uprising occurred late
in the colonization of Sápmi and is anomalous as the only instance in which lives were lost in
conflict between Sámi and the Norwegian authorities. Its immediate causes were also rooted in
specific community grievances, such as the emergence of the Læstadian charismatic religious
610 Magnus Rodell, “Fortifications in the Wilderness: The Making of Swedish-Russian Borderlands around 1900,” Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2009), 75. 611 Fur 2006, 65. 612 Adriana M. Dancus, “Ghosts Haunting the Norwegian House: Racialization in Norway and The Kautokeino Rebellion,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 55, no. 1 (2014): 121-139.
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sect and local objections against the Norwegian State Church and the state-run alcohol
monopoly.613 The Kautokeino uprising was not rooted in Sámi opposition to Norwegian
colonization of Sápmi, per se. As such, it reflects that colonization occurred largely without
direct physical violence between Sámi and the Scandinavian states.
This section illustrates that Sámi were important for the consolidation of the modern
Scandinavian states, principally because they afforded control over the fertile territory of the
north-central plateau of the Scandinavian Peninsula. More broadly, it suggests the importance of
understanding colonial relations of power and dominance to the formation of modern Norway
and its neighbours, the construction of their national interests, and the constitution of the Sámi
people. That Sápmi was brought under the sovereign power of Scandinavian kingdoms through
colonization is clear: “The purpose of ‘colonisation’ was twofold: to get access and exploit the
natural resources of Sápmi and to establish visible presence by populating an area, to which
several different nations still laid claim.”614 Despite Sámi objections, Swedes and Norwegians
established permanent settlements across Sápmi, including in areas used by Sámi for grazing and
herding activities. What followed was a lengthy process of state building designed to render
Sápmi legible to the sovereign gaze: land was measured, surveyed, and mapped; divided into
provinces, parishes and tax lands; the landscape cultivated and domesticated; and Sámi subjected
to civilizing efforts through the spread of Lutheran conversion and education “aimed at
reforming the minds and bodies of the students and creating obedient subjects.”615 Confronted
with an influx of Scandinavian settlers and the imposition of policies determined in far off
capitals without consideration of their views or interests, “to Saami people it looked suspiciously
like an invasion.”616 While colonization of Sápmi was more gradual, and in many ways more
gentle, than European colonialism elsewhere around the globe, the Scandinavian states still
“asserted power over the lands that they had taken by expansion, usurping Saami sovereignty.
613 Ivar Bjorklund, “The Anatomy of a Millenarian Movement,” Acta Borealia 9, no. 2 (1992): 37-46; Henry Minde, “Constructing ‘Læstadianism’: A Case for Sámi Survival?” Acta Borealia 15, no. 1 (1998): 5-25. 614 Lindmark 2013, 131. 615 Lindmark 2013, 133. 616 Fur 2006, 40.
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Their ultimate purpose was to displace and deny independence to the Saami people.”617 The
colonization of Sápmi influenced the political and demographic shape of northern Europe, since
it led to the expansion of the Scandinavian states and brought vast new areas under the power of
modern, centralized, Christian European sovereigns.
Scandinavian colonialism also shaped the very determination of who was and is considered
Sámi. The 17th century Swedish governor of Västerbotten province, Johan Graan, articulated the
“parallel theory” which argued that forest Sámi could be integrated with the peasantry as
subsistence farmers, while mountain Sámi and their reindeer herds should be afforded greater
privileges and lighter taxation in order to maintain their loyalty in the border regions. Graan thus
helped establish two important trends in Sámi identity: “First, he linked the Saami to the reindeer
so that the two, human and animal, became virtually indistinguishable. Second, he argued that
persons were defined by their subsistence activities and not by ethnic markers.”618 Sámi identity
became tightly linked with particular “lappmark trades” – namely fishing, hunting, and reindeer
herding, meaning that “Saami was not, from an administrative point of view, an ethnic or racial
concept, but a technical term for the practitioner of certain trades.”619 The result was
simultaneously the enshrinement of certain Sámi collective rights, such as rights to land use for
reindeer herding, and the genesis of a view that unless they engage in such practices, individuals
are not truly Sámi and thus unentitled to collective rights or political consideration.
Although Graan was Swedish, his views exerted influence in neighbouring countries, as well.
To be sure, in the 19th and 20th centuries Sweden and Norway pursued distinct policies towards
their Sámi populations, with Sweden’s “Lapps shall remain Lapps” policy segregating Sámi
from the other Swedes while Norway’s policy of “Norwegianization” sought to assimilate them
into the dominant society.620 However, these differences only reinforce the influence that state
617 John Wunder, “Indigenous Homelands and Contested Treaties: Comparisons of Aborigines, Saamis, Native Americans, First Nations, and Euro-Nation State Diplomatic Negotiations since 1300,” in Patricia Grimshaw and Russell McGregor, eds, Collisions of Cultures and Identities: Settlers and Indigenous Peoples (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2007), 32. 618 Fur 2006, 58. 619 Fur 2006, 59. 620 Henry Minde, “Assimilation of the Sámi – Implementation and Consequences,” Gáldu Čála: Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights 3 (2005): 1-33.
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policy had on constituting Sámi people. Sweden’s Sámi population retained many cultural
practices, but experienced significant marginalization within society. On the other hand,
Norwegianization resulted in the near elimination of Sámi language use in Norway by the late
20th century, which is particularly important because use of Sámi language at home is one of the
critical determinants for eligibility to vote in elections for the Sámi Parliament in Norway.621
The echoes of parallel theory, particularly the intimate connection between Sámi and reindeer
herding, persist in both positive and negative ways, ranging from: stereotypes and prejudices
based on essentialist conceptions of Sámi as herders and nomads; exclusive rights for Sámi to
herd reindeer; enshrinement of the traditional Sámi siida – a family-based reindeer herding social
unit – within the 2007 Norwegian Reindeer Herding Act; and the conception of what it means to
be Sámi, both to themselves and to the dominant populations within their societies.622 The
power of the Scandinavian kingdoms over Sámi was structural, institutional, and productive of
significant aspects of Sámi identity, and remains relevant to this day. It has also contributed to
how security is understood in northern Norway – discussed below – and understood by Sámi
themselves – discussed in Chapter 7.
6.2 Changing In/Security in the Norwegian High North
Like other Arctic regions, the Norwegian High North is a socially constructed space imbued with
a powerful national narrative and contested social and geographic boundaries. Norwegians
identify as a northern people, making the High North an important link in the chain connecting
them to their national myth as a hardy, peripheral, Viking-descended society. Once the modern
Scandinavian states were established, the northern areas became a frontier for exploration and
profit making rather than a theatre for conflict. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
621 Anne Julie Semb, “Sámi Self-Determination in the Making?” Nations and Nationalism 11, no. 4 (2005): 531-549. 622 Odd Terje Brantenberg, “The Alta-Kautokeino Conflict, Saami Reindeer Herding and Ethnopolitics,” in Jens Brøsted, Jens Dahl, Andrew Gray, Hans Christian Gulløv, Georg Henriksen, Jørgen Brøchner Jørgensen, and Inge Kleivan, eds, Native Power: The Quest for Autonomy and Nationhood of Indigenous Peoples (Bergen-Oslo-Stavanger-Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget AS, 1985), 33; Mikkel Nils Sara, “Siida and Traditional Sámi Reindeer Herding Knowledge,” The Northern Review 30 (2009): 153-178; International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry, “Sámi – Norway”. Accessed at http://reindeerherding.org/herders/sami-norway/ on November 11, 2015.
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Figure 7: Map of Norway and surrounding areas
Source: The Independent623
Norwegian Arctic explorers such as Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen received international
acclaim and were treated as international celebrities. Both men were prominent supporters of
Norwegian independence, and their Arctic voyages provided sources of national pride and
623 Accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/norway-s-wild-wonders-in-winter-from-northern-lights-and-dog-sledging-to-ice-beds-and-blissful-a6769356.html on March 8, 2016.
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inspiration for many Norwegians. In many ways, the Arctic as a source of national pride persists
today. As shown in Figure 7, geographically and geopolitically, Norway’s long Arctic coast and
adjacent seabed are defining national features; while a small country by land area, if marine
territory is included Norway is the 15th largest country in the world and the largest in Europe.
Moreover, its extensive coast makes it a key player in circumpolar politics pertaining to issues
such as maritime boundary delimitation, offshore resource extraction, and search and rescue.
During the Cold War, northern Norway was one of only two places a NATO ally shared a land
border with the Soviet Union, and its proximity to Russia, particularly in the Barents Sea, makes
Norway the most important interlocutor between Russia and the other Arctic states.
Despite Norway’s long Arctic history, the term “High North” was first used as a way of referring
to Norway’s Arctic territory only in 1973. It entered common usage in the 1980s as the English
equivalent for nordområdene, or “the northern areas”, and was adopted for Norwegian
government use around the turn of the millennium.624 It has since become widely employed as
“the political significance of the High North has risen to heights unheard of since the Cold
War.”625 Indeed, the High North is widely regarded as the single most important area of
Norwegian foreign policy, and is routinely identified as a core national interest with widespread
implications for other policy realms. Precisely what the High North encompasses, though, is
somewhat less clear. Its scope was first defined in specific terms in Norway’s 2006 High North
Strategy: “In geographical terms, it covers the sea and land, including islands and archipelagos,
stretching northwards from the southern boundary of Nordland County in Norway and eastwards
from the Greenland Sea to the Barents Sea and the Pechora Sea. In political terms, it includes
the administrative entities in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia that are part of the Barents
Co-operation.” The Strategy goes on to state that, “Norway’s High North policy overlaps with
the Nordic co-operation, our relations with the US and Canada through the Arctic Council, and
our relations with the EU.”626 While encompassing broad geographic and conceptual space, the
624 Odd Gunnar Skagestad, The ‘High North’: An Elastic Concept in Norwegian Arctic Policy (Lysaker: Fridtjof Nansen Institute, 2010). 625 Leif C. Jensen, “Seduced and Surrounded by Security: A Post-Structuralist Take on Norwegian High North Securitizing Discourses,” Cooperation and Conflict 48, no. 1 (2012): 81. 626 Norway 2006a, 13.
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High North and its related foreign policy domains were clearly defined. But this specific
definition shifted in 2009, when the same government announced that its policy
does not give a precise definition of what it reads into the expression ‘the High North’, nor whether it limits the High North to Norwegian territory. Substantial Norwegian interests are likely to be affected by developments wherever they take place in the circumpolar and Arctic region … Norway’s strategic High North policy exists in a certain geo-political environment … [and] wider international cooperation in the High North and circumpolar areas, and with Russia in particular, should prove beneficial for our part of the country as well.627
As a result of this shift, analysts suggest “the very precise geographical definition in the 2006
document has disappeared in favour of a vaguer and more open-ended understanding of the High
North.”628 Such an understanding allows Norway greater flexibility on Arctic issues that it
perceives as relevant to its national interests, including many that have been characterized as
threatening to Norway’s national security. By defining the High North as including but not
exclusive to Norwegian territory, Norway has also reserved the prerogative to address issues
beyond its borders within the framework of its High North Strategy, exemplifying the centrality
of the northern areas to Norway’s foreign policy goals and national security interests.
The remainder of this section examines the contemporary and recent historical meanings of
Arctic security for the Norwegian state, focusing particularly on the post-Cold War redefinition
of security in the High North and the new High North Initiative launched in the mid-2000s. It
suggests that despite the changes that have occurred in global and European politics over recent
decades, two issues remain the core pillars of Norway’s official understanding of security in the
Arctic: the enduring significance of Russia, and the extraction of Arctic resources, particularly
offshore hydrocarbons. To support this argument, this section draws on secondary analysis of
English-language scholarship on Norwegian foreign and security policy. In particular, it is
indebted to foreign policy and discourse analyses of original government documents and
Norwegian-language media conducted by Johan Eriksson,629 Leif Jensen,630 Leif Jensen and Pål
627 Norway 2009, translated in Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 442. 628 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 442. 629 Eriksson 1995. 630 Jensen 2012.
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Skedsmo,631 and Leif Jensen and Geir Hønneland.632 These and other sources support the
argument that security is the central conceptual frame for Norwegian state policy in the Arctic
region, and that Norwegian Arctic security interests have been constructed around the risk of
Russian instability and/or invasion, and the control and extraction of petroleum resources as a
cornerstone of the Norwegian economy and the maintenance of Norway’s welfare state.
6.2.1 A Post-Cold War Region
The end of the Cold War and decline in overt hostilities between the superpowers opened space
for a radical reconfiguration of security politics in northern Europe. Before the late 1980s,
interstate relations in the European Arctic were shaped, and limited, by the balance of power
between the East and West blocs. Wary of their geographic location between the Soviet Union
and Western Europe, and mindful of the destruction caused by Nazi occupation and Soviet
liberation during the Second World War, Norway, Sweden, and Finland pursued inter-related
foreign and security policies designed to maintain the “Nordic balance”. The objective was to
preserve the strategic balance between East and West and prevent northern Europe from
becoming the site of superpower conflict; thus, Norway (along with Denmark and Iceland)
joined NATO, Sweden remained neutral, and Finland was allied with the Soviet Union.633
Norway – as the only European NATO member to share a land border with the Soviet Union
proper – was thus directly affected by the international shift that allowed for greater openness
between Russia and its Nordic neighbours. In fact, reduced tensions in the Euro-Arctic region
were an integral catalyst for broader rapprochement between East and West, and helped facilitate
the end of the Cold War and normalization of European security relations.634
The pivotal moment was a speech given by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at
Murmansk in October 1987. Framed as part of perestroika, the Murmansk speech contained
631 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010. 632 Leif C. Jensen and Geir Hønneland, “Framing the High North: Public Discourses in Norway after 2000,” Acta Borealia 8, no. 1 (2011): 37-54. 633 Arne Olav Brundtland, “The Nordic Balance: Past and Present,” Cooperation and Conflict 1, no. 4 (1965): 30-63. 634 Åtland 2008.
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eight separate policy initiatives designed to reduce military tensions in the Arctic and foster
greater East-West trust and cooperation. Gorbachev shocked observers by announcing: “The
Soviet Union is in favour of a radical lowering of the level of military confrontation in the
region. Let the North of the globe, the Arctic, become a zone of peace. Let the North Pole be a
pole of peace. We suggest that all interested states start talks on the limitation and scaling down
of military activity in the North as a whole, in both Eastern and Western hemispheres.”635 While
several of its proposals were never enacted, notably denuclearization, nonetheless the Murmansk
speech “is a key discursive point of reference and stands as an epochal event in Norway’s
understanding of the High North.”636 By helping to desecuritize the Arctic as an arena of Cold
War competition, the speech opened space for the emergence of a cooperative regime based on
peaceful negotiations over interstate disputes and the principles of international law.637 Its
proposals for greater scientific and environmental cooperation, and for the political inclusion of
Indigenous peoples, directly contributed to the establishment of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region
and the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), the precursor to the Arctic Council.
Gorbachev’s call for the Arctic to become a “zone of peace” augured a powerful animating
vision for the institutional structures of the post-Cold War Arctic, in which all circumpolar states
routinely and emphatically iterate their commitment to a rule-governed regional order.
In spite of improved macro-security conditions wrought by the collapse of the Soviet Union,
post-Cold War Norwegian foreign policy remained focused on post-Soviet Russia. While
Norway had felt threatened by Russia’s strength throughout the 19th and 20th centuries,638 in the
immediate post-Soviet period it perceived its security to be threatened by Russian state
weakness. Throughout the early 1990s, “the general tendency [was] to emphasize environmental
hazards, ethnic conflicts and economic disparities as jeopardizing Norwegian security, while
military threats [were] downplayed,”639 but Norwegian officials also explicitly articulated new
635 Quoted in Åtland 2008, 290. 636 Jensen 2012, 88. 637 Åtland 2008. 638 Jens Petter Nielsen, “The Russia of the Tsar and North Norway: ‘The Russian Danger’ Revisited,” Acta Borealia 19, no. 1 (2002): 75-94. 639 Eriksson 1995, 266.
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threats associated with disorder on the Russian side of the border. Then-Foreign Minister Johan
Jørgen Holst made clear that “new security policy challenges” had emerged along the eastern
edge of Europe, namely a zone of unstable post-Soviet states, including Russia, that posed
economic, ecological, and political challenges to the rest of the continent.640 Citing Holst,
Jensen asserts that:
One of the mainstays of Norwegian policy on the High North – one which has remained consistent and stable since the Cold War – sought to ensure stability in northerly areas of crucial importance to Norway. Enabling de-securitization by means of de-militarization was, and still is, an explicit discursive component of Norway’s security policy. Much-stated reasons why Norway and Russia work together in the Barents region are precisely to offset military tensions, to counter the threats to the environment and to narrow the gap in living standards between the people living on the Norwegian and Russian sides of the region’s borders.641
The Soviet collapse posed new threats in the Euro-Arctic region, which remained “a core
concern in Norwegian security and welfare. The Norwegian government has repeatedly stressed
that, although the political climate has become much warmer, ‘the factors of insecurity have not
completed faded away’ … These security problems almost exclusively have to do with what is
going on in Russia, in Moscow and particularly in the northwestern parts of the country.”642 The
government was clear that cessation of superpower hostilities did not entail a commensurate
improvement in security threats for Norway and other European states proximate to the former
Soviet Union. In fact, Norwegian policymakers lamented the lack of stability and predictability
associated with the new security threats in the post-Soviet period compared to the Cold War.
Thus, in the early 1990s, as remains the case, “Norwegian action and foreign policy interests in
the European Arctic depend[ed] on relations at several levels with Russia.”643 According to
Eriksson, Norway’s three priorities for the Euro-Arctic region were: normalization, stabilization,
640 Quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 641 Jensen 2012, 81. 642 Eriksson 1995, 266; quoting UDI no. 9, 1994, 25. 643 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 440.
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and regionalization.644 While regionalization pertained to the establishment of more effective
Russo-European political institutions, “‘normalization’ concerns a qualitative change in relations
and perceptions, [and] ‘stabilization’ is more about dealing with the actual problems that directly
or indirectly threaten survival in the area. These threats include environmental pollution, the
military factor, the unstable political system and the huge social and economic problems [in
Russia].”645 Despite the greater military threat posed to Norway during the Cold War, it was
fairly predictable, leading Norwegian leaders to perceive the unpredictability of Russian political
developments in the early 1990s as more dangerous. Eriksson concludes that “it is, of course,
the internal Russian political development that is to be predicted, or at least in the northern part
of the country … [since] the [Norwegian] government considers the growing permeability of
state borders and the spill-over potential of environmental, criminal and social problems to be a
major challenge to Norwegian security.”646 Deep political engagement with Russia was seen as
a requirement for establishing security in the High North.
At the same time, officials were clear that Russia should principally be engaged through
multilateral contexts, as Norway’s relative size made bilateral negotiations unlikely to
successfully accomplish Norwegian priorities.647 Multilateral engagement was considered
crucial, but was stymied by the limited number of intergovernmental institutions in the Arctic of
which Russia was a member. Although there already existed bilateral institutions such as the
Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission and the Joint Norwegian-Russian Commission
on Environmental Protection, no institution had a broader political mandate or included
neighbouring states in the Barents or European Arctic regions. Achieving the Norwegian
priorities of stabilization and normalization clearly required active efforts in the third priority of
regionalization. In response, then-Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg organized a new forum
for regional cooperation. The Barents Euro-Arctic Region comprised Norway, Sweden, Finland,
and Russia, their relevant sub-state levels of government, and representatives of the region’s
644 Eriksson’s analysis is of Norwegian policymakers’ discourse, based on government speeches, official documents, and interviews: “The main source is the foreign ministry’s newsletter UD Informasjon (UDI), which renders speeches, statements, and press releases,” Eriksson 1995, 266. 645 Eriksson 1995, 275. 646 Eriksson 1995, 276. 647 UDI no. 39, 1993, 9; UDI no. 2, 1994, 16; cited in Eriksson 1995, 279.
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indigenous peoples, principally Sámi. Established in January 1993 through the Kirkenes
Declaration, the Barents framework established two-tier governance with both
intergovernmental (inter-state) and interregional (inter-substate) levels of decision-making,
demonstrating principles of regionalization and subsidiarity consistent with the broader European
integration project.
While its activities were primarily economic, security was a prime motive in driving Norwegian
interest in Barents regional cooperation. The lack of institutions had posed significant challenges
for Norwegian officials concerned over potential spillover effects from Russia, such that “even
before the Barents scheme was initialized, the Norwegian government allocated some NOK20 or
30 million to emergency aid for Northwestern Russia.”648 Thus, for the Norwegian government,
“the basic aim [was] to promote stability and thereby strengthen security by means of broad
cooperation in a large number of fields.”649 Though the Barents Regional Council consists of 12
specialized committees, Eriksson observes:
Security per se does not have a special committee. However, in view of the broad Norwegian definition of security, the issue-areas of the Barents scheme support the conclusion that security is treated as a dimension [of multiple policy areas]. In addition, a brief look at the issue-areas reveals that security in the Barents framework concerns such areas that traditionally are seen as ‘low’ politics, rather than ‘high’ politics of military security and national sovereignty.650
While significant, the Barents framework was only one institution through which Norway
approached post-Cold War security problems in the European Arctic; others included NATO,
which shifted its focus to facilitate cooperation with Russia, principally through its Partnership
for Peace programme.
Evident in Norway’s post-Cold War approach to security is its leading role in embracing a
widened conception of in/security in its foreign policy. As for many other states, the 1990s was
a decade of significant transition in Norwegian security and defence policy as the dramatic
changes in East-West relations precipitated new global developments such as the proliferation of
648 Eriksson 1995, 277. 649 UDI no. 4, 1994, 24; cited in Eriksson 1995, 275. 650 Eriksson 1995, 271.
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ethno-nationalist conflicts, resurgence of UN peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention, and
unconventional security issues related to the “dark side” of globalization, such as terrorism and
organized criminal networks trafficking illegal drugs, arms, and people.651 These new threats
necessitated an “extended security concept” that encompassed new policy and institutional
responses beyond established military instruments.652 According to then-prime minister Gro
Harlem Brundtland, “the new dangers require that we act according to a wider agenda than
NATO has offered so far – one that included economic and environmental aspects of stability
and cooperation.”653 Her foreign minister, Bjørn Tore Godal, expanded on the theme: “The
traditional concept of European security, defined in terms of East-West confrontation and with
eminence given to its military dimension, has lost much of its validity and relevance with the end
of the Cold War.”654 In 1998, Norway joined with Canada to form the Human Security
Network, an intergovernmental group committed to promoting the human security agenda of
civilian protection from sudden and chronic threats to their rights, safety, and lives.655
Norwegian foreign policy embraced a worldview whereby the security of Norway and
Norwegians was no longer solely threatened by the prospect of military attack by Russia, but was
endangered by various hazards located across different analytical sectors of security.
Norway embraced a widened conception of security, but also a deepened one examining referent
objects above and below the level of the sovereign state. Government officials and policy
statements all indicate that not only was Norway’s national security increasingly tied to regional
security of the European Union and other groupings of European states, but that within Norway
there existed distinct security interests and threats at the sub-state, inter-regional, and community
levels, particularly in the High North.656 The Barents initiative was expressly framed around
expanding and democratizing foreign and security policymaking to include a wider number of
651 Ramesh Thakur and Jorge Heine, eds, The Dark Side of Globalization (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2011). 652 UDI no. 5, 1994, 30; UDI no. 30, 1994, 17; quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 653 UDI no 39, 1993, 9; quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 654 UDI no. 4, 1994, 19; quoted in Eriksson 1995, 267. 655 UNDP, Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security (New York: United Nations Development Program, 1994), 23. 656 Eriksson 1995, 267.
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sub-state actors. According to former Foreign Minister Holst, post-Cold War “foreign policy is
no longer simply a question of relations between states. It is also a question of interactions
between societies. It is also a question about managing common problems. Therefore it is
natural that foreign policy becomes more democratically rooted, that it reflects wider
commitment and a wider distribution of responsibility.”657 The shift in Norwegian policy
particularly emphasized security at the community level, recognizing the distinctiveness of
security concerns in northern Norway vis-à-vis the south and the greater proximity to the new
threats emerging from inside Russia. Within the new regional context, “the official idea of the
Barents organization is that local and regional actors should have operative roles, while the
central governments are responsible for the setting-up of general frameworks and allocation of
financial resources.”658 Thus, for instance, it was county-level governments in Troms and
Finnmark that administered most of the Norwegian government’s NOK30 million in emergency
aid to northwestern Russia, as they were on the front line of the emerging challenges. But the
focus on community level in/security also opened room to identify policies and priorities
emanating from Oslo as threatening to the particular interests and concerns of those living in the
High North. According to one analyst at the time, “stability in the Arctic, even in the security
policy sense, is also dependent on how the local population experiences its relationship to the
central authorities and, moreover, to the outside world.”659 Scholars and officials were aware
that post-Cold War security in the Arctic would be less affected by state-to-state interactions than
by localized and regional threats, and forces and agents originating outside the Arctic.
The degree of security deepening in Norwegian security policy should not, however, be
overstated. The Norwegian government continued to exercise significant control over its sub-
state representatives within the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, raising doubts over how much
autonomy its northern counties actually had and what extent they contributed to the formation of
Norwegian foreign policy. Though lauded by some local officials, others were less enthused
about the expansion of the central government’s understanding of security into new areas that
potentially encroached on what had previously been local areas of authority. For instance,
657 Quoted in Eriksson 1995, 270. 658 Eriksson 1995, 268. 659 Hannevold 1994, 234.
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though welcomed by some Sámi leaders, others claimed that by reducing Sámi to just one more
set of actors in a complex and multi-level political region, the Barents integration project
reflected “the final step in the colonization of Sápmi.”660 Official statements maintained a strong
reservation for the importance of the national role within the new security policy architecture,
and “the central government is clearly perceived as the one where ultimate, supreme power is
located.”661 Thus, there are contradictory tendencies in the Norwegian approach to post-Cold
War security: the state widened the actors involved in security, but the effect of constructing new
and diverse issues as security-relevant had the reverse effect of bringing them under the ambit of
the central government. This risk appears in the close link between Norway’s three High North
foreign policy priorities; according to Eriksson, “the empirical material is not always
straightforward, but it is clear enough for conclusions to be drawn that behind ‘normalization’,
‘stabilization’, and ‘regionalization’, one finds the imperative goal of security … Security is not
the only objective, but seemingly the most basic one.”662 The expansion of security into new
political areas had the effect of centralizing power within the state while impeding normal
political engagement around certain issues.
6.2.2 A New High North Initiative
Despite these changes, until the late 1990s Norwegian national security policy remained oriented
around defending against conventional military attack from the east. A 1998 defence policy
Green Paper maintained that “over the long term the danger of invasion cannot be ruled out …
The government therefore seeks to maintain a capacity to repel invasions over a limited time in
one region of the country at a time.”663 However, by the turn of the millennium diminished
Russian power, the eastward expansion of NATO, and the emergence of new security issues had
largely assuaged this concern. The new security situation, particularly the primacy of
660 Quoted in Eriksson 1995, 270. 661 Eriksson 1995, 268. 662 Eriksson 1995, 273. 663 Ministry of Defence, Guidelines for the Armed Forces and Development in the Years Ahead 1999-2002 (Oslo, 1998). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 85.
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unconventional threats emanating from Russia, was articulated by Eldbjørg Løwer in the defence
minister’s annual address to the Oslo Military Society:
The effective defence of Norway [is] still … of crucial importance, but it needs to be adapted to a radically changed international situation. In the 1990s, Norway, we said, no longer faced a military threat, but developments in security policy are informed by uncertainty. The general direction of security policy today is unpredictable, but it could be just as ‘dangerous’ as the confrontations between superpowers during the Cold War. Russia’s constrained economic and social situation has gone, however, hand in hand with other dangers and risk to security in the North. The destruction of the environment, social misery, [and] organized criminality are prevalent on the Russian side of the border; they could destroy the social fabric and destabilize Norway’s immediate neighbourhood.664
As with other states that widened their foreign and security policies during the 1990s, the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 abruptly disrupted Norwegian national security discourse.
The post-9/11 context affected perceptions of threats from non-state violent actors, while
strengthening the trend away from seeing Russia as the principal threat. Moreover, the attacks
occurred at a unique moment in Norwegian politics, with parliamentary elections having taken
place only the day before. New defence minister Kristin Krohn Devold explained the
significance in her 2002 Oslo Military Society address:
The ripple effects of the terrorist attack have spread around the globe. The USA is leading the world in a new war against terrorism, in which Norway is also participating … We went to the ballot on September 10 to elect a new parliament. A few hours later, the political agenda changed beyond recognition … September 11 presents us with numerous challenges on how we configure and use our Armed Forces … In the present security situation today, there is little cause for Norway to see Russia as a likely threat … Continued stable development in our neighbour and increased readiness to work together [with Russia] after September 11 will benefit Norway’s security interests.665
664 Ministry of Defence, “Our Defence in an International Perspective,” Defence Minister’s Annual Speech (Oslo Military Society: January 10, 2000). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 85-86. 665 Ministry of Defence, “The Government’s Defence Policy Challenges and Priorities,” Defence Minister’s Annual Speech (Oslo Military Society, January 7 2002). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 86.
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Despite the impact of the 9/11 attacks on security discourses around the globe, for Norway the
immediate policy effects were limited. Having already widened its understanding of security,
the response to the emerging Global War on Terror was a renewed centralization of foreign
policy decision-making in the central government compared to the diffusion of actors during the
1990s. Jensen suggests that Norwegian participation in the Global War on Terror, particularly its
involvement in Afghanistan through Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO’s International
Security Assistance Force, resulted in a top-down, state-centric conception of in/security
concerned with a diversity of possible threats.666 Put another way, Norway’s approach to
in/security was wide but not deep, focused on both conventional and unconventional threats but
retaining the state and its core interests as the referent object of security policy. Combined with
the Barents initiative, these policy shifts “can be read as the beginning of the end of the
hegemonic discourse on the threat of invasion in Norwegian security thinking and as the lowly
beginnings of the expansion of the security concept in the Norwegian High North debate.”667
The importance of the High North continued to grow despite the new focus on global terrorism,
and the most pressing security concerns in Norway post-9/11 resembled those pre-9/11: disorder
and spillover effects from northwestern Russia. In fact, the prevailing Arctic security concern
was substantively the same to that which Norwegian authorities had struggled with for years:
nuclear waste in northwest Russia and the Barents Sea. The disastrous accidental sinking of the
Russian nuclear-powered submarine Kursk in 2000 highlighted the challenges of managing
nuclear issues in post-Soviet Russia, especially since the vessel was only recovered with the
assistance of the Norwegian military. Norwegian officials had been concerned for years over
insufficiently demobilized and secured deposits of nuclear waste in and around Murmansk, a
message reiterated by Foreign Minister Jan Petersen in his 2004 address to the Storting
(Norway’s Parliament):
There exists in our immediate vicinity nuclear energy along with a great number of demobilized nuclear submarines, large stocks of spent reactor fuel and radioactive waste in sold and liquid form. There are hundreds of lighthouses along the coast of the Kola Peninsula run by inadequately secured and highly radioactive sources. We are
666 Jensen 2012, 87. 667 Jensen 2012, 86.
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confronted by a threat to the environment and security; it is obviously in our interests therefore to help solve the problems.668
In spite of the major shift in the global security landscape, regional issues in the Barents
continued to be the single greatest source of concern for Norwegian officials, and was the foreign
policy focus of both progressive and conservative governments after 2001.
In March 2003, the Conservative-led government established an expert commission to examine
Norwegian High North policy. Its report, the White Paper Mot nord! (Northwards!), was the
first in a series of documents outlining a comprehensive set of regional policies. The same
government later produced a Green Paper, Muligheter og utfordringer i nord (Possibilities and
Challenges in the North), which further expanded northern foreign policy. In autumn 2005, the
Conservatives were defeated by the so-called Red-Green coalition led by the Labour Party’s Jens
Stoltenberg, but the centrality of the High North endured. The three-party Soria-Moria
Declaration, which laid out the new coalition’s governing priorities, further elevated the
importance of the High North and reinforced the interrelated nature of northern policy issues:
The Government regards the Northern Areas as Norway’s most important strategic target area in the years to come. The Northern Areas have gone from being a security policy department area to being an energy policy power centre and an area that faces great environmental policy challenges … The handling of Norwegian economic interests, environmental interests and security policy interests in the North are to be given high priority and are to be seen as being closely linked.669
In addition to indicating the government’s intentions to expand the offshore petroleum sector in
the Barents region, combat climate change, and further deepen cooperation with Russia, the
Soria-Moria Declaration signalled the intention to create a holistic strategy for the northern
areas, which was released in 2006 as the Norwegian Government Strategy for the High North
(Regjeringens nordområdestrategi), hereafter High North Strategy. This was followed in 2009
by an interim report, New Building Blocks in the North, laying out the next steps in Norwegian
668 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Foreign Minister Jan Petersen’s Report to the Storting,” (January 27, 2004). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 87. 669 Norway, The Soria-Moria Declaration on International Policy (Oslo: Office of the Prime Minister, 2006b). Available at https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/the-soria-moria-declaration-on-internati/id438515/.
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northern policy. Together, this high-level attention indicates “the European Arctic is at the head
of the Norwegian political agenda in a way that has not been since the days of the Cold War.”670
According to the High North Strategy, the overarching goal for Norway’s Arctic policy is to
“create sustainable growth and development in the High North.”671 This is similar to how
Norway’s Arctic objectives were expressed by the previous government three years earlier,
suggesting significant continuity in the official formulation of High North policy.672 Several
studies find that policy interest in the High North was driven by the direct involvement of
officials at the highest levels of government, notably former foreign minister and current Labour
Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre, widely regarded as the chief architect of the High North
Initiative.673 High North policy is also exceedingly diverse in its focus and comprehensive in its
vision of the inter-relationship between different policy areas: “The Norwegian approach ranges
across issues as diverse as safeguarding the livelihoods, traditions, and cultures of indigenous
peoples in the High North, promoting people-to-people cooperation, and developing policy on
future petroleum activities in the Barents Sea.”674 But despite extensive discursive mobilization
around these themes, there have been limited material impacts of these new initiatives on the
ground. The Norwegian government has retained many of the same High North priorities that
have existed since the early 1990s, if not earlier.675 What is different, however, is the routine
framing of formerly political issues as related to security, in general, and Arctic security, in
particular: “It was in 2004 that, according to the textual evidence, official Norwegian security
thinking on the High North underwent a substantial change, with ‘security talk’ becoming a
normalized and necessary ingredient of the High North discourse.”676 Thus, while northern
Norway has many issues not traditionally relevant to national or regional security, these have
become increasingly securitized, such that “in the public High North discourse since 2005, it has
670 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 439. 671 Norway 2006a, 7. 672 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 442-443. 673 Jensen and Hønneland 2011, 44; Jensen 2012, 88-89. 674 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 444. 675 Jensen and Hønneland 2011, 44. 676 Jensen 2012, 88.
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become increasingly difficult to be heard unless the word ‘security’ is uttered in the course of
one’s reasoning and argumentation.”677 Northern Norway has become one of the most
securitized regions in the circumpolar region, with security operating as a powerful discourse
that elevates Arctic issues within the hierarchy of political importance while simultaneously
legitimizing state intervention in those areas because they are discursively linked to the highest
national interest.
6.3 Identifying Norway’s Arctic Security Priorities
Two core themes underpin both current and historical state understandings of security in the
Norwegian High North: Russia and natural resources. Although recently reiterated as part of the
new High North initiative, both issues have been intimately connected to dominant constructions
of the Norwegian national interest for centuries, since before it achieved independence. In this
respect, the central objectives of Norway’s Arctic policy appear constant: keeping the Russians
out of its northern territory while extracting natural resources from that territory, with both goals
depicted as vital to the continued survival and prosperity of the Norwegian state. Ironically,
Norway shares key Arctic policy features with Russia, including “four nodal points that the
Norwegian and Russian foreign policy discourses on the European Arctic evolve around[:] …
energy, security, the economy and the environment.”678 All four nodes are closely
interconnected in High North discourse such that not only is the area perceived as essential for
Norway’s national wellbeing and national security, these areas of public policy have been
securitized within broader Norwegian political discourse.
6.3.1 Fearing the Bear
Undoubtedly, the most persistent security issue in northern Norway is its proximity to Russia.
The Russo-Norwegian security relationship continues to evolve, and, though improved from its
677 Jensen 2012, 92. 678 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 447.
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Cold War nadir, has deteriorated significantly as a result of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea
and support for armed separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine. Subsequently, Russia, NATO, and
the EU have increased military activities in northern Europe, and all five Nordic states have
announced unprecedented military cooperation, as well as expanding cooperation with the
neighbouring Baltic states.679 Norway’s military establishment has quickly reinvigorated much
of the High North defence apparatus that became moribund in the post-Cold War period due to
the desecuritization of relations with Russia.680 Norwegian officials have been quick to dismiss
prospects of invasion but emphasize caution about Russia’s actions and scepticism of its
intentions. The new situation has been described as a return to the “new old normal” by the
general in command of Norway’s military headquarters – itself located in the city of Bodø in the
High North – and the current defence minister, Ine Eriksen Soreide, has stated that “Russia has
created uncertainty about its intentions, so there is, of course, unpredictability.”681 Though they
fall outside the core period under consideration in this dissertation, these developments indicate
the persistent centrality of Russia to Norwegian conceptions of security, both nationally and in
the High North. Though how Russia has been understood to threaten Norway’s security interests
has varied over time, it has never ceased being the foremost issue for Norwegian officials.
Indeed, the concept of Russian unpredictability has recent precursors in Norwegian security
discourse. Two core objectives of Norwegian High North policy in the 1990s – stabilization and
normalization – have focused on managing security issues associated with the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russian polity. Stabilization meant promoting
predictable change given rapid and dramatic instability across the unravelling Soviet empire,
while normalization fostered the idea of desecuritizing relations between post-Soviet Russia and
the Scandinavian states, particularly Norway as a member of NATO. Since improved relations
with Russia clearly served Norway’s national security interests, normalization meant restoring
the non-conflictual, relationship of commercial and political interaction across the Russo-
679 Tore Andre Kjetland Fjeldsbø, “The Nordic Countries Extends Military Cooperation,” Nora Region Trends (April 13, 2014). Accessed at http://www.noraregiontrends.org/news/news-single/article/the-nordic-countries-extends-military-cooperation/87/ on June 4, 2015. 680 Andrew Higgins, “Norway Reverts to Cold War Mode as Russian Air Patrols Spike,” The New York Times (April 1, 2015). Accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/world/europe/a-newly-assertive-russia-jolts-norways-air-defenses-into-action.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0 on June 4, 2015. 681 Quoted in Higgins 2015.
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Norwegian borders. So, for instance, “as part of the preparations for the Barents initiative,
Norwegian historians were assigned to write reports on the common history of the Euro-Arctic
area, with specific emphasis on the pre-Soviet Norwegian-Russian Pomor trade. The explicit
motive was to legitimize the Barents Region as a reincarnation of pre-Soviet, or even pre-state,
relations.”682 In the early 1990s, “Norway want[ed] to see the 70 years of Euro-Arctic division
as a ‘historical parenthesis’,”683 a sentiment echoed a decade later when Foreign Minister Støre
also depicted the Cold War as an aberration interrupting Norway’s “normal” relations with its
Russian neighbour: “It used to be the case that security policy and strategic military balance
pushed every other approach to the side. But historically we ought perhaps to think of the Cold
War as a parenthesis, for the Iron Curtain in the North stands in contrast to commercial and
social relations down the centuries.”684 Confronted with changing political contexts globally and
within Russia, Norwegian leaders sought to reshape the bilateral relationship in a cooperative
fashion, which they suggested better reflected the peaceful interactions of an earlier time.
However, Norwegian efforts to recreate peaceful relations with Russia invoked an idealized
history that downplayed the enduring role of Russia as the Other endangering the interests and
sovereignty of the Scandinavian states. Far from the Cold War being an “historical parenthesis”,
the Russo-Scandinavian border has long been a site of deep tension and mistrust between, on the
one hand, Norway and Sweden associated with the liberal European order, and, on the other,
Russian-centred polities representing an Orthodox, Asiatic, and autocratic tradition. This divide
reaches back at least to the early 19th century, when the loss of Finland by Sweden to Russia
divided Finnish speakers on all sides of the borders. This created permanent Finnish-speaking
minorities within Sweden and Norway who were marginalized in part over fears they would
serve as a fifth column for Russia imperial expansion: “The Finnish minority and the
expansionist aspirations of the Russian empire were seen as different sides of the same coin.”685
These concerns were fuelled by Russian media, which alleged concern over the treatment of the
682 Eriksson 1995, 273. 683 Eriksson 1995, 274. 684 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “An Ocean of Possibilities – A Responsible Policy for the High North,” Speech by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2005). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 89. 685 Rodell 2009, 72-73.
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Finnish minority: “Russian press headlines like ‘Oppressed Finns in Norway’ were recurrent,”
and were viewed by some Norwegians as laying justifications for potential Russian
aggression.686 Through the 19th century, depictions of Russia as expansionary and militarily
aggressive were ubiquitous in Scandinavian discourse, and “the Russian will to expand
westwards was considered a self-evident, almost natural, process.”687 This belief had important
political consequences, including motivating Norway to accept the suzerainty of its more
powerful Scandinavian neighbours. For instance, Sweden used fear of “the Russian danger” to
convince Norway to accept forcible union as part of Sweden-Norway following the latter’s brief
independence in 1814.688 Sweden-Norway also joined an alliance with Britain and France
against Russia during the Crimean War, though it took no part in the hostilities and maintained
neutral relations with the Russian Empire. As a result of this complex history, “Norwegian
attitudes towards Russia were to a large extent formed in a Norwegian-Russian-Swedish
triangle.”689
Fear of Russia resulted in significant emphasis being placed on defensibility against invasion.
Following Sweden-Norway’s union in 1814, Swedish authorities decommissioned and
demolished many border fortifications between the two countries that had defended Norway
against Swedish attack and supported Danish-Norwegian assaults on Sweden over the preceding
centuries. As a result, from the 1820s onwards the Swedish-Russian border, along with the
shorter Norwegian-Russian border further north, effectively formed the common boundary
separating a new Scandinavian “pluralistic security community” from their common Russian
foe.690 Over the course of the 19th century, military infrastructure increased as “the borderlands
between Sweden-Norway and Finland-Russia were ascribed meaning and reinforced as
strategically important.”691 Northern industrial and commercial hubs were felt to be particularly
686 Rodell 2009, 78-79. 687 Rodell 2009, 72. 688 Nielsen 2002, 77. 689 Nielsen 2002, 77. 690 Roald Berg “The Nineteenth Century Norwegian-Swedish Border: Imagined Community or Pluralistic Security System?” Journal of Northern Studies 1 (2009), 94. 691 Rodell 2009, 70.
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vulnerable; the construction of a railway linking the rich iron mines of northern Sweden with the
Norwegian port at Narvik necessitated a secret Norwegian-Swedish agreement for its joint
defence in case of Russian attack, despite the feelings of Norwegian nationalism prevalent at the
time.692 Eventually, fear of Russian aggression led to the construction of an enormous
fortification resembling “a Nordic inland Gibraltar” at the village of Boden, 1100 km north of
Stockholm.693 Among the most expensive military undertakings in Scandinavian history, the
fortress at Boden indicates the degree of popular and political concern over potential Russian
militarism, and would become an enduring symbol of Scandinavian military capability and
political independence. The decision to construct fortifications at Boden was taken in 1900,
when Norway and Sweden were still joined in a political union; it was thus designed to protect
both countries from Russian aggression. Although it entered service in 1907, after Norway had
achieved independence, the fortress remained a hub for Cold War military activity against the
Soviet Union, and only closed in 1988 as the Cold War was drawing to a close.694
The Scandinavians perceived the Russian threat as targeting the natural resources of their
northern provinces, and the fortress at Boden was explicitly justified in terms of defending
Sweden-Norway’s control over northern mineral wealth. An anonymous observer at the time,
writing in one of many pamphlets pressuring authorities to invest in border defence, claimed “a
fortified and unconquered Boden … [would be] the key to the inexhaustible ore fields of
Gellivara and Luosavaera [in northern Scandinavia].”695 Fear that Russia coveted Scandinavia’s
resources reflects the deep social and economic disparities on either side of the border. Though
Russia was larger and more powerful, northern Scandinavian was far more prosperous. By the
late 1800s, there were still only 700 inhabitants of Murmansk, the largest Russian town on the
Kola Peninsula, whereas Norwegian Finnmark had four major towns with over 10,000 residents,
and supported “trade, magazines, doctors, clergy, mobility, post offices, telegraphs and steam
ships,” compared to the description at the time of the “lawless” Russian north as “one vast
desert.” The result is that “the two sides of the northernmost parts of the Kola peninsula
692 Berg 2009, 97. 693 Rodell 2009, 70. 694 Rodell 2009, 84. 695 Quoted in Rodell 2009, 81.
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represent two radically different forms of societies. Sweden-Norway represented civilisation;
Finland-Russia manifested the opposite.”696 Thus, for at least two hundred years the defence of
northern Norway (and Sweden) against the threat of Russian aggression has been understood as
vital not only to territorial integrity and sovereignty, but to the prosperity of the Norwegian
national economic interest, as well. Indeed, the pursuit and subsequent defence of natural
resource wealth is an historical constant, and has been at the core of the national interests and
security considerations of Norwegian rulers.
6.3.2 Northern Riches and the Welfare State
It is therefore unsurprising that natural resources are the second core theme in the official
Norwegian understanding of security in the High North. Forestry, fisheries, and mineral wealth
motivated early Scandinavian settlement in Sápmi, and defence of those resources catalyzed
intra-Scandinavian conflict, before leading to cooperation to counter potential Russian claims.
More recently, Norwegian policymakers have shifted their focus to another resource perceived as
fundamental to both the High North and the broader national interest: petroleum. Since its
inception in the 1970s, the Norwegian energy industry has relied on heavy support from
government for the development of offshore hydrocarbon deposits. The state provided the bulk
of funding for the initial development of offshore oil and gas in the North Sea, making it for a
time the single largest site for oil investment and extraction in the world.697 As North Sea
production has declined, Norwegian leaders have looked further north as High North energy
extraction has become an increasingly attractive option for sustaining Norway’s economic
prosperity. Given the greater geopolitical dimension of the High North compared to southern
Norwegian waters, energy has shifted from being primarily a domestic and economic issue to
one firmly framed as part of foreign and security policy. As stated in the High North Strategy:
“The guidelines on Norwegian oil and gas policy are well established. At the same time,
Norway must be capable of understanding and dealing with the more central position of energy-
696 Rodell 2009, 76. 697 Berit Kristoffersen and Stephen Young, “Geographies of Security and Statehood in Norway’s ‘Battle of the North’,” Geoforum 41, no. 4 (2010): 579.
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related questions in the exercise of our foreign and security policy.”698 The challenges for
Norway are not related to the regulation or management of the extractive process, per se, but
rather to the context within which petroleum development in the High North is being pursued.
Over the past decade, offshore petroleum reserves in the High North have been framed
principally in terms of the energy and economic security of the Norwegian state, and to a lesser
extent that of Europe: “The official Norwegian discourse clearly rides on an energy plot, and on
the perceptions of the European Arctic as a future petroleum province of regional and even
global significance.”699 This has been driven by obvious enthusiasm among Norwegian
officials; a major Norwegian financial newspaper reported “foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre
talks so incessantly about oil and the High North, he wouldn’t look amiss in a boiler suit and
hard hat.”700 According to former defence minister Anne–Grete Strøm-Erichsen, “energy
supplies and energy security have become security policy, which explains why increasing
international interest in the High North as an emerging energy region should come as no
surprise.”701 A former minister for petroleum and energy, Ola Borten Moe, was referred to as
“Oil-Ola” due to his support for energy development.702 In foreign and defence policy
documents of all kinds, securing and developing northern energy reserves is identified as the
core objective of the High North initiative and as integral to Norway’s national interest.
Reporting to the Storting in 2007, the Ministry of Defence noted: “In the space of a very short
time, energy security has become a leading policy issue. The need to ensure long-term, stable
energy supplies is of vital concern to many countries. Norway’s position as a major and reliable
exporter of power increases the international importance of Norway and contiguous areas. The
Government will engage in a long-term policy to ensure internationally stable energy supplies
and safe transport routes.”703 The policy document guiding post-Cold War and post-9/11
698 Norway 2006, 10. 699 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 448. 700 Quoted in Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 443. 701 Anne–Grete Strøm-Erichsen, Nordlys, 26 September 2007. Quoted in Jensen 2012, 90. 702 Berit Kristoffersen and Brigt Dale, “Post-Petroleum Security in Lofoten: How Identity Matters,” Arctic Review on Law and Politics 5, no. 2 (2014): 204. 703 Ministry of Defence, Proposition to the Storting no. 1 2007-2008 2007 (Oslo: 2007). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 93.
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military restructuring is also explicit that “our strategic position is enhanced by the natural
resources we manage. Oil and gas on the Norwegian continental shelf are of major strategic
importance to other states.”704 Minister Støre often discussed the link between energy and
security in the High North, including the importance of peaceful cooperation for resource
development and its primacy over other policy areas:
Today, it is the energy question that is pressing all other issues to one side, altering the perspectives – not only those of Norway and our Russian neighbours, but of anyone with an interest in energy production, supply security and climate and environmental challenges … Energy is changing how the concept of geopolitics is understood. An industrial country which is unable to secure for itself a steady supply of energy will face considerable problems … If the development of a predictable framework around energy development fails, this region will lose its main assets, stability, transparency and peaceful progress.705
Norwegian officials saw energy extraction as intimately connected to the new security situation,
supplanting the earlier focus on defence against Russian invasion. A broader approach to
national security is identified as necessary because of both the growing importance of energy
resources and possible threats to the energy sector. Such threats include interruption of supply
and possible inter-state competition over resource deposits, which is coded reference to Russian
challenges in the Barents region. Moreover, ensuring energy extraction is identified as the new
context within which Norwegian security interests in the High North are to be assessed:
Norway’s security situation is characterized by a broader and more complex risk assessment, in which a comprehensive existential threat has been supplanted by uncertainty and unpredictability about the security challenges we could face. This also applies to potential security challenges in Norway’s immediate vicinity, where the strategic importance of the High North and resource management over immense stretches of sea provided central parameters for Norwegian security and defence policy.706
704 Ministry of Defence, Restructuring the Armed Forces, 2002-2005 (Oslo, 2001). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 86. 705 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “An Ocean of Possibilities – A Responsible Policy for the High North,” Speech by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Tromsø: University of Tromsø, 2005). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 89. 706 Ministry of Defence, “Continuing the Modernisation of the Armed Forces,” Proposition to the Storting no. 42 2003-2004 (Oslo: 2004). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 87-88; emphasis added.
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Among industrialized economies, the context for linking energy, particularly hydrocarbons, and
security is usually concern over supply and declining global production.707 In Norway, however,
as with other petroleum producing states, energy security is often employed as a proxy for the
contributions of petroleum extraction to the broader economy. Policymakers’ focus on
expanding extraction in the Barents region is driven by concern that “oil production in Norway
peaked in 2001 and has since declined by around 30%,” with the rate of decline exceeding earlier
estimates by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and the International Energy Agency.708 The
economic challenge of addressing declining petroleum production is stark; as of 2010, there were
“about a thousand producing oil and gas wells [in Norwegian waters]. With an anticipated
production decrease of about 20%, about 200 new producing wells will have to be drilled each
year in order to maintain a relatively stable production level, a target that even the Petroleum
Directorate admits is ‘not very realistic’.”709 Expanding drilling in the less developed Barents
region is seen as the only viable way to maintain production levels, and thus perpetuate the
energy economy, which is particularly important given the unique configuration of energy
revenues and social democratic society in Norway.
From the outset, there have been strong ties between Norwegian oil production and maintenance
of the welfare state. This is enshrined in the “10 Oil Commandments’” passed by the Storting in
1971, which paved the way for the establishment of Statoil as a state-owned oil company by
unanimous parliamentary vote in 1972. The public nature of the Norwegian energy sector has
led to a powerful government- and industry-propagated narrative that “‘what is good for the oil
industry is good for Norway’ … This link has frequently been endorsed by government officials,
who have pointed to the importance of oil and revenues in establishing one of the most
comprehensive welfare systems in the world.”710 For instance, in 2007 the state’s net rents from
the petroleum industry comprised approximately 31% of total government revenues, and are
“seen as an indispensable part of the government’s national pension fund.”711 The so-called
707 See Benjamin Sovacool, ed, The Routledge Handbook of Energy Security (London: Routledge, 2011). 708 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580. 709 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580 710 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 208. 711 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580
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“Norwegian petroleum fairy tale” has become a widely used metaphor for the supposedly
virtuous relationship between oil rents, welfare provision, and inter-generational justice.
However, the national consensus around the benefits of petroleum extraction has become
increasingly strained over proposed expansion into more remote and ecologically sensitive
regions, particularly those with local economies based on vulnerable renewable resources. The
most prominent of these regions, Lofoten-Vesterålen-Senja (LoVeSe), has an estimated 3 billion
barrels of recoverable oil located offshore but has existed under a petroleum moratorium since
2001.712 One study of local attitudes towards petroleum development in LoVeSe found that
despite similar levels of support as other Norwegians, and a recent increase in support for the
proposition that opening up new areas for oil and gas development in the North is a “prerequisite
for the maintenance of the welfare state in the future,” opposition to drilling in LoVeSe remains
significant, and is credited with stopping government plans to commence drilling.713 The
authors suggest that debates over oil and gas threaten many Norwegians’ identity by calling into
question the environmental cost of Norwegian national prosperity and challenging the
sustainability of the welfare state. However, ongoing government efforts to secure support for
offshore extraction have made LoVeSe the front line in the battle over expanded petroleum
extraction and a key focal point in articulations of energy security in the High North.
Driven by such challenges to the dominant national interest, the extent to which Norway
prioritizes petroleum development is evident in collusion between government and industry to
maximize public support for expanded hydrocarbon extraction. Perhaps the most prominent
example of this is the establishment of Konkraft, a high level forum “with the objective of
developing joint strategies between industry and state representatives to make the Norwegian
shelf more globally ‘competitive’. For the industry that means accessing ‘prospective acreage’,
primarily the unexplored hydrocarbon deposits in the Barents Sea and the [LoVeSe] region in
particular.”714 Konkraft facilitates quarterly closed-door meetings between politicians and
industry chaired by the Minister of Petroleum and Energy, and has served as the venue through
712 For discussion of the arguments behind the moratorium see Arve Misund and Erik Olsen, “Lofoten-Vesterålen: For Cod and Cod Fisheries, but not for Oil?” ICES Journal of Marine Science 70, no. 4 (2013): 722–725. 713 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 204-208. 714 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 580.
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which state officials provide information on government policy and upcoming decisions. A 2008
documentary on the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation revealed that the senior Konkraft
bureaucrat working in the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy “had secret meetings to advise
[industry] on how to run an effective lobby campaign. For example, he advised them to improve
their environmental image and concentrate on influencing mayors in northern Norway and
politicians in Parliament.”715 Komkraft illustrates the access enjoyed by industry to the highest
levels of the Norwegian state. Given their shared interest in expanding fossil fuel extraction
while maintaining a pro-environmental image, “the state is not circumscribed by transnational oil
companies but is enrolled as an active participant in efforts to make new hydrocarbon fields
accessible.”716 The state has expended considerable effort to encourage and sustain public
support for the energy sector, particularly expanded operations in the High North, even as
various actors have challenged the sustainability of the “petroleum fairy tale”.
Undeterred, the Norwegian government has attempted to naturalize the prospect of offshore
drilling in the High North, including LoVeSe. At least four tactics of “strategic advancement”
have been deployed as a means of increasing the area open to offshore drilling while minimizing
or deflecting criticism of the local and global environmental impacts of the Norwegian energy
industry.717 These tactics include, first, opening new offshore areas incrementally, starting with
the least ecologically sensitive but reserving the possibility for later expansion into areas that are
currently protected. Maps produced by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate have gradually
included new areas within the Barents petroleum region that were previously omitted or
considered as environmentally protected areas.718 Second, support for petroleum development in
the Barents was encouraged by emphasizing natural gas deposits rather than oil, notably the
Snow White (Snøhvit) liquefied natural gas (LNG) project near Hammerfest that was the first of
715 NRK Brennpunkt. “Spillet om oljen [Game about oil],” Documentary (March 22nd, 2008). Available at www.nrk.no/brennpunkt. 716 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 581. 717 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 212-213. 718 Norwegian Petroleum Directorate 2014. Maps available at http://www.npd.no/en/Maps/Fact-maps/.
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its kind above the Arctic Circle. Described as “the future of the European energy supply,”719 the
Snow White project had been touted as a cleaner, next generation form of hydrocarbon
extraction that would lower tailpipe emissions and capture and store carbon at the point of
extraction. But the project has been plagued by problems since production began in 2006, with
numerous challenges related to both gas extraction and higher than expected carbon emissions
causing many to question its viability as a model for the Norwegian energy sector.720 Third, in
light of the Snow White project, government emphasized onshore economic benefits in related
sectors, particularly economic ripple effects of future LNG projects. Following the high cost and
poor environmental outcomes associated with Snow White, however, several LNG and related
carbon and capture projects were subsequently cancelled. Fourth, government emphasized the
role and growth of future technologies in making it possible to extract petroleum from
ecologically sensitive areas. Taken together, this strategy, “while acknowledging the
vulnerability and uniqueness of the areas in question, has the important aim of excluding the
possibility of not drilling at all, as it is sought ontologically placed [sic] within the realm of
petro-politics – and not, for instance, environmental politics or a more general framework of
multiple resource management.”721 As discussed in Chapter 3, exclusion is a central function of
securitization; the successful construction of a political issue as a security issue has the effect of
removing it from the realm of normal political debate and reserving a particular role for
government in the pursuit of those goals considered to be so important they affect the security of
the state as a whole. Thus, the framing of the High North in terms of “energy security” restricts
the policy possibilities available in that region. Debate is restricted to circumscribed topics such
as where to drill or how quickly, while debate over whether to drill is rendered unavailable.
What the Norwegian government and petroleum industry are combatting through these efforts is
fairly clear. Despite the ongoing narrative power of the petroleum fairy tale, “a series of WWF
[World Wide Fund for Nature] reports, and other forms of local activism, are rescripting the
719 Alexnder Jung, “Snow White’s Liquid Gold: Gas from Norway Could Reduce Dependency on Russia,” Die Spiegel International (January 3, 2007). Accessed at http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/snow-white-s-liquid-gold-gas-from-norway-could-reduce-dependency-on-russia-a-448574.html on November 10, 2015. 720 “Norway’s Energy Part 1: Rough Waters Ahead for Statoilhydro,” Aftenposten (March 3, 2008 [October 12, 2011]). Accessed at http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/wikileaksdokumenter/06032008--NORWAYS-ENERGY-PART-I-ROUGH-WATERS-AHEAD-FOR-STATOILHYDRO-5105902.html on November 10, 2015. 721 Kristoffersen and Dale 2014, 212. Emphases in original.
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Norwegian Arctic as an ‘ecoregion’ that is sustained by a complex network of human and non-
human relations and requires new trans-institutional and transnational forms of collaboration.”722
Thus, in addition to geopolitical and military challenges from Russia, political opposition to
Arctic petroleum development from NGOs, civil society groups, and local communities is also
framed as a security issue. In particular, direct action or activist campaigns that threaten
production are constructed as dangerous within the framework of energy security. The Ministry
of Defence makes clear that threats to the petroleum sector also threaten the national economy,
and fall within the purview of security policy: “The sustainability of the petroleum sector is more
fragile than ever, and the impact of even minor interruptions will affect not only the economy but
security as well.”723 The very use of the term “sustainability” in the context of hydrocarbon
extraction represents an instance of “discourse co-optation”, a mechanism through which a
particular discursive meaning is undermined by a counter-discourse that serves to re-establish the
hegemony that the original meaning had sought to alter.724 In this case, “sustainability”, as a
term that originally entered widespread use to denote the need to preserve a natural environment
able to meet present and future human needs, has been coopted and redeployed to promote policy
objectives that will result in negative environmental effects for future generations.725
Thus, security in the Norwegian Arctic is explicitly tied to control over hydrocarbon resources
and their extraction. Energy is the cornerstone of all recent Norwegian Arctic policies, such that
“the High North has been revitalized by a discourse on the prospects that the Barents Sea could
become a new, strategically important petroleum province.”726 This signals an important
departure from post-Cold War Norwegian security policy, which emphasized de-securitizing the
High North in order to normalize relations with Russia. In his study of High North security
discourses, Jensen finds that “data from the 1990s indicate a persistent effort by participants in
official discourses to de-securitize and de-politicize energy and petroleum policy, thereby
722 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 583. 723 Ministry of Defence, “A Defence for the Protection of Norway’s Security, Interests and Values,” Proposition to the Storting no. 48 2007-2008 (Oslo: 2008). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 90. 724 Leif C. Jensen, “Norwegian Petroleum Extraction in Arctic Waters to Save the Environment: Introducing ‘Discourse Co-optation” as a new analytical term,” Critical Discourse Studies 9, no. 1 (2012): 29-38. 725 See the discussion of human-caused environmental change and security in Chapters 1 and 3. 726 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 443.
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maintaining a clear line of separation between it and security and foreign policy.”727 Driven by
global energy demand and increasingly contentious politics over global energy resources and
perceived scarcity of supply, this approach was gradually abandoned post-2000: “As concerns
for energy as a strategic and scarce resource grew, the High North once again became a subject
of high politics. This flew in the face of the stated objectives of Norway’s post-Cold War
security and foreign policy.”728 The construction of the High North as a key region for
Norwegian security has become prevalent within official security discourse, and informs all
aspects of state policy towards the region. Moreover, the intimate connection between energy
and economic security means that the wellbeing of all Norwegians is implicated in the continued
extraction of northern hydrocarbons, in spite of the ambiguous situation on the ground with
respect to local attitudes towards expanded petroleum production. Thus, “quite contrary to
established political conventions in Norway, energy becomes part of a politicized, even
securitized, discourse.”729 Ironically, the emphasis on energy highlights a major commonality
with respect to Arctic security between Norway and Russia. Both countries “regard the
European Arctic’s most important feature to be its prospects as a resource province, with more or
less emphasis on security.”730 Energy is seen to be so important to the economy that it warrants
securitization and elevation to the apex of policy priority, and challenges to hydrocarbon
extraction become synonymous with challenges to the national interest and national wellbeing.
6.4 Conclusion
This chapter argues that successive governments of Norway have held an understanding of
security in the High North that consistently identifies the centrality of Russia and natural
resource extraction, particularly petroleum, to Norwegian Arctic security interests. Though this
conception of security in the Norwegian Arctic is longstanding, in fact predating modern Norway
as an independent state, under its new High North Initiative Norway has undertaken a significant
727 Jensen 2012, 81. 728 Jensen 2012, 81. 729 Jensen 2012, 94. 730 Jensen and Skedsmo 2010, 448.
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re-securitization of the region since 2005. This series of policies mark a shift away from the key
post-Cold War objective of de-securitizing the Arctic region and normalizing cooperative
relations with Russia towards a conception of Norwegian security that views Russian aggression
as potentially threatening and energy extraction as vital to Norwegian prosperity. Rather than a
Cold War aberration, securitization of the High North contra Russia has returned after a brief
hiatus, as “the machinery of power seems to have re-naturalized security discourses, forcing us to
‘speak security’ to gain entry to the High North discourses … ‘Security’ seems crucial as a
‘password’ which needs to be uttered to ‘gain access’ to the central discourses on the High
North.”731 By contrast, as discussed in Chapter 4, the Canadian state may articulate a similar
meaning of security within its Arctic policies, but security has not been elevated as a requisite
discourse through which to discuss Canadian Arctic issues.
This conception of security in the High North stretches back to the formation of the modern
Scandinavian states. Though driven in large part by Russia, it is also a story that centrally
involves the Sámi people living in their transnational homeland of Sápmi. Sámi were integral in
establishing conditions of sovereign control and national security in the disputed border regions
prior to the consolidation of the separate Scandinavian kingdoms, and their labour was vital for
early efforts to extract natural resources for export south. At the time, Sámi were clearly a
subject people who were used instrumentally by the state in the pursuit of its national interests,
often to the detriment of Sámi themselves. Today, the national wellbeing promised through
Norwegian securitization of natural resource extraction is presumed to include both ethnic
Norwegians and Norwegian Sámi without distinction. However, as with other indigenous
peoples, Sámi leaders and institutions often assert a distinct set of interests from the dominant
society, including with respect to security. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 7, Sámi do not
necessarily share the official Norwegian understanding of security in the High North, or view it
as consistent with their own security priorities. Rather, security discourse in Norway, as in
Canada, often appears to be set in the South in accordance with Southern interests and values,
excluding those who actually inhabit the northern regions.
731 Jensen 2012, 91-94.
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Chapter 7
Explaining In/Security in Norwegian Sápmi 7This chapter examines the meaning of security for Sámi in northern Norway. As with Inuit in
Canada, Sámi articulate a distinct and conflictual understanding of in/security, and its
relationship to environmental change, to that employed by the Norwegian state. However, while
there are similarities between the understandings of Arctic security identified by Sámi and Inuit
political actors, unlike Inuit, Sámi in Norway have not generally sought to securitize their most
pressing priorities. Though Sámi political actors express concern over various hazards to their
traditional land use and livelihoods, culture, and political autonomy, these issues are usually not
described using securitizing language, and are rarely characterized as existential issues for Sámi
survival. By and large, these issues remain situated within normal politics, with little of the
existential connotation invoked by security language.
The first section outlines the contemporary status of Sámi within Norwegian society, including
the emergence of Sámi as organized political actors. The second section examines Sámi
understandings of Arctic security, and suggests their security can be identified as: maintenance
of ecological viability for traditional land-use, preservation and revitalization of Sámi culture and
language, and maintenance of Sámi political autonomy as a self-determining indigenous people
within the context of the unitary Norwegian state. However, while it is possible to define what
security means for Sámi in Norway, Sámi leaders and institutions have not acted as securitizing
actors employing security language to elevate their priority issues within Norwegian politics.
The third section offers three reasons why Sámi have not sought to securitize their political
concerns: the relatively weaker impacts of human-caused climate change in the Scandinavian
Arctic; the high degree of Sámi social inclusion within Norwegian society; and the enduring
influence of a threatening Russia to the construction of in/security within Norwegian discourse.
7.1 Sámi in Norway
Historically, Sámi were a largely pastoralist and agrarian people inhabiting rural areas and small
communities across the region of Sápmi, comprising territory in modern Norway, Sweden,
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Finland, and a small number on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. As described in Chapter 6, the
traditional Sámi territory of Sápmi was slowly colonized and incorporated into the Scandinavian
states from the 16th century onwards. Today, Sámi number around 100,000 people across all
three states, and are the only indigenous people officially recognized by European political
institutions. Approximately half of all Sámi are Norwegian, and of a total Norwegian Sámi
population of some 50,000 “less than 10% of the Saami are directly involved in reindeer herding;
most are farmers, labourers, or civil servants. Saami practicing fishing and farming
combinations along the coast have mostly abandoned the Saami language and are practically
indiscernible from their Norwegian neighbours.”732 Despite this, Sámi across Fennoscandia
elect separate political institutions – called the Sámi parliaments – whose functions vary, but
which operate as a mix of representative indigenous institutions, quasi-government agencies
responsible for Sámi affairs, and government lobby groups.733
Today, most Sámi in Norway have migrated from villages to larger cities, with the largest Sámi
community now residing in Oslo. These major demographic and cultural shifts in the Sámi
population are largely attributable to the state policy of “Norwegianization” during the 19th and
20th centuries. In general, this policy was intended to distinguish Norway from the Swedish and
Danish political and cultural influences exerted over preceding centuries. In the context of the
High North, however, Norwegianization had a specific meaning: the coercive assimilation of
Sámi, Finnish-speaking minorities, and isolated rural communities into the dominant Norwegian
nation.734 In this respect, Norwegianization refers to “state efforts to protect the Norwegian
‘tribe’ in a part of the realm dominated by aboriginal Sámi, immigrants from adjacent Finland
(called ‘Kvens’), and Norwegian fishermen and smallholders … It was a policy encompassing a
variety of harsh measures aimed at forcing the inhabitants of the multi-ethnic north … to reject
their cultural identity and perceive themselves as Norwegians.”735 The degree of assimilatory
732 Sidsel Saugestad, “Regional and Indigenous Identities in the High North: Enacting Social Boundaries,” Polar Record 48, no. 246 (2012): 233. 733 Eva Josefsen, “The Saami and the National Parliaments: Channels for Political Influence,” Promoting Inclusive Parliaments: The Representation of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Parliament (New York: United Nations Development Program, 2010). 734 Minde 2005. 735 Berg 2013, 157.
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policies varied across the Scandinavian states: Sweden “pursued a segregation policy vis-à-vis
the Reindeer Saami and an assimilation policy vis-à-vis the other Saami, while Norway stuck to
the assimilation policy for all Saami.”736 This means that in spite of its relatively larger Sámi
population, Norway experienced a less visible Sámi presence over the 20th century due to its
greater emphasis on assimilation and persecution of Sámi cultural practices.
This situation began to shift in the 1970s, with the growth of social movements calling for
greater recognition of Sámi cultural identity and indigenous rights, as well as regional identity
movements for non-Sámi in the High North.737 Reflecting similar trends between colonized
peoples and their colonizers elsewhere in the world, Sámi began to articulate claims as
distinctive collective rights-holders based on prior occupation of their traditional territories,.738
Though initially rejected by many Norwegians, Sámi slowly gained legal recognition and
succeeded in affecting significant political changes, though not without conflict with the
Norwegian state. The central issue between Sámi and Norway has remained fairly constant:
decision making over land use in the traditional reindeer herding areas of Sápmi. In effect, the
question over several centuries has been who has authority over how communal grazing lands
and other rural areas should be used, and what is the appropriate balance between economic
benefits for the country as a whole versus costs principally borne by Sámi and others living in
the High North.
The most famous dispute occurred over the government’s decision to construct a hydroelectric
dam on the Alta River, which threatened to destroy a nearby Sámi community and flood large
areas of reindeer herding land. From 1979-1982, an alliance of Sámi and environmental activists
campaigned against the proposal, including mass civil disobedience at the dam construction site,
a hunger strike outside the Storting, Norway’s parliament, and the occupation of the prime
minister’s office by 14 Sámi women.
736 Josefsen 2010, 6. 737 Saugestad 2012. 738 Henry Minde, “Sámi Land Rights in Norway: A Test Case for Indigenous Peoples,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 8, no. 2 (2001): 107-125.
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In these protests, which went on for several weeks, the environmental movement and the indigenous population of Norway, the Sámi, with additional support from the academic community and local fishermen, tried to stop the building of a major hydropower plant project that would have taken land from the Sámi community. The Sámi took their case all the way to the Norwegian Supreme Court and, although they ultimately lost, this struggle still represents the biggest conflict over land and energy resources in Norwegian history. One of the most significant results of these protests was an increased awareness of and political support for Sámi rights in Norway … The general political attitude was that the conflict had come at a very high political cost that must be avoided in the future.739
The Alta controversy signified the emergence of Sámi as modern political actors in Norway, but
also brought Sámi into Norwegian security discourse in news ways. In evaluating the merits of
the proposed hydroelectric dam, the Norwegian government eventually assessed two questions
pertaining to the core security question of survival: whether the impacts of the dam threatened
the survival of reindeer herding in that part of Finnmark, and whether Sámi culture was
threatened by eroding the practice of reindeer herding.740 The government, supported by a
subsequent ruling of the Supreme Court, determined the answer to both questions was no. Prime
Minister Odvar Nordli released a statement that sought to reframe the question of Sámi interests
in terms of a liberal problematic of security highlighting the importance of modern economic
development for Sámi survival:
In the debate over the Alta case, too much importance has been placed on the effects of the pastoral [reindeer herding] sector. Approximately 10 per cent of the Saami in Finnmark are depending on reindeer herding, whereas the remaining 90 per cent are depending on other sources of livelihood in the county. The cultural basis of this population can be threatened in earnest if we cannot manage to secure development and progress in Finnmark.741
In addition to this reframing of Sámi collective security interests, the Alta conflict was notable
because of the depiction of protestors as threatening public order and the interests of the
739 Kristoffersen and Young 2010, 579. 740 Brantenberg 1985. 741 Quoted in Brantenberg 1985, 38-39.
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Norwegian state. On October 12, 1979 more than 200 anti-dam protesters were arrested in Oslo
when police cleared the encampment that had been established in front of the Storting, while,
nearly 2000 kilometres north, protestors continued to block access to the dam construction
site.742 Tensions remained high over the following days as rumours circulated that police
planned to clear the blockade, as well, but on October 15 the government announced it was
temporarily halting the project and the police stood down. However, later investigation found
the Norwegian Defence Command had issued an operational directive on October 9 instructing
the Armed Forces to provide 200 soldiers and logistical support including “16 trucks, two
military buses, eight jeeps, military police, ambulances and two helicopters” for a 500-man
police operation to clear the blockade.743 The operation was scheduled for October 17, and was
only cancelled at the direction of Prime Minister Nordli over concerns for the potential fallout,
and questions about the legal basis for dam construction without sufficient consultation with
Sámi herders. Police action continued, however, and over the winter of 1980-81 more than 600
officers from across the country were deployed to Alta in the largest peacetime mobilisation in
Norwegian history, representing 10 per cent of the total number of police in Norway.744 More
than 2000 people subsequently demonstrated against the police presence in Alta, double the
number who actually participated in blockading the construction site. Government and Sámi
sources later reported that in 1980-81 individuals from the Irish Republican Army and the far left
Norwegian Workers Communist Party (AKP) also offered assistance to the Sámi organizations
leading the protests, including conspiring to bomb power generation utilities across Norway.745
While protest leaders rejected this offer, the Alta conflict indicates a renewed construction of
Sámi as potentially threatening the Norwegian state, and interfering in the Norwegian national
interest. To a certain extent, as with the earlier period of Scandinavian state formation,
742 William Lawrence, “Saami and Norwegians protest construction of Alta Dam, Norway, 1979-1981,” Global Nonviolent Action Database. Accessed at http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/saami-and-norwegians-protest-construction-alta-dam-norway-1979-1981 on September 30, 2015. 743 Aftenposten, “Ville bruke soldater i Alta-aksjon [Would use soldiers in Alta action],” (October 19, 2011). Accessed at http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Ville-bruke-soldater-i-Alta-aksjon-6393917.html on September 30, 2015. Translated using Google. 744 Svein S. Andersen and Atle Midttun, “Conflict and Local Mobilization: The Alta Hydropower Project,” Acta Sociologica 28, no. 4 (1985): 319. 745 Nordlys, “AKP ville hjelpe samene med sabotasje [AKP would help Sámi with sabotage],” (August 9, 2003). Accessed at http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/akp-ville-hjelpe-samene-med-sabotasje/s/1-79-722508 on September 30, 2015. Translated using Google.
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maintaining Sámi support and preventing further defections was also viewed as important for
maintaining national unity and re-establishing the status quo ante.
In the wake of the Alta controversy, Sámi became a potent force in Norwegian and Scandinavian
politics. Though small in number, Sámi engaged in multiple processes of politicization in
northern Norway and across northern Europe, seeking state recognition of their collective rights,
establishment of distinct representative institutions, and Sámi representation within regional and
European institutions. In 1989, Norway signed the International Labour Organization’s
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, also known as ILO Convention 169, and in 1990
became the first state in the world to ratify it. Sámi were included in negotiations over the Arctic
Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), one of the key political openings for post-Cold War
rapprochement between Russia and the West, and in 1996 the transnational Saami Council
became one of the original Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council. The establishment of
separate Sámi parliaments in Norway, Sweden, and Finland between the late 1980s and mid-
1990s served as acknowledgement of both legitimate Sámi demands for separate institutions and
of the de facto separation of the Sámi people into distinct national constituencies.746 At the
highest levels, the Norwegian government has recognized the historical rights of Sámi over
Sápmi, both through its signing of ILO Convention 169 and in the government’s 2001 White
Paper on Sámi Policy, which explicitly states that “the Kingdom of Norway is based on the
territory of two peoples.”747 Sámi demands to exercise greater autonomy and self-determination
have resulted in new institutional arrangements, particularly following the promulgation of the
Finnmark Act in 2005, which significantly altered the administration of public lands in northern
Norway and further enshrined certain collective land rights.748
746 Else Grete Broderstad, “The Promises and Challenges of Indigenous Self-Determination: The Sami Case,” International Journal 66, no. 4 (2011): 893-907; Rauna Kuokkanen, “Self-Determination and Indigenous Women – ‘Whose Voice Is it We Hear in the Sámi Parliament?’.” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 18, no. 1 (2011): 39-62. 747 Translated in Saugestad 2012, 234. 748 Broderstad 2011. For a critical perspective on the limitations of the Finnmark Act for the promotion of Sámi rights see Øyvind Ravna, “The Fulfilment of Norway’s International Legal Obligations to the Sámi – Assessed by the Protection of Rights to Lands, Waters and Natural Resources,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 21, no. 3 (2014): 325-327.
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It is worth noting that compared to some indigenous peoples Sámi have generally pursued their
political claims against the Norwegian state in a collaborative, rather than confrontational,
manner. Indeed, some Sámi view “adaptability” and “accommodation” as their defining
qualities, and as largely responsible for the perpetuation of Sámi culture in the face of
Scandinavian colonialism.749 Scholars have proposed the long history of non-violent colonial
interaction and the more recent influence of the Norwegian welfare state as explanatory factors
for why Sámi have embraced political tactics of diplomacy and negotiation.750 However, others
have been critical of the Sámi approach to politics, suggesting that reluctance to confront the
state has compromised their goals of autonomy and self-determination, and resulted in Sámi
institutions that mirror those of their Nordic colonizers.751 The creation of the Sámi Parliaments
as consultative, rather than truly self-governing entities, is seen as emblematic of the high degree
of deference in Sámi-Nordic relations. One study of Sámi women leaders found that some
believed “Sámi today are afraid of autonomy and of talking about ‘governing our own territory
and nation like other nations’ … The hundred years of assimilation policies had given rise to
today’s fears about autonomy.”752 From this perspective, comparatively weaker rights over
traditional lands and their use, lack of authority over natural resources, and emphasis on cultural
rather than political autonomy are results of a Sámi political disposition that is collaborative to
the point of conformism, or even complacency.753
The development of Sámi politicization across state borders raises various questions in post-Cold
War northern Europe. Among these is the complicated issue of how security should be
understood and pursued in the context of de-securitized relations between the European Arctic
states and Russia, and the growth of sub- and transnational identities with distinct interests and
749 Quoted in Rauna Kuokkanen, “Indigenous Peoples on Two Continents: Self-Determination Processes in Saami and First Nation Societies,” European Review of Native American Studies 20, no. 2 (2006): 4. 750 S.E. Olsson and D. Lewis, “Welfare Rules and Indigenous Rights: The Sámi People and the Nordic Welfare States,” in J. Dixon and R.P. Scheurell, eds, Social Welfare with Indigenous Peoples (Routledge: new York, 1995), 141-187. 751 Kuokkanen 2006, 4. 752 Kuokkanen 2011, 46. 753 Peter Jull, “Through a Glass Darkly: Scandinavian Sámi Policy in Foreign Perspective,” in Odd Terje Brantenberg, Janne Hansen, and Henry Minde, eds, Becoming Visible: Indigenous Politics and Self-Government (Tromsø: Centre for Sámi Studies, University of Tromsø, 1995).
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political representation at the local, national, regional, and international levels. In the early
1990s, some analysts specifically predicted that the political changes occurring in Scandinavia
might manifest in the articulation of distinct security interests. In a detailed study of post-Cold
War security in the Barents region, Johan Eriksson predicted “regionalization and
transnationalization may lead to a situation where non-state units claim security interests of their
own.”754 The growing awareness of specific Arctic issues such as environmental change,
contamination of the food system, degradation of traditional herding lands, and the assertion of
indigenous languages and cultures as threatened by the assimilatory pressures and policies from
their southern metropoles informed Eriksson’s view that, in the post-Cold War era Indigenous
peoples, including Sámi, “definitely have their own specific security problems.”755 In the 1990s,
the articulation of distinct indigenous understandings of in/security would contrast with the shift
in how the Norwegian state viewed its security interests in a transforming Arctic.
7.2 Sámi Understandings of In/Security
The construction of Arctic security within Norwegian official policy in terms of Russia and
natural resources, as described in Chapter 6, has certain parallels to the construction of Arctic
security within Canadian government policy. Likewise, on the surface it appears Sámi in
northern Norway share similar understandings of the meaning of security to Inuit in northern
Canada. In examining how Sámi in Norway have articulated the meaning of Arctic security, I
conducted an analysis of primary texts similar to the one pertaining to Inuit described in Chapter
4. I examined 46 documents published between 2001-2011, including an exhaustive search of
relevant online English-language documents available from the Saami Council and the Gáldu
Research Center for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Kautokeino, Norway. 20 (43%) of
these documents contained securitizing moves, as shown in Appendix 2. Of the securitizing
moves, 65% identified the environment, generally, and 45% climate change, specifically, as
threatening, suggesting the central importance to Sámi of maintaining local and regional
754 Johan Eriksson, “Security in the Barents Region: Interpretations and Implications of the Norwegian Barents Initiative,” Cooperation and Conflict 30, no. 3 (1995): 278. 755 Eriksson 1995, 271-272.
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environments. 100% of securitizing moves that identified climate change as a threat identified
traditional livelihoods, particularly reindeer herding, as a primary referent object. 85% of the
securitizing moves identified culture as a referent object, and 20% identified autonomy or self-
determination. Considering the integral link between reindeer herding and Sámi culture, there
was significant overlap between culture and traditional livelihoods as referent objects, with
threats to the former generally considered to endanger the latter.
These securitizing moves specify various threats perceived as endangering Sámi traditional
territories, cultural practices, and subsistence livelihoods. When climate change was specified,
threats included: the private sector, the national government, assimilation, and climate change
itself. When the environment more generally was specified, threats included private sector
activities, the host country, and assimilation. Securitizing moves were often very specific; for
instance, a majority of examples that indicated the private sector as a threat cited specific
industrial developments and named relevant corporations. Thus, Sámi organizations draw
explicit links between the pro-development policies of the national government and private
sector encroachment and cultural assimilation, particularly as a result of mining and other
extractive industries that many Sámi recognize as threatening to their collective wellbeing.
Other Sámi securitizing moves outside this sample also invoke the collective and existential
nature of the threats in question. For instance, Anders Oskal, director of the International Centre
for Reindeer Husbandry, describes “climate change as an incredible challenge we all face as a
civilization.”756 Speaking before the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Aili Keskitalo,
President of the Sámediggi, the Sámi Parliament of Norway, stated: “The degradation of the
environment in Inuit and Saami traditional territories caused by e.g. pollution, non-sustainable
natural resource extraction and climate change constitute a great threat to their traditional
lifestyles and culture.”757 Overall, the pattern seems quite clear: Sámi in Norway situate the
natural environment, and its integral role in maintaining traditional cultural practices, at the heart
of what security means in their Arctic homeland.
756 Anders Oskal, “ICR Director Address to Arctic Frontiers,” (January 17, 2015). Accessed at http://reindeerherding.org/tag/anders-oskal/ on June 11, 2015. 757 Aili Keskitalo, “Address before the Sixth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,” (May 14, 2006). Accessed at http://www.galdu.org/web/index.php?artihkkal=356&giella1=nor on March 19, 2014.
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The preceding analysis has several methodological limitations. Foremost among these is
linguistic; unsurprisingly, Sámi organizations in Norway publish most of their documentation in
Norwegian or one of three recognized Sámi languages, complicating the search for securitizing
moves. While many notable documents or policy statements are also published in English
translations, the total sample of texts and speech acts available in English is much smaller than
for the comparable study of Inuit discussed in Chapter 4. Moreover, those written in English
tend to be directed at international audiences, and thus may differ in their chosen discourse from
the types of speech acts directed by Sámi organizations at the Norwegian government or other
regional actors. This also raises the issue of representation, since those organizations that do
publish in English tend to be those representing Sámi as a single unified people, rather than Sámi
within Norway alone. For instance, the Saami Council, representing Sámi in all three
Fennoscandian states and Russia, publishes most of its documents in English, whereas the
Sámediggi does not. Thus, the above analysis is not limited to Sámi in Norway, but captures
securitizing moves being made on behalf of Sámi across national boundaries. Moreover, these
moves are directed at international audiences such as the Arctic Council and the UN Permanent
Forum on Indigenous Issues, rather than specifically at the Norwegian government. It is thus
impossible to interpret them as securitizing moves made on behalf of Sámi in Norway to the
Norwegian government in a specific effort to affect Norwegian public policy. Since the question
of the audience is central to securitization theory, which audience particular securitizing moves
are made to will have significant effects on securitizing policy outcomes. An authoritative
audience is not expected to respond to securitizing moves that are not made to it, and directing
securitizing moves at multiple audiences weakens the imperative for one actor to respond.
Moreover, the choice of which language and discourse to employ is a contextual one, and the
choices made when communicating Sámi issues internationally may well differ from those made
for domestic political consumption. The fact that securitizing moves are made in English by
organizations representing people whose primary language is not English also raises the debate
over whether securitization theory travels effectively beyond English-speaking political
communities.758 In this case, translation of meaning is further complicated because of the
vagaries of Norwegian language itself, and differing views over what certain terms mean. Jensen
758 Wilkinson 2007; Stritzel 2011.
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notes the importance and limitations of language for Norwegian security discourse, but claims
“there is no natural way in Norwegian to distinguish between what in English is ‘security’ (in the
classic sense) and ‘safety’ (in the sense of search and rescue, etc.) … English, then, has two
words whose customary connotations are ‘hard’ (military) and ‘soft’ (civilian) respectively.”759
This point is directly contradicted by interviews conducted for this dissertation; in fact, some
sources claimed the opposite. Whereas in English “security” has no fixed meaning or inherent
link to armed force or military violence – evidenced by the evolution of the concept over time –
Norwegian has specific words that capture the hard/military and soft/civil components of
security separately: sikkerhet and trygghet.760 Thus Norwegian policies distinguish between
security issues (sikkerhet) requiring state action and/or military involvement, and issues related
to civilian safety and wellbeing (trygghet), often enacted by non-state actors. Consequently, it is
more linguistically challenging for non-military issues to be securitized in Norway, since these
cannot employ the high political vocabulary necessary to initiate securitization. As one
interview respondent noted: “It’s probably down to discourse, isn’t it? I don’t think that in the
Sámi language, or in the Scandinavian language, the word ‘security’ is related to English. It’s
closer to the word ‘safety’.”761 If Sámi priorities are principally linked to trygghet, not sikkerhet,
then they are less likely to be constructed as “security” issues in Norwegian government policy,
especially when translated from the Norwegian language into English.
These methodological challenges caution against reading too deeply into the findings that Sámi
political actors have attempted to securitize the central issues of environmental change and
Indigenous culture and autonomy, but they do not invalidate them. Instead, they suggest that
textual analysis of Sámi publications should be complemented by qualitative research into the
views of Sámi leaders and political representatives with respect to the meaning of security in the
High North. Accordingly, for this dissertation I conducted 12 semi-structured English language
interviews with individual leaders representing prominent Sámi institutions: the Sámediggi, the
Sámi Reindeer Herders’ Association of Norway, and the Saami Council. I also conducted
participant observation of Sámi politicians, activists, academics, and community members,
759 Jensen 2012, 92. 760 Personal correspondence with Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv (June 13, 2013). 761 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015.
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including reindeer herders, during five months of fieldwork in northern Norway, including visits
to five communities in Sápmi located in the Norwegian county of Norland and the Swedish
county of Norrbotten. These findings provide the first English-language account of Sámi
understandings of in/security in the Norwegian Arctic.
The interviews suggest a high degree of consensus in terms of the issues considered most
important by Sámi leaders and institutions. Virtually all respondents identified conflicts over
land use, particularly the preservation of contiguous grazing areas for reindeer herding, and
preservation of Sámi language and culture as the most important issues. Within the category of
land use conflicts, three specific issues were frequently mentioned: development of new mines
and associated infrastructure, the siting of windmill farms, and a small but growing concern over
the possible onshore impacts of oil and gas development. Of these, mining is clearly the issue of
the moment. Spurred by the rapid growth of mining activities across the border in northern
Sweden – which have galvanized Sámi and local resistance and drawn comparisons to the Alta
dispute in the 1980s762 – and passage of a new Mineral Act in 2009, Sámi are increasingly
concerned over the prospect of a “mineral extraction wave” occurring in northern Norway, as
well.763 To Sven-Roald Nystø, former president of the Sámediggi: “Minerals, that's a huge
issue. The mineral deposits you find in the middle parts of the Sami areas. The reindeer herders
already complain that they are losing too much of their grazing land to infrastructure
development in our areas.”764 Some respondents identified the long-term health and viability of
communities as being threatened by mining activities even if they experienced short-term
benefits. One representative of the Saami Council sees that resource projects “bring little back to
the local community … After the mining has ended, the local communities are left with nothing
… The non-renewable resources have been stolen, and the viable natural resources that we had
before have been destroyed. And the things that we need to maintain our way of living are
gone.”765 Another official with the Saami Council concurs, suggesting that mining threatens to
762 Stuart Hughes, “The reindeer herders battling an iron ore mine in Sweden,” BBC News (July 30, 2014). Accessed at http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28547314 on June 6, 2015. 763 Interview with Christina Henriksen, June 20, 2014. 764 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014. 765 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014.
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undermine the traditional herding basis of Sámi economies. He sees the greatest challenge
confronting Sámi to be “by far industrialization of traditional territory. It’s been a while, but the
pressure from infrastructure and industry and so on has become so much that reindeer herding
cannot sustain much more. We need to be able to stop these kinds of projects. They will soon
start to pose a threat to the whole reindeer herding culture and livelihood.”766 Many respondents
commented that while mining activities have occurred in the region for centuries, and Sámi are
not opposed to such projects on principle, they are sceptical of allowing new mines to proceed if
they risk compromising the continued viability of the reindeer herding industry.
The concern over protecting grazing areas, rather than objections to mining, per se, is illustrated
by the fact that many respondents also noted the negative effects of ‘green’ development projects
on traditional activities. In particular, they referred to the negative consequences that
construction of windmill farms can have for reindeer grazing areas. Runar Myrnes Balto,
political advisor to the President of the Sámediggi, sees the interest of large corporate actors
behind mine projects and renewable energy farms as being equally problematic for the prospect
of continued herding: “Big industries [are] coming in and grabbing land, infrastructure coming
in. Green energy. Windmills are becoming a big problem for reindeer herders. Green energy in
the sense of windmills are taking a lot of land which was traditionally for the reindeer. So that is
one of the key threats that we are facing.”767 An official with the Saami Council expressed a
similar view: “From a reindeer herding perspective, what matters is if it damages or not. It
doesn’t matter if it’s green. It’s all about how it impacts on your livelihoods, and the herd is
really the only thing that matters when reindeer herders take a stand. The one thing is that a
windmill park would be a lesser infringement.”768 Aili Keskitalo has described the growth of
windmill farms in Sápmi as a form of “‘green’ colonization, colonization in the name of the
climate,” that perpetuates historical patterns of decisions over the High North being made in the
south, in the interests of those in the south.769 Many Sámi appear equally reluctant to concede
766 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 767 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 768 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 769 Quoted in Susan Moran, “Renewables v. Reindeer,” Flux (February 4, 2015). Accessed at https://www.beaconreader.com/flux/renewables-v-reindeer on June 6, 2015.
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traditional grazing areas to renewable energy production as they are to extractive industrial
activities.
Finally, several respondents voiced concern over the potential impacts of future petroleum
development in the High North for herding and other traditional uses of land and marine areas.
To date, petroleum development has been a relatively minor issue in the High North due to the
concentration of extraction in southern Norway. That drilling has occurred offshore also means
the oil and gas sector has been less susceptible to legal challenges through the framework of
Sámi collective rights. Torvald Falch, senior advisor to the Sámediggi, explained that oil and gas
has only recently been addressed by Sámi political institutions:
Partly [why] the Sami Parliament has not been so active when it comes to oil and gas is that it’s offshore and it has not been so far north until recently … It’s not in direct conflict with land rights … When it comes to international law, you have more solid situation when it comes to rights of onshore than offshore. So we don’t have the tools in the same way, to come to a good negotiated position offshore … The question is, of course, when it comes to environmental questions, if you have a blow out, of course, that’s highly problematic, and the climate change.770
His colleague, Jan-Petter Gintal, also a senior advisor, was quick to add that “we know they are
searching for new projects, and there may be many politicians who want it to come to shore, to
have pipelines and other oil and gas industries on the land. So that's a challenge for the future
for us.”771 Sven-Roald Nystø agrees: “Among Sámi in Norway, oil and gas has had minor
effects regarding the material basis for Sami industries. It is still a southern industry, but is now
moving northward, yes. Those issues are climbing on the Sámi agenda as well.”772 The
prospect of expanding petroleum operations in the Barents region, or more contested areas such
as Lofoten-Vesterålen-Senja, has raised local concerns and caused some Sámi to worry about the
possible repercussions of an oil spill for the coastal fishing sector, upon which many small
communities still rely. Christina Henriksen, a member of the Sámediggi, insists that “significant
measures to prevent oil spills and disasters at sea” are essential for providing security in the High
770 Interview with Torvald Falch June 17, 2014. 771 Interview with Jan-Petter Gintal June 17, 2014 772 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014.
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North.773 As with mining activities in Sápmi, the objections are not principled, but framed in
terms of mitigating negative impacts on nearby communities and ensuring that industries and
subsistence activities such as fishing and reindeer grazing remain as unaffected as possible.
The other central political issue identified by almost all respondents was the preservation and
revitalization of Sámi language, and by extension culture. As discussed in Chapter 6, until the
20th century Sami culture and religious distinctiveness were perceived as threatening to the
centralized rule of the Scandinavian kingdoms. Consequently, as with Indian residential schools
in North America, Sámi children were sent to government, church, and privately run schools to
be acculturated into the dominant Norwegian society. While the educational experience of Sámi
children was less brutal than comparable Indigenous experiences in North America,774 the
assimilatory goals of the system were similar, with the stated goal to “make the Sámi as
Norwegian as possible.”775 State mandated education resulted in severe impacts on cultural and
linguistic continuity and the capacity to maintain indigenous ways of life, particularly when
coupled with the other aspects of the government’s policy of ‘Norwegianization’: “Placed in a
colonial context, the schools not only attempted to obliterate the religion and culture of the
colonised, but also strove to implant those components of colonial culture which were considered
appropriate for the colonised.”776 Through Norwegianization, by the second half of the 20th
century Sámi language use was nearly erased, and to this day scholars argue that “in Norway,
there is a quite clear language hierarchy,” with Norwegian at the top followed by the various
Sámi languages in descending order of value according to their degree of usage.777
Consequently, one of the major priorities of Sámi political institutions has been the revitalization
of Sámi languages and the maintenance of viable linguistic and cultural communities for Sámi
across Norway. Indeed, language has become one of the most important markers of Sámi
773 Interview with Christina Henriksen June 20, 2015. 774 Rauna Kuokkanen, “‘Survivance’ in Sámi and First Nations Boarding School Narratives,” American Indian Quarterly 27, no. 3-4 (2003): 706-708. 775 Jon Todal, “Minorities with a Minority: Language and the School in the Sámi Areas of Norway,” Language, Culture and Curriculum 11, no. 3 (1998): 354-366. 776 Lindmark 2013, 136. 777 Anna-Ritter Lindgren, “What is Language Emancipation? Norwegian and Other Nordic Experiences,” Sociolinguistic Studies 7, no. 1-2 (2013): 21.
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political success and meaningful self-determination: “We don’t have a country, so language
becomes one of the most important things for our culture.”778 The rights to use and receive
public services in Sámi have been “the other question the Sámi Parliament also has [paid] high
attention to … Sami language and the rights to use the language, and to get more Sámis to use
the language more … that is again very much connected to education.”779 Approximately half of
all Sámi people speak one of the Sámi languages, though the proportion varies by country, but
none are monolingual Sámi speakers.780 Because Norway’s policy of Norwegianization was the
least hospitable of all the Scandinavian states for the maintenance of Sámi and other minority
languages, only a small minority remain fluent in any of the Sámi languages, and its
revitalization remains a contested subject within Norwegian society, which worked hard to
establish the Norwegian language as a recognized language distinct from its Danish
antecedent.781 Although rights to Sámi language use have been legislated, implementation and
access remain challenging. As described by Runar Myrnes Balto:
It’s well protected in the law framework. A Sámi has the right to learn the Sámi language, and to use it when you meet government officials, when you go to health care, when you contact the government in any way … But the biggest challenge is [still] concerning language. The statistics are really grim. There are fewer and fewer people, there are fewer students studying Sámi language in school … There are few Sámis, and we live in a number of different places. In a few places, at least where we are in the majority, the language classes are really good. Children get every class in Sámi. But if you look outside those areas … There are so many places where Sámi live and there are only one or two families, and people really struggle … There is a huge gap between the rights that are given through the law and the actual implementation of that in the school system.782
Balto also indicated the challenges that limited Sámi language prevalence poses for the
maintenance of Sámi identity, including stigma around speaking Sámi in urban areas. Sven-
Roald Nystø made a similar observation, noting “it is perhaps an emotional challenge to use a
778 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014. 779 Interview with Torvald Falch June 17, 2014. 780 Sari Pietikäinen Leena Huss, Sirkka Laihiala-Kankainen, Ulla Aikio-Puoskari, and Pia Lane, “Regulating Multilingualism in the North Calotte: The Case of Kven, Meänkieli and Sámi Languages,” Acta Borealia 27, no. 1 (2010): 1-23. 781 Lindgren 2013. 782 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015.
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language which we are not supposed to be using. It is a matter of identity. Can we be good
Sámi without knowing the language?”783 Overall, many respondents noted the complicated
relationship between Sámi language and cultural identity, and the challenges posed by promoting
language revitalization without excluding the majority of Sámi who do not speak it from feeling
included within Sámi society.
Based on these interviews, it is possible to conclude that Sámi leaders and organizations in
Norway articulate a conception of security similar to that expressed by Inuit organizations in
northern Canada. When asked to describe what security means to them, or the types of threats
Sámi face, respondents clearly identified threats and referent objects related to the maintenance
of the natural environment and the practice of subsistence activities, Indigenous culture and
identity, and autonomy and self-determination within the context of the Norwegian state. On one
level, this understanding is consistent with the basic elements of human security, since “what can
possibly be more important than clean water, fresh air, and clean food?”784 As a result of
industrialization in Sápmi, many respondents identified these basic necessities as being
threatened for many Sámi and northern communities. For Runar Myrnes Balto, the “first thing
that comes to mind is the livelihood perspective, in the sense of traditional ways of living:
reindeer herding, fishing, agriculture, as well, which are traditional Sami livelihoods, that's how
we’ve had our incomes. Those I would say are under threat. That is the first threat I would
identify.”785 A senior official with the Saami Council responded: “I would say that if you talk
security with most Sami, they would talk about environmental risks, and then also personal
security … Reindeer herding is the most dangerous occupation in Sweden, high level of death.
Accidents that have to do with vehicles, four wheelers that turn over, go though the ice. Also
drowning, people go through the ice. Also fires in these huts.”786 The same respondent later
expanded on the relationship between security for Sámi and the pursuit of legal rights and
decision-making through Sámi political institutions, particularly with respect to conflicts over
land use:
783 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø April 6, 2014. 784 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014. 785 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 786 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b.
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If you are successful with your legal claims, [and] gain control of your lands and resources that way, that gives you security. Security of your possessions, not security against external things, natural catastrophe, and so on. That would allow you to stop mining projects and so on in areas where you don’t find it suitable to pursue mining. Where the damage to traditional livelihoods or environmental risk is too high and so on … Basically, [to] get control of the territories, and over your own society.787
Christina Henriksen, member of the Sámediggi, emphasized that “security also means we should
be part of the decision making, so we don’t just get to clean up the garbage” of other
governments’ decisions.788 One respondent identified the interaction between their unique
cultural position, symbolic and economic connection to land, and numerical minority as
distinguishing Sámi security interests from those of non-Sámi Norwegians:
When we are a smaller population you might experience more security issues. Because you are being a smaller population, you might be ignored. Shortage of culturally relevant health services. That impacts a Sami more than a Norwegian. Lack of access to culturally relevant, culturally appropriate heath care. Same with education. In that sense we might have more issues that can be addressed as security. We might be more vulnerable in a way. We might be more exposed to insecurity.789
Some also placed the threats facing Sámi, particularly with respect to resource extraction and
environmental degradation, within a broader circumpolar and global context. A representative of
the Saami Council stated: “[We] have to think about the way we live in the world today … It’s
the way we’re living that is the cause of the problem … If we don’t reconsider how we use
minerals, resources, if we don’t recycle, and cut back, we will put the whole Arctic in
danger.”790 His statement linked demand for Arctic resources with patterns of global
consumption that are driving environmental change and manifesting insecurity for communities
located near the sites of extraction or vulnerable to climate disruption.
These statements indicate that, when asked, many Sámi leaders hold an understanding of
in/security consistent with a widened, human security conception of threats and referent objects.
787 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 788 Interview with Christina Henriksen June 20, 2015. 789 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015a. 790 Anonymous interview June 23, 2014.
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However, what was also made clear through these interviews is that Sámi leaders and institutions
in Norway are not securitizing actors in so far as they do not seek to construct their political
priorities as security issues within Norwegian government discourse or state policy. Security is
not the preferred framework within which Sámi issues are presented or generally discussed, and
is a discourse that many respondents viewed with scepticism. “The term is rarely used,” was one
response,791 while another was concerned that if it were employed as a lens for Sámi issues
“security might have a negative connotation.”792 The linguistic context was also raised, with
respondents noting that the types of issues widely understood as related to human security were
not described using security-centric terminology in either Sámi or Norwegian, and contrasted
this with the case of Inuit: “I think that the use of the word ‘security’, and why we don’t use it
within the Sami discourse, is because the word has connotations to more ‘hard security’. It’s not
relevant to the issues we are so concerned about. So we have other words to describe the feeling
that the Inuit may be talking about.”793 But some respondents were also careful to note the
salience of issues underlying human security concerns, particularly with respect to transnational
environmental hazards outside of the political control of Sámi or their institutions:
Of course it’s relevant it’s just rarely used in the vocabulary. In the ‘80s, with the Chernobyl breakdown at the power plant, that had enormous impacts on reindeer herding, particularly in Sweden. That made large areas of pastureland unusable. You could use the pasture, but then you could not eat the meat. Of course we are concerned about minimizing environmental security and impacts on environment. It’s just not spoken that much about.794
Others noted the possible downsides of securitization as a strategy for advancing Sámi priorities.
Sven-Roald Nystø observed that securitization of the Russo-Norwegian border during the Cold
War had impeded Sámi land rights and resulted in a restrictive discourse in which the state took
security and defence decisions without significant consideration of Sámi interests, “so Sámi
deliberately avoided the language of security in order to keep open their options or possibilities
791 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 792 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015a. 793 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 794 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b.
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for resolving their struggle for political good will.”795 He suggests a similar dynamic has been
reproduced by the renewed securitization of the region through the High North Initiative, with
exclusionary implications for Sámi involvement in state policy:
We are talking [about] environmental security, society security, energy security, and so on and so on. And that in itself puts much more light on the high political issues in the Arctic and excludes a lot of stakeholders in the discussion on how to put forward civility in the Arctic debate. I think we have taken a couple of steps back in the desecuritization on the Arctic, and where it ends I’m not quite sure, but one of the losers in that process are, of course, indigenous peoples.796
7.3 Explaining Sámi Non-Securitization
Given the relative similarities between Inuit and Sámi as Arctic Indigenous peoples residing
within the northern territories of two comparable circumpolar states, the reluctance of Sámi
representatives to attempt to securitize their political priorities is surprising, especially given the
frequent invocation of in/security by Inuit leaders and organizations in Canada. Based on my
research, I suggest three factors influence the non-securitization of Arctic issues by Sámi in the
Norwegian High North: ecological difference, and the different collective experiences of climate
change that result; the greater degree of social inclusion of Sámi within Norwegian society,
including full enjoyment of the benefits of the welfare state; and the proximity of Norway to
Russia, which results in a more robust military security discourse focused on national defence,
restricting the space for alternative, non-state security discourses.
7.3.1 Ecological Difference
The labelling of both the Canadian North and the Norwegian High North as belonging to ‘the
Arctic’ is deceptive because these regions have distinct ecologies and very different climatic
conditions. This variation means they are experiencing distinct effects of human-caused climate
change. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which provided the first definitive account of
795 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014. 796 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014.
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climate change occurring in the circumpolar region, clearly identified the milder effects
occurring and predicted to occur in northern Europe compared with much of the Canadian
Arctic. For instance, mean annual temperatures in Scandinavia have risen by about 1 degree
Celsius since the 1950s, and average winter temperatures by about 2 degrees. Notably, “surface
air temperatures over the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans have remained very cold in winter,
limiting the warming in coastal areas,”797 which is where most settlements in northern Norway
are located. By contrast, mean annual temperatures in the central and eastern Canadian Arctic
have increased by 1-2 degrees Celsius over the same period, with average winter temperatures
increasing by as much as 3-5 degrees.798 This variation is also reflected in the more recent
findings of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which illustrates the dramatically greater trend
towards warmer seasonal temperatures in most of the North American Arctic compared to
Fennoscandia.799 In sum, the Canadian North has experienced more than twice the warming of
the Norwegian High North, particularly during winter, with particularly significant effects on
seasonal sea ice coverage, flora and fauna, permafrost thawing, and weather predictability
compared to Scandinavia.
As a result of the relatively fewer and less significant ecological changes they have directly
experienced, Sámi leaders and organizations do not usually include climate change among their
highest political priorities. On the one hand, all interview respondents agreed that climate
change in Sápmi was visible and adversely affecting a range of Sámi interests, most notably with
respect to reindeer herding. Jan-Petter Gintal, senior advisor to the Sámediggi, insisted that
“[climate change is] very relevant. As [with] other indigenous people, mainly Sámis live in the
traditional way, with reindeer herding and fishing, harvesting wild berries, stuff like that. So
they can feel the climate change. So I think they are very aware and we see the weather change,
so people are talking a lot about that. And especially the latest year we have seen many changes
here in the north.”800 Randi Skum, advisor to the Reindeer Herders Association of Norway and
a former member of the Sámediggi, described specific challenges the changing climate is having
797 ACIA 2004, 112. 798 ACIA 2004, 113. 799 Larsen et al. 2014, 1579. 800 Interview with Jan-Petter Gintal June 17, 2014
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on the reindeer industry: “Now the rivers are open very early. Some rivers they don't have ice at
all. So its one effect is the traditional way of moving reindeers. Many have to move by cars
now. You also see the changing in the type of vegetation and you see the forests actually
moving higher and higher up in the mountains. And that also in a way changes the vegetation
that the reindeers are dependent on.”801 Other respondents also mentioned the increased cost of
feeding reindeer unable to graze due to changes such as seasonal icing of pastureland, as well as
non-reindeer related impacts such as altered fish stocks and decline in other marine animals.
Overall, climate change was not viewed as an urgent priority for Sámi institutions, but rather an
emerging challenge requiring management and adaptation, but not approaching the level of crisis
or insecurity.
In this respect, many respondents noted that while changes are visible, adaptation needs have
been mild and manageable. Sven-Roald Nystø observed:
We are not living in the Arctic, we are living in the sub-Arctic. Changes in ice and snow are not as visible as in the High Arctic. You don’t see any erosion here. Climate change is less visible here in terms of physical damage. What we see are changes to some extent. Mackerel are coming further north. Some changes in the distribution of the cod stocks. We can see the tree line is going up. We can see more severe weather, of course, but is that a huge problem? Isn’t that a question of clothing, of adaptation?802
Representatives of the Sámediggi and Saami Council noted that climate change might actually
lead to benefits for reindeer herding, as milder winters and longer growing seasons result in
easier access to grazing pasture and less adverse environmental conditions. Nystø observed that
unpredictability of ice and snow conditions was nothing new for herders: “Most visible for the
Sami is snow and ice conditions for the reindeer herders. That’s a bigger issue. But that’s so
unpredictable, and has always been unpredictable. That’s a permanent situation.”803 As a
political strategy, therefore, Sámi institutions are reiterating their emphasis on land use and
protection of contiguous grazing areas rather than, for example, greenhouse gas mitigation, since
801 Interview with Randi Skum June 19, 2014. 802 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014 803 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø May 9, 2014.
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bodies like the Sámi-led International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry consider “protection of
grazing land will be the most important adaptive strategy for reindeer herders under climate
change.”804 In the hierarchy of Sámi concerns, climate change ranks behind other threats to
traditional land use; Runar Balto, for instance, observed that compared to mining, climate change
is “just as serious, but it isn’t [taken as seriously]. Perhaps it should be.”805
The relative lack of importance afforded to climate change is exacerbated by Sámi knowledge of
their relatively fortunate position compared to other Arctic Indigenous peoples. Several
explicitly contrasted Sámi experiences with those of Inuit, sympathizing with the greater
environmental challenges confronting the latter. A Saami Council official sees “the situation is
very different even though we share a lot of similarities as Arctic Indigenous peoples, [Inuit]
being much more dependent on ice, marine resources than we are. Much more exposed to
natural catastrophes than we are. Diseases, so on, that accumulate in fish and marine mammals,
that they are exposed to.”806 Randi Skum sees the Canadian Arctic as a cautionary tale for Sámi,
underscoring the view of climate change as more of a future concern: “I think we see what's
happening in [the] North of Canada. We have seen on television that the ice is melting,
especially affect[ing] the indigenous there. I think also here in Norway it will be first the
indigenous here that actually will notice this changes mostly.”807 The perception that climate
change is more acute elsewhere, coupled with the relatively modest experiences of
environmental change in the High North to date, underline that ecological differences between
the Canadian and Norwegian Arctic regions partly account for the different efforts between Sámi
and Inuit to securitize environmental change.
804 Anonymous interview January 20, 2015. 805 Interview with Runar Myrnes Balto January 23, 2015. 806 Anonymous interview January 22, 2015b. 807 Interview with Randi Skum June 19, 2014.
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7.3.2 Social Inclusion
A second factor that helps explain why Sámi leaders have not sought to securitize their highest
priority issues is the high degree of inclusion of Sámi within Norwegian society. In fact, Sámi in
all three Fennoscandian states enjoy likely the highest qualities of life of any indigenous people
in the world. In the words of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples, “Sámi people in the Nordic countries do not have to deal with many of the socio-
economic concerns that commonly face indigenous peoples throughout the world, such as
serious health concerns, extreme poverty or hunger.”808 Norway has ranked either first or
second on the UN Human Development Index every year since 2001, making it the overall best
country in the world in which to live in the 21st century. However, unlike Canada where high
rankings on the Human Development Index have never translated into comparably high qualities
of life for Indigenous people, Sámi were fully incorporated into the Norwegian welfare state in
the post-WWII period: “Most relevant here is the idea of equality which has been a core value in
Nordic societies since the 1930s. This has been attributed to the strong position of social
democratic parties, but [it] is better to attribute it to the development of a welfare state with a
safety net preventing any members of society from falling to destitution and misery.”809
Significantly, this incorporation was of Sámi as individuals rather than as a distinct minority
group,810 resulting in high qualities of life for individuals and Sámi families without significant
gains for Sámi collective rights until decades later. In fact, “Saami culture and identity [were]
not only seen as irrelevant, but as a handicap to the obtainment of equality and the full benefits
of the Welfare State.”811 Thus, though they have struggled for recognition as a distinct people,
Sámi in Norway enjoy the full benefits of liberal, individualistic citizenship of one of the most
prosperous and progressive social democracies in the world, and are fully incorporated into
Norwegian society. More controversially, Sámi might be described as highly assimilated, since
808 James Anaya, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Situation of the Sámi People in the Sápmi Region of Norway, Sweden and Finland. UN document A/HR/18/35/Add.2 (New York: United Nations General Assembly, 2011), 3. 809 Mai Palmberg, “The Nordic Colonial Mind,” in Suvi Keskinen, Salla Tuori, Sari Irni, and Diani Mulinari, eds, Complying with Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 35. 810 Olsson and Lewis 1995. 811 Brantenberg 1985, 26.
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in most cases they are “practically indiscernible from their Norwegian neighbours.”812 Sámi in
Norway are not segregated from the rest of society along geographic, socio-economic, or
epidemiological lines,813 which is also why Sámi have often struggled to assert themselves as a
distinct people with distinct collective values, traditions, and need for institutions from other
Norwegians.814 Indeed, to some, “claims to Saami exclusiveness and legal rights ran contrary to
what many had come to regard as a fact and a value: that they participated in Norwegian society
on equal terms with other Norwegians.”815
Egalitarian inclusion into Norwegian society was not always the case; for centuries, Sámi
experienced colonization and disempowerment by successive Scandinavian states that viewed
them as inferior and incapable, if also somewhat indispensable in the northern border region.
The historical relationship between Sámi and their respective states was fundamentally colonial.
This is a contentious way to characterize the history of Sámi-Scandinavian relations, but the
argument for viewing Sámi as having been colonized, albeit more slowly and less violently than
Indigenous peoples in the Americas, coheres with the tenets of indigeneity discussed in Chapter
2. In terms of prior occupation, archaeological evidence shows settlement in Sápmi since at least
the end of the last ice age:
Whether these sites are evidence of Saami ethnogenesis is a matter of debate, but it seems safe to say that there was a distinct Saami ethnic population from at least the Scandinavian Viking Age (AD 800-1000) … It is also clear that these groups of mobile hunters and gatherers had long been in contact with more agrarian proto-Norse cultures. Contacts and some interaction between these groups evolved seamlessly over the centuries, thus making it impossible to speak of a first date of encounter.816
Sámi and non-Sámi traded and intermixed for centuries, but from the 16th century onward these
interactions gave way to a system of increasingly overt control of Sámi lands and lives by
southern peoples of Norse and Germanic origins. These Europeans established and enforced a
812 Saugestad 2012, 233. 813 Per Sjølander, “What is Known About the Health and Living Conditions of the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Scandinavia, the Sámi?” Global Health Action 4 (2011): 1-11. 814 Kuokkanen 2011. 815 Brantenberg 1985, 36. 816 Fur 2006, 41.
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social hierarchy in which they enjoyed cultural superiority and political dominance over Sámi,
and in which Sámi were no longer allowed to make decisions affecting the direction of their
collective society or, in many cases, the course of their individual lives.817 This relationship
strongly resembled those between indigenous peoples and colonizing powers elsewhere in the
world, resulting in the legal designation of Sámi as the only officially recognized Indigenous
people in Europe.
Formal and informal discrimination against Sámi, particularly through state policies of
Norwegianization, ultimately fuelled social and political resistance among Sámi communities
and ignited a resurgence of Sámi cultural identity and political institutionalization. Following
the Alta protests in the early 1980s, Norway enacted significant legislative measures to address
Sámi political concerns, protect their human rights, and establish representative institutions.
Motivated partly by Norwegian concern over its international human rights image, this resulted
in a flurry of activity encompassing passage of a new Sámi Act in 1987, an amendment to the
Norwegian Constitution in 1988, ratification of ILO Convention 169 in 1990, and eventually
passage of the Finnmark Act in 2005. Cumulatively, this legislation established the Sámi
Parliament of Norway, recognized the linguistic and cultural rights of Sámi citizens, affirmed
Norway’s bi-national ethnic character, committed it to best practices towards Indigenous peoples
under international law, and created the first domestic structure in Norway approximating a land
claim agreement over part of the traditional Sámi territory.818 Though not without critics,819 the
results are generally regarded as a major political success for Sámi and non-Sámi alike: “In
Norway, the national parliament and government over the last thirty years have supported,
developed and strengthened Sámi rights on a wide range of issues. The establishment of the
Sámi Parliament has given the national authorities a collaborative partner which functions on
behalf of the Sámi people and has a legitimacy based on elections.”820 Several decades of
817 Fur 2006, 38. 818 Minde 2001; Carsten Smith, “The Development of Sámi Rights in Norway from 1980-2007,” in Günter Minnerup and Pia Solberg, eds, First World, First Nations: Internal Colonialism and Indigenous Self-Determination in Northern Europe and Australia (Thornhill: Sussex Academic Press, 2011): 22-30. 819 Kuokkanen 2011, 51-52; Ravna 2014. 820 Eva Josefsen, “The Norwegian Sámi Parliament and Sámi Political Empowerment,” in Günter Minnerup and Pia Solberg, eds, First World, First Nations: Internal Colonialism and Indigenous Self-Determination in Northern Europe and Australia (Thornhill: Sussex Academic Press, 2011), 41.
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innovative and cooperative policymaking between Sámi and Norwegian political institutions
have thus resulted in a situation where Sámi are both incorporated into Norwegian society and
represented through distinct institutions reflecting their specific concerns and interests.
This high degree of integration, and its impacts on the willingness to securitize, was also
reflected in the interviews. According to Else Grete Broderstad, a prominent Sámi academic,
whether or not a group sees their concerns as security issues “has to do with experiences of
politics, what kind of experiences you have with the political system. We don't need to use the
concept [of security]. For good or bad, and mostly here for good, we are integrated into the
society. Education, health, infrastructure: we are the same [as other Norwegians].”821 Multiple
respondents echoed the view that Sámi were highly incorporated into Norwegian society, and
therefore have no need to articulate security interests separate from those of other Norwegians.
Torvald Falch and Jan-Petter Gintal observed that Norwegians have a high degree of trust in the
state and so do Sámi, and that Sámi benefit from same security as other Norwegians. Although
most Sámi view themselves as distinct, “you have a Sámi public which is also very much
connected to the Norwegian public. So it’s not a clear division between the Sámi public sphere
and the Norwegian public sphere. It has never been actually, in that way.”822 Sven-Roald Nystø
also linked Sámi inclusion directly to attitudes towards climate change, attributing the greater
willingness and capacity of Sámi to adapt to the changing environment to the previous
adaptations they have undertaken to become part of Norwegian society: “The Sami societies
have changed. They have modernized. They are to a huge extent an integral part of the
mainstream economy. All the adaptations to that are very much in place. We have faced the
urbanization process for a long time. We have adapted to that as well. The challenges that will
follow climate change, they have started on a different basis among the Sámi.”823 If efforts to
securitize social and cultural issues by minority groups is often premised upon the gap that exists
between those groups and the dominant society, then the high degree of social and political
recognition and integration of Sámi in Norway can reasonably be expected to decrease the
perceived need among Sámi to depict their distinct security as being threatened.
821 Personal communication with Else Grete Broderstad June 16, 2014. 822 Interview with Torvald Falch June 17, 2014. 823 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014.
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7.3.3 Geography
The third factor which I argue explains why Sámi have not sought to securitize their political
priorities is geography, particularly the influence close proximity to Russia has exerted on
Norwegian national security discourse. Norwegian security discourse, including in the High
North where the two countries share borders both on land and at sea, remains structured around
concern for security threats emanating from Russia, including in extremis the threat of military
conflict. As discussed in Chapter 6, the perceived threat posed by Russia is an enduring feature
of Norwegian security discourse, only complemented more recently by a similarly securitized
discourse around Arctic resource extraction. Recent studies have examined various dimensions
of the role of Russia in Norwegian security policy, including the shared border, the Svalbard
Archipelago, Norway membership in NATO, Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, and energy
extraction in the Barents Sea.824 But the two remain linked, because it is at least partly due to
fears over Russian aggression and the implications for northern petroleum extraction that drives
Norwegian concerns, and has driven the re-securitization of the High North by Norwegian
policymakers over the past decade. As Leif Jensen writes:
To gain entry to and credibility in the discourse, one must now ‘speak security’ across an ever-widening array of thematic contexts. The politicization of energy has acted as a door opener, letting ‘security’ in to colonize the discourses once again. The increasing concern for security, especially after 9/11, at the individual and aggregate level in the West, resonates widely in Norwegian High North discourses. This collective sense of vulnerability has instigated a renaissance for realism and state-centrism. Indeed, on Norway’s part, there is no more obvious place for prolonging a sense of paranoia and general insecurity than in relation to the High North, where Norway’s national identity as a tiny, vulnerable land and the image of massive Russia (‘the Russian bear’) as ‘the radical other’ are clear and easily resuscitated in the ‘collective Norwegian mind’.825
824 Kristian Åtland and Torbjørn Pedersen, “The Svalbard Archipelago in Russian Security Policy: Overcoming the Legacy of Fear – or Reproducing It?” European Security 17, no. 2-3 (2008): 227-251; Kristian Åtland and Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, “When Security Speech Acts Misfire: Russia and the Elektron Incident,” Security Dialogue 40, no. 3 (2009): 333-354; Torbjørn Pedersen, “Norway’s Rule on Svalbard: Tightening the Grip on the Arctic Islands,” Polar Record 45, no. 233 (2009): 147-152; Jensen 2012. 825 Jensen 2012, 94.
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The existence of a powerful, enduring, state-centric security discourse in Norway limits the
conceptual and policy space available to articulate alternative, non-state conceptions of
in/security. Due, in part, to the connotations of the Norwegian word sikkerhet, security-language
is still widely viewed as a privileged discourse that is the appropriate purview of the central
government. Fear of the Russians, or of being seen to interfere with the state’s ability to
effectively defend the nation against the Russians, restricts the willingness of Sámi actors to
employ security language in making their political claims. This also relates to the inclusion of
Sámi within Norwegian society, as some interview respondents noted that Sámi, too, were
protected by the Norwegian state against Russian aggression. Part of the Cold War legacy thus
appears to be the defence of Sámi populations in northern Norway against the Soviet threat.826
Jensen emphasizes that: “We must bear in mind that everything that smacks of ‘security’
acquires a very particular status in Norwegian discourses on the High North. Discourses are
wrapped in history, and here in the north, close to Russia, discursive fragments from the Cold
War continue to ring like echoes from the past.”827 Sven-Roald Nystø sees opportunities to
securitize Sámi issues as limited by proximity to Russia and the high political issues that
accompany it: “It’s state-centric. When you say the word ‘security’ then the governments say
‘whoa, hold your horses, this is our business,’ because security in the older days was military
security. But now we are widening the definitions and taking into account human security and
everything like that, and what media is hyping us, well of course, we have a border to Russia.
We are situated where we are, we have all this continental shelf issues, and so on and so on.”828
Given the enduring challenges associated with their Russian neighbour, other types of
securitizing moves are able to gain less traction within the Norwegian public sphere.
This is especially the case because the Norwegian state itself has widened the scope of security
threats contained within its official security discourse, as also discussed in Chapter 6. The High
North has become increasingly securitized since 2005, but the ambit of security has been
widened within state policy to accommodate an increasing variety of policy issues. As described
826 Interview with Torvald Falch and Jan-Petter Gintal June 17, 2014; interview with Sven-Roald Nystø, May 9, 2014. 827 Jensen 2012, 90. 828 Interview with Sven-Roald Nystø April 16, 2014.
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by a former minister of defence: “Current challenges in the North are qualitatively different, but
not necessarily less demanding than those facing us during the Cold War. Today’s challenges
are related to resource management, unresolved jurisdictional questions and the environment, all
of which affect societal security. We cannot, however, disregard situations likely to entail
challenges also in respect of state security.”829 Rather than attempt to define new issues as
security, and thus invite the state to take the lead role in their resolution, Sámi actors have
employed strategies of politicization and legalization rather than securitization, because “in so
far as increasing numbers of questions issues dealing with the High North acquire a security
flavour in the expanded sense of the term, the discursive consequences would appear to be the
sublimation of other issues.”830 Thus, Sámi have generally chosen not to speak security rather
than compete with the discursive position of Russia and energy as the preeminent security issues
in the High North. This may also reflect the tendency of Sámi political institutions to collaborate
with the Norwegian state, rather than resort to confrontation or directly challenge state policies.
7.4 Conclusion
Two conclusions can be drawn from this chapter’s analysis of the meaning of in/security in the
Norwegian High North. First, the understanding of in/security held by the Norwegian
government, described in Chapter 6, is not wholly shared by leaders and institutions representing
the Sámi minority whose traditional homeland encompasses most of the land area included in the
Norwegian High North. Instead, Sámi political actors identify a conception of Arctic in/security
that highlights two central issues: land use conflicts affecting contiguous grazing areas for
reindeer herding, and the preservation of Sámi language and culture. Within the category of land
use conflicts, interviewees identified three distinct threats perceived to threaten the continued
viability of the reindeer herding industry and Sámi cultural practices: expansion of mining
activities, construction of windmill farms in grazing areas, and prospective coastal and onshore
impacts of expanded offshore petroleum extraction activities. Climate change is not generally
829 Minister of Defence, “A Defence for the Protection of Norway’s Security, Interests and Values,” Proposition to the Storting no. 48 2007-2008 (Oslo: 2008). Quoted in Jensen 2012, 91. 830 Jensen 2012, 95.
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regarded as a security issue, and when it is this is primarily due to its effects on reindeer herding
and subsistence food sources such as fish stocks. Overall, it is possible to state that Sámi seem to
share a similar, though not identical, conception of in/security with Inuit in northern Canada, in
so far as threats and referent objects can be broadly categorized in terms of the natural
environment, indigenous identity and cultural practices, and political autonomy and self-
government. For Sámi, the last of these three is seen as essential for protecting the former two,
though Sámi success in establishing representative institutions for exercising self-determination
in Norway means that most do not see Sámi political rights as being threatened.
The second conclusion is that in spite of sharing a similar conception with Inuit as to the
meaning of security in their respective Arctic homelands, Sámi are not securitizing actors within
the context of Norwegian domestic politics. As such, they do not seek to have their political
priorities elevated to the apex of political priority through the invocation of security language
and the construction of existential threat-referent object relationships. Whereas Inuit in Canada
have articulated their priorities as security issues in an effort to disrupt official Canadian Arctic
security discourse, Sámi appear to have refrained from framing their issues as security issues
precisely to avoid having their priorities subordinated to the security concerns of the Norwegian
state. I have proposed three factors to explain the decision not to securitize on the part of
Norwegian Sámi. First, the relatively modest environmental changes that have occurred in
Sápmi reduce the material hazards facing Sámi, decreasing the existential implications of climate
change and thus the motivation to securitize. Second, Sámi are full beneficiaries of Norwegian
society, enjoying all the benefits of citizenship of the world’s only social democratic petro-state.
As such, they do not experience the same poverty, privation, and lower qualities of life vis-à-vis
the majority population as most indigenous peoples, further reducing the material basis upon
which Sámi could base specific security claims and be motivated to pursue discrete security
interests against the Norwegian state. Finally, the continued discursive power of Russia within
Norwegian Arctic security policy is such that it is difficult for other security issues to gain
significant traction. Unlike Canada, whose geography is such that there has never been a
realistic fear of invasion by the Soviets/Russians, Norwegians have been concerned for centuries
over the possibility of aggression from their far more powerful neighbour. The continued
concern over relations with Russia contributes to a robust, state-centric national security
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discourse in Norway that is less susceptible to alternative securitizing moves. Even if they so
chose, Sámi might have difficulty making political claims on the discursive terrain of security.
Fortunately for them, the absence of immediate threats to their survival or wellbeing, and given
that they, too, benefit from defence against Russia and extraction of Arctic petroleum resources,
Sámi have little reason to advance security claims different from those articulated by the
Norwegian state. Moreover, given their high degree of assimilation, it is possible that even if
they attempted securitization Sámi security claims might not be terribly different from those of
other Norwegians. The different experiences of environmental change between Canada and
Norway, in particular, suggest that Sámi would not seek to securitize environmental change.
Though many Sámi possess a strong indigenous identity, the analysis in Chapters 4, 5, and 7
demonstrate there is no monolithic indigenous conception of in/security. Since their material
context is similar to that of other Norwegians, and they face no particularly grave threats to their
survival, it is possible that Sámi securitizing moves would not be radically different, even if their
policy preferences with respect to land use differ from those of the national government.
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Chapter 8
Conclusion 8This dissertation has examined the meaning of in/security in the Arctic regions of Canada and
Norway from the perspectives of each state’s national government and their Indigenous peoples,
particularly Inuit and Sámi, respectively. In particular, it has examined how human-caused
environmental changes are incorporated into the understanding of Arctic in/security held by
these different actors, and the roles that actors’ identities and their material contexts have on the
process of securitization. The findings demonstrate the variations that exist across differing
conceptions of Arctic in/security, both between states and Indigenous people and between
different Indigenous peoples. Overall, while there is no consensus on the meaning of security in
the circumpolar region, certain commonalities exist. Human-caused environmental changes have
catalyzed a widespread reassessment of in/security since the turn of the 21st century, with new
threats and referent objects identified by various securitizing actors. Environmental change has
unquestionably caused the emergence of new security issues, and is now a ubiquitous feature of
Arctic foreign and security policies. However, states and Indigenous peoples differ significantly
on what they identify as the principal security implications of environmental change, in some
cases depicting contradictory and mutually exclusive understandings of the nature of Arctic
security threats. Six central conclusions can be extracted from this dissertation: three empirical
findings, and three theoretical implications of those findings.
8.1 Indigenous Understandings of Arctic In/Security
The first finding of this dissertation is that Inuit and Sámi have specific conceptions of what
in/security means in the Arctic, and of the relationship between in/security and environmental
change. Organizations and individual leaders representing Inuit and Sámi, respectively, identify
valued referent objects they fear are threatened; often, these threats arise from global or local
environmental changes, or the ways in which environmental change exacerbates or multiplies
existing challenges and security issues for Indigenous peoples. The emphasis in this dissertation
is on security claims made by leaders and organizations on behalf of Indigenous peoples, but
there is reason to believe these understandings of in/security are held among non-elite
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community members, as well. Though imperfect, survey data from the first and second Arctic
Security Public Opinion Surveys and the Survey of Living Conditions in the Circumpolar Arctic
support the priority afforded to environmental issues, and the identification of environmental
change as the most pressing Arctic issues because it affects so many others.
There are, however, distinctions between Inuit and Sámi understandings of Arctic in/security.
As laid out in Chapter 4, for Inuit in Canada articulations of in/security are structured around
three referent objects: protecting the Arctic environment – including animal populations, specific
ecosystems, and human-nature relationships – from degradation and radical climate change;
preserving Inuit identity through the maintenance of cultural and subsistence practices; and
asserting and maintaining Inuit autonomy as self-determining political actors within the context
of the Canadian settler state. All three of these referent objects are identified as threatened by
human-caused environmental change, and deep concern over the multifaceted impacts of Arctic
climate change permeates Inuit articulations of in/security. Many Inuit see climate change as
compounding the negative effects of colonization, sedentarization, and modernization imposed
on their people by Canada in the latter half of the 20th century. As with previous episodes of
antagonistic relations between Inuit and the federal government, the policies and preferences of
the Canadian state are often explicitly identified as threatening the wellbeing and survival of
Inuit. This is particularly the case with respect to federal inaction on mitigating climate change
and strong support for Northern resource extraction, both of which many Inuit see as threatening
their ability to maintain their established ways of life, and as being imposed on them in a manner
that compromises the integrity of Inuit political autonomy and rights to self-determination.
Overall, Inuit representatives are clear and explicit in identifying an understanding of Arctic
in/security that strongly echoes the discourse of human security, which situates the wellbeing of
people and human communities as the referent object of security analysis and the normative
object to be protected.
This Inuit understanding of Arctic security differs in important ways from that of Sámi in
Norway. As discussed in Chapter 7, Sámi political actors identify a conception of Arctic
in/security that highlights the protection of two central referent objects: contiguous grazing areas
for reindeer herding, and Sámi language and culture. Grazing areas are seen to be threatened by
land use conflicts between Sámi and non-Sámi actors, particularly corporations, with three
distinct hazards identified as threatening the continued viability of the reindeer herding industry
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and reindeer-based Sámi cultural practices: expansion of mining activities in Sápmi, construction
of windmill farms in grazing areas, and coastal and onshore impacts of expanded offshore
petroleum extraction. Environmental change contributes to these threats in various ways, such as
impacting reindeer herding, subsistence food sources, and fish stocks, but in general climate
change itself is not regarded as a significant security issue. Preservation and revitalization of
Sámi languages, meanwhile, is seen as key to the maintenance of a distinct Sámi identity within
the Norwegian state, and is a reflection of the rights of Sámi to self-determination under
international law. Overall, Sámi in Norway share a similar conception of in/security with Inuit
in Canada, in that threats and referent objects can be broadly categorized in terms of the natural
environment, indigenous identity and cultural practices, and autonomy. For Sámi, however, the
emphasis is on cultural autonomy within the context of Norwegian society, whereas Inuit
emphasize political autonomy within the context of the Canadian state. Regardless, both Inuit
and Sámi continue the “quest for an institutional context of non-domination,” wherein they are
able to exist as self-determining Indigenous peoples within settler-colonial polities.831 However,
the most significant difference lies in the relative emphasis placed on the threats associated with
environmental change. Whereas climate change is foundational to the Inuit meaning of
in/security in their Arctic homeland, it is secondary or absent from the ways Sámi construct their
security interests.
Thus, despite the similarities between Arctic Indigenous peoples in Canada and Norway, there is
reason to doubt the existence of an inherently ‘indigenous’ understanding of security. Even
within specific Indigenous peoples, important differences over the meaning of security may
exist. Both Inuit and Sámi are transnational, cross-boundary peoples divided among themselves
by the colonial imposition of territorial boundaries between sovereign states. While they did not
consent to the colonization and polyfurcation of their traditional territories, it appears likely that
colonialism has resulted in significant differences between Indigenous peoples separated by
national boundaries. For example, among Inuit there is reason to believe Greenlanders and
Nunavummiut might view security differently. Inuit in Canada have frequently opposed natural
resource extraction projects, particularly offshore hydrocarbon development, as threatening local
831 Iris Marion Young, Global Challenges: War, Self-Determination and Responsibility for Justice (Malden: Polity, 2007), 50.
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communities and ecosystems and contributing to global warming, and while Greenlanders
remain highly divided, the Inuit-led Government of Greenland has embraced resource extraction
as the means to achieve greater political autonomy from Denmark.832 Inupik – Inuit in Alaska –
have also been supportive of oil development in Prudhoe Bay and the North Slope Borough, with
revenues from extraction and related economic activities being a vital part of Indigenous
economies since the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971.833 Similarly,
Sámi in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia likely understand security differently given the
influence of distinct policies and political structures within their respective countries, and the
geopolitical realities that accompanied membership in the East or West blocs during the Cold
War. Such variation among Indigenous peoples’ understandings of their interests, and the
relationship between those interests and natural resource extraction, cautions against
characterizing a particular essentialized Indigenous understanding of in/security. Though
similarities may exist, Arctic Indigenous peoples exhibit variation in their political preferences
and identification of their political interests on the basis of their specific material and political
contexts. Such variation prevents any singular definition of what in/security means to
Indigenous peoples, even if many Indigenous accounts of in/security foreground threats to
certain common values and shared referent objects.
8.2 State Understandings of Arctic In/Security
The second finding is that understandings of Arctic in/security held by Inuit and Sámi differ
from, and are omitted, from those articulated by their national governments. As outlined in
Chapter 4, Canada’s official understanding of Arctic in/security – as reflected in the key Arctic
foreign and security policy documents released under the previous Conservative government – is
based on two linked pillars. The first pillar asserts the need for increased military defence of
Canada’s Arctic sovereignty in the face of potential challenges. It implies that sovereignty over
Arctic lands and waters remains unsettled under international law and threatened by geopolitical
rivals, thus Canada requires a strengthened Northern military presence and increased investment
832 Frank Sejersen, Rethinking Greenland and the Arctic in an Era of Climate Change (London: Routledge, 2015). 833 Shadian 2014.
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in military resources and capabilities. In particular, the Conservative government frequently
depicted a resurgent Russia as an expansionary power and Canada’s primary Arctic antagonist.
The second pillar is linked to the first because it explains part of the motivation for Canada’s
increased militarization of Arctic sovereignty, namely that extraction of Arctic resources is
important for the economic security of the Canadian state. Although extraction of many
resources, particularly hydrocarbons, experienced only modest increases between 2001-2011, the
idea of Northern resources as important to the broader economic security of Canadians, in
general, and Northerners, in particular, has been a significant component of Canada’s recent
Arctic policy. In one sense, Canada tends to discuss security indirectly; sovereignty remains the
central element of Canada’s official Arctic discourse. However, the recent discourse of Arctic
sovereignty has been premised on realist understandings of security and the nation-state. Thus,
Canadian Arctic policy may best be understood as sovereignty-as-security, whereby Canada’s
national security interests are served through the militarized assertion of sovereignty claims seen
as enabling the extraction of Arctic resources, which in turn further demonstrates that Canada is
exercising that sovereignty.
This official discourse of Canadian Arctic security indicates relative continuity with historical
patterns of government policy towards the Arctic, but marks a departure from the human security
foreign policy agenda that characterized Canada’s global involvement in the 1990s and early
2000s. Canada was a leader in the post-Cold War widening of security, and championed a
holistic conception of regional security that prioritized protection of the Arctic ecosystem, health
and wellbeing of Northerners, cultural integrity of Arctic Indigenous peoples, and mitigating the
impacts of human-caused climate change. Though never fully implemented by the Liberal
governments of the day, these goals are fundamentally incompatible with the Conservative
vision of the Canadian North as a storehouse of hydrocarbon and mineral resources waiting to be
exploited. Indeed, the vision of the Arctic as a resource province necessitates environmental
damage as the cost of economic progress. Canada’s approach to Arctic security is thus inimical
to understanding the threats associated with environmental change because doing so would
implicate the Conservatives’ own natural resource and economic development policies as a key
source of insecurity. Ultimately, rather than build upon Canada’s human security legacy, recent
federal policy has ignored the threats posed by climate change in pursuit of the economic
benefits that it may afford.
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The analysis of in this dissertation Canadian Arctic policy between 2001-2011 straddles both
Liberal and Conservative governments, but is particularly informed by the recent Conservative
Government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper (2006-2015). In October 2015, however, the
Conservatives were defeated in the federal election by the Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau.
During the campaign and since taking office, the Trudeau Liberals have articulated a distinct
vision of federal-Indigenous relations from their predecessors, including an emphasis on
“renewing[ing] the relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples … [and] do[ing] more
to make sure that the voices of Indigenous Peoples are heard in Ottawa.”834 The Arctic did not
feature prominently in the Liberals’ campaign rhetoric and has not as yet been a significant
feature of their time in government, but some indications of potential future developments have
already appeared. With respect to the intersection of Indigenous politics and natural resources,
the Liberal focus appears to be on winning ‘social license’ for continued extractive projects.
This extends beyond the Arctic, but, like their Conservative predecessors, the Liberals emphasize
the “tremendous economic potential” of Canada’s North,835 and the need to make the region
attractive for workers and investment by achieving “a balance between development and
protecting the environment.”836 The Liberals have adopted a very different tone on climate
change – including use of securitizing language by describing it as “an immediate and significant
threat to our communities and our economy”837 – but have had difficulty identifying a pathway
towards national GHG emissions reductions and gaining buy-in from other orders of
government.838 And the Liberal government has announced that, despite pledging to scrap the
proposed purchase of new F-35 fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force, the F-35 will still
834 Liberal Party of Canada, “A New Nation-to-Nation Process”. Accessed at https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/a-new-nation-to-nation-process/ on March 10, 2016. 835 Liberal Party of Canada, “Canada’s North”. Accessed at https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/canadas-north/ on March 10, 2016. 836 Thomas Rohner, “Nunavut’s federal candidates: Hunter Tootoo,” Nunatsiaq Online (September 30, 2015). Accessed at http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674nunavuts_federal_candidates_hunter_tootoo/ on March 10, 2016. 837 Liberal Party of Canada, “Climate Change”. Accessed at https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/climate-change/ on March 10, 2016. 838 “Trudeau, premiers agree to climate plan framework, but no specifics on carbon pricing,” CBC News (March 3, 2016). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/first-ministers-premiers-trudeau-1.3474380 on March 10, 2016.
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be considered as a replacement for the aging CF-18s.839 The early evidence makes it difficult to
tell to what extent the new government will differ from the Conservatives with respect to the key
pillars of militarism and resource extraction in an Arctic region experiencing dramatic climate
change. The exclusion or absence of Indigenous views on Arctic in/security may be specific to
the Conservative era, or may prove to be a continuing feature of Canadian security policy. Given
the rapid pace of change within global politics and the global climate, and the intensely
competing domestic pressures on the federal government to balance the interests of different
economic sectors and political constituencies, only time will tell.
Canada’s sovereignty-as-security discourse echoes several key themes of Norwegian Arctic
security policy. As examined in Chapter 6, Norway’s official understanding of in/security in its
High North region is also structured around two pillars: Russia and natural resources. Although
these issues have been reiterated as part of Norway’s new High North Initiative, they reflect the
dominant construction of the Norwegian national interest in the Arctic for at least the last two
centuries. In this respect, defending its territory from Russian aggression while extracting
natural resources are routinely and consistently depicted as vital to the survival and prosperity of
the Norwegian state. Historically, this conception of in/security in the High North also
incorporated Sámi, because their support was integral in establishing sovereignty in the disputed
Scandinavian border regions prior to modern state consolidation, while their labour was
exploited to facilitate natural resource extraction. In the present day, the ongoing construction of
Russia as a national security issue and natural resources, particularly offshore petroleum
extraction, as key to national economic security and the maintenance of the welfare state has
resulted in the High North being a heavily securitized subject within Norwegian policy
discourse. The Arctic regions of Canada and Norway have each been constructed as security-
relevant in their respective national contexts. However, whereas northern Canada has been only
narrowly understood as related to security, namely through the discourse of sovereignty-as-
security, many issues in the Norwegian High North have been securitized within state policy,
with security operating as a powerful keyword for numerous regional policy domains.
839 Murray Brewster, “Sajjan refuses to rule out F-35 from fighter jet replacement competition,” CBC News (December 21, 2015). Accessed at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sajjan-refuses-to-rule-out-f-35-from-fighter-jet-replacement-competition-1.3375507 on March 10, 2016.
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Implicit in how Canada and Norway have constructed their official understandings of Arctic
in/security is that the views of Indigenous peoples are not reflected. Whereas Inuit and Sámi
views of in/security emphasize threat-referent object relationships pertaining to the environment,
indigenous identity, and political and cultural autonomy, Canada and Norway identify Arctic
in/security premised on territorial defence, natural resource extraction, and the economic
interests of their core southern regions. Indigenous peoples feature very little in the Arctic
security policies of either state, and in so far as they do their own stated security priorities are
absent. This suggests that state understandings of Arctic in/security remain fundamentally
colonial, and represent the assertion of southern Canadian and Norwegian priorities and interests
over those of the Indigenous peoples who inhabit the northern regions of both countries. They
also fail to fully account for the facts that Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claims rest in large part
on the prior sovereignty of Inuit, and that Sámi were integral in supporting early Norwegian
claims over the High North. Thus, dominant Arctic security discourses in both countries
perpetuate the historical relations of Indigenous subordination to southern-based governments,
which also serves to undermine the Inuit and Sámi priorities of autonomy and self-determination.
Not only do Canada and Norway’s Arctic security policies fail to reflect the security interests of
their Indigenous peoples, they further compromise those very interests and validate Inuit and
Sámi concerns over government imposition on their peoples.
8.3 Indigenous Securitization and Non-Securitization
The third empirical finding of this dissertation is that, despite the similarities between Inuit and
Sámi and Canadian and Norwegian understandings of Arctic in/security, respectively, there are
differing explanations for why Indigenous understandings are not reflected in the Arctic security
policies of either circumpolar state. Inuit in Canada and Sámi in Norway do not equally employ
securitization as a strategy to mobilize political action on their highest priority issues, thus two
distinct sets of factors explain the failure or absence of Indigenous securitization within the
Canadian and Norwegian Arctic regions. As Chapter 5 explains, dominant Arctic security
discourse in Canada omits Indigenous views of in/security because securitizing moves made by
Inuit and other Indigenous actors are excluded from the official securitization process. This
exclusion operates through the mechanism of silenced insecurity, whereby securitizing moves
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are either impeded from being made or systematically ignored to prevent them from being heard.
The silencing of securitizing moves by Indigenous peoples in the Canadian Arctic occurs in three
specific ways. First, their voices and views are marginalized or omitted from the considerations
of state actors who comprise the authoritative audience for securitization, principally the
Parliament of Canada. Second, ‘the Arctic’ is defined in such a way that certain Indigenous
peoples are excluded from the region, resulting in the delegitimation of their views on Arctic
issues through the imposition of settler-colonial territorial definitions. Third, the central issues
for Indigenous peoples’ understandings of Arctic in/security are omitted or diminished in state
discourse, denying recognition of the material basis for certain security claims to be made. Thus,
while Inuit and other Indigenous peoples in Northern Canada have attempted to have their
security claims heard by political actors representing the sovereign power to mobilize an
exceptional political response, their securitizing moves have failed to transform into complete or
successful securitizations, and have instead been subsumed within the Arctic security claims of
the Canadian state.
The explanation for why Sámi views are not represented in state Arctic security policies in
Norway is very different, however. Unlike Indigenous peoples in northern Canada, Sámi have
not generally functioned as securitizing actors articulating their concerns in terms of threat-
referent relationships and existential threats. Sámi political actors express concern over various
hazards to their traditional land use, livelihoods, culture, and autonomy, but these issues are
usually not described using securitizing language, nor characterized as existential issues
threatening Sámi survival. By and large, these issues are treated as normal political issues, with
little of the urgency invoked by speaking in/security. Thus, particularly given the prevalence of
security language for Inuit in Canada, the question in the case of Sámi shifts from “why have
their securitizing moves failed?” to “why have they not made securitizing moves in the first
place?”. Chapter 7 proposes three reasons for why Sámi have not sought to securitize their
political concerns: the relatively weaker impacts of human-caused climate change in the
Scandinavian Arctic; the high degree of Sámi inclusion within Norwegian society; and the strong
influence of a threatening Russian neighbour on Norwegian national security discourse.
Whereas a high degree of difference between Inuit and non-indigenous Canadians and a
relatively diffuse conception of national security in Canada make securitization a possibility for
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political action, these three factors combine to make security uninviting terrain for Sámi to
pursue their political interests vis-à-vis non-indigenous Norwegian society.
The different explanations for the absence of Indigenous views from Arctic security highlight the
contributions of the revised approach to securitization theorized in Chapter 3. In/security means
something similar to Inuit and Sámi, but the former have sought to securitize while the latter
have not. Despite the seemingly favourable conditions for securitization success, Inuit have
failed in their efforts at securitization due to the interaction between their identity as the basis for
their security claims and the identity of the authoritative audience that must accept those claims.
The prior context of the colonial relationship between Inuit and the Canadian state is such that
Inuit implicate Canada in the production of their insecurity. To accept Inuit claims would
therefore require Canada to accept its own historical and contemporary complicity in adversely
affecting the prospects for Inuit survival and wellbeing, and undermine its own legitimacy to
determine the meaning of in/security in Northern Canada. The relational identities of Inuit and
the federal government thus mediate the success of securitizing moves made by the former
against the latter, because power to determine in/security is still held by the latter over the
former. By contrast, Sámi in Norway have chosen not to pursue securitization as the principal
strategy to advance their political priorities. The reasons for this appear to be their comfortable
material circumstances and relative lack of differentiation from the non-indigenous majority.
Included in this is the lesser gravity of environmental change in the High North, and the fact that
Sámi do not experience it very differently than their non-indigenous Norwegian counterparts. In
this respect, while identity may contribute to the likely failure of certain securitizing moves, the
social context within which security claims are made and the material nature of prospective
threats inform the inclination towards, and possible viability of, securitization as a strategy for
political action. These findings have significant implications for securitization theory.
8.4 Indigenous Peoples and Securitization Non-Dominance
There are three distinct theoretical implications of the preceding empirical findings. The first of
these is whether securitization actually affords a viable strategy for Indigenous peoples to pursue
state action on their highest priority policy issues. As discussed above, whether Indigenous
political actors choose to pursue securitization varies according to contextual factors. However,
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the experience of Inuit in Canada suggests that even when Indigenous actors do attempt to
securitize they may be unable to do so. If Inuit views are structurally excluded from state Arctic
security discourse in Canada, a result is they are rendered securitization non-dominant. This is
distinct from observing that Inuit and other peoples inhabiting the Arctic may experience unique
or specific security threats to their collective survival or wellbeing, such as those related to
climate change or indigenous identities. Rather, securitization non-dominance suggests a group
is unable to engage in the intersubjective process through which security threats are socially
constructed, and thus their views are structurally excluded from state security discourse.
Inuit securitization non-dominance is not an a priori condition, but can be deduced from the
consistent failure of their securitizing moves. Chapters 4 and 5 detail the securitizing moves that
Inuit have made to articulate environmental change, the effects of colonization and
modernization, and various policies of the Government of Canada as threats to their collective
security and wellbeing. Since these securitizing moves are not reflected in Canada’s Arctic
policies, it is possible to say that Inuit failed at their effort to securitize their priority issues. For
any societal group, securitization non-dominance suggests representatives of the state do not
consider their views worthy of full consideration, nor their stated interests sufficient to enjoy
protection afforded by the state. For indigenous peoples, however, whose states have historically
understood them as explicitly unworthy of full consideration as political subjects, it is a further
manifestation of the structural power exercised by settler-colonial institutions.
It is worth reiterating why the failure of Inuit efforts at securitization is puzzling. Inuit
organizations and leaders enjoy what should be a felicitous combination of factors for their
priority issues to be successfully securitized: they employ the grammar and vocabulary of
in/security; they have high social capital as organized, legitimate representatives of their people,
who are inherent and constitutional rights-holders over much of northern Canada; and there is a
significant material basis to the security issues they are articulating, particularly environmental
change. Thus, Inuit would seem to rank highly in terms of the three “facilitating conditions” that
structure the likely success or failure of a securitizing move.840 While securitization is a
structured field in which not all actors may participate equally, it is not clear that leading Inuit
840 Buzan et al, 33.
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organizations should have their views excluded. That this has nonetheless occurred suggests that
something else has intervened in the securitization process. While it is possible that the nature of
a given issue is not favourable to securitization, Chapter 3 discusses numerous examples of the
successful construction of environmental change as a security threat in other political and
geographic contexts. Securitizing environmental change is often difficult, but it has succeeded,
suggesting the answer to why Inuit securitizing moves have failed does not lie solely in the
nature of the threat they are seeking to construct.
Figure 8: Revised Securitization Process
Instead, I propose that the role of identity is more complex than typically recognized in
securitization theory. While some identities may offer privileged access to securitization and
serve to facilitate acceptance of a given actor’s security claims, identity can also be an inhibiting
condition that impedes securitization success. The case of Inuit securitizing actors in Northern
Canada suggests that Indigenous identity, as the basis for articulating the distinct interests of
Indigenous peoples, may limit the ability of indigenous securitizing moves to be accepted by the
sovereign power of the settler state. As such, Indigenous peoples may find themselves to be non-
dominant securitizing actors who are structurally unable to have their issues accepted as security
threats as a result of their historical relationships and contemporary positions within settler states,
and because their security issues inherently position that very sovereign as contributing to the
conditions of their insecurity. Since Indigenous peoples are subject to particular forms of
governmentality and state intervention, including greater means through which Indigenous
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security claims can be silenced, securitization processes involving Indigenous peoples have at
least three potential outcomes, instead of the binary possibilities of failure or success. As
explained in Chapter 3, demonstrated in Chapter 5, and re-illustrated in Figure 8 below,
Indigenous peoples’ securitizing moves: 1) may be silenced, and thus never reach the
authoritative audience that must adjudicate them; 2) may be subsumed within a broader but
distinct securitizing move, thus nominally succeeding while substantively failing to advance the
original security claim; or 3) may simply fail on their own terms if rejected by the audience.
The prospect of certain identities operating as an inhibiting condition for securitization raises
numerous theoretical questions: Which identities constitute particular groups as non-dominant?
Under what, if any, circumstances can non-dominant securitizing moves succeed, particularly if
the threats they articulate derive from the interests of the dominant group? A related question is
who is the authoritative audience of securitization, and does it always matter? Identities are
relational, and securitization non-dominance is determined by the prior relationship between the
securitizing actor and the audience. If the audience of securitization shifts – as, say, through a
change of government or in public opinion – then a standard account would indicate the
conditions for securitization may shift, as well. As discussed in Chapter 3, however,
securitization has been challenged for its underlying democratic bias, whereby the operation of
securitization presupposes that certain values exist, notably free speech and expression, thus
security claims made under favourable facilitating conditions are expected to succeed. Such an
account of the relative openness of securitization stands in considerable tension with one of the
basic of precepts of Indigenous politics: that Indigenous peoples, by definition, “remain occupied
peoples who have been dispossessed and disempowered in their own homelands.”841 Under
such imbalanced power relations, and where the security of the non-dominant group is, to some
extent, necessarily compromised by the interests of the majority, can the settler sovereign ever
accept the security claims of Indigenous peoples? Is the securitization non-dominance of
Indigenous peoples thus a fixed condition, because the sovereign cannot accept security claims
made against itself or those that question the legitimacy of its authority?
841 Alfred and Corntassel, 598.
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Full answers to these questions are beyond the scope of this dissertation, but they have important
implications for related areas of research. If Indigenous peoples are structurally impeded from
successfully making security claims within their respective domestic polities, then it suggests a
significant limitation on the political agency of Indigenous peoples within settler states. In
particular, if securitization can be a useful mechanism for mobilizing political action against
potentially existential material hazards, then the findings of this dissertation call into question
whether self-determination – as currently realized within the context of settler societies such as
Canada and northern Norway – includes the capacity to effectively respond to the most
challenging issues facing Indigenous people. Though Indigenous governments and other
representative organizations provide a potential alternative audience for securitizing moves, they
possess neither the material resources nor the constitutional and legal authority to enact sufficient
changes to effectively respond to the security issues identified by in Inuit in Chapter 4 and Sámi
in Chapter 7. The ability to securitize is linked to power, and the preponderance of power within
settler societies does not reside with Indigenous people. Consequently, the inability to
successfully securitize has serious implications for the protection of Indigenous peoples against
the security threats they identify. In effect, they may be rendered doubly insecure, both
confronted with specific types of security threats and systematically unable to generate an
appropriate state response in order to protect themselves against them.
8.5 Security, States, and Radical Environmental Change
It is thus important that Indigenous peoples have been principal advocates linking Arctic security
with the threats posed by environmental change. Perhaps counter-intuitively, articulation of
climate change as a security issue by Indigenous peoples may contribute to why it has not been
successfully securitized within the Arctic security policies of circumpolar states such as Canada
and Norway. However, radical environmental change may pose a more fundamental challenge
to securitization theory, and its basic logic of in/security. With respect to securitization, whether
or not Indigenous peoples or other non-dominant groups have the power to securitize may be
moot given the nature of the threats associated with human-caused environmental change. Even
if the preceding section were incorrect – i.e. Indigenous peoples were not securitization non-
dominant, and therefore stood a reasonable chance of having their security claims accepted by
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states – it might not make any significant difference in their ability to defend themselves against
the threats in question. As outlined in Chapter 1, human-caused environmental change is already
causing an irrevocable transformation of the Arctic, with more significant and increasingly dire
predictions released on a regular basis. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report warns that “the
rapid rate at which climate is changing in the Polar Regions will impact natural and social
systems and may exceed the rate at which some of their components can successfully adapt.”842
The pace of environmental changes continues to exceed predictions of climate models, and
particularly worrying is the likelihood that positive feedbacks generated by the warmer climate –
such as release of methane from Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost, reduced albedo from loss of
sea ice, or collapse of the Greenland or Antarctic ice-sheets – may significantly exacerbate
climate change.843 Recent findings indicate the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has begun to
disintegrate in earnest, and is now beyond human capabilities to prevent.844 This is expected to
cause an increase in global sea level of 1.2-3.6 metres over the next two centuries, in addition to
predicted sea level rise related to other drivers of environmental change. The melting of the
Antarctic ice-sheet indicates that certain major environmental changes are now certain to occur
irrespective of future human efforts to mitigate their climate impact. Climate adaptation will
now be necessary around the world, while mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions causing global
warming are aimed at preventing future or runaway climate change. As such, it is not clear what
effects successful securitization of environmental change would have in mobilizing an
extraordinary political response to climate changes that can no longer be avoided.
Put another way, even if Inuit and other Indigenous peoples were successful in having their
securitizing moves accepted by Canada or other circumpolar states, what exceptional measures
could be mobilized to effectively respond to the threats posed by human-caused environmental
change? Climate change in the Arctic can be slowed but not reversed, but that would only result
from global efforts to address climate change, and cannot be achieved through the actions of any
842 IPCC 2014, 3. 843 IPCC 2013, 16; Lenton 2012. 844 Jonathan Bamber, Riccardo Riva, Bert Vermeersen, and Anne LeBrocq, “Reassessment of the Potential Sea-Level Rise from a Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” Science 324, no. 901 (2009): 901-903; Ian Joughin, Benjamin Smith, Brooke Medley, “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica,” Science 344, no. 6185: 735-738.
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state alone. In this respect, effectively mitigating threats posed by Arctic climate change is
merely an extension of responding to global climate change. Unsurprisingly, therefore, climate
change has been referred to as a “macro-securitization” because rather than forming a discrete
security issue that can be defended against, it is the context that shapes and orders the
articulation and assessment of numerous other security issues.845 For instance, a 2010 study of
the failure of Canadian policymakers to recognize climate change as a security threat offers
seven recommendations for action.846 While laudable and appropriate given the increasing
threats posed by environmental change, these recommendations focus on climate adaptation
rather than mitigation. The authors lament the lack of interest by the Conservative government,
and its predecessors, in seriously responding to the multi-scale security impacts of climate
change, and encourage Canadian institutions, including law enforcement and intelligence
agencies, to catch up with respect to planning for climate related hazards. They encourage
Canadian leaders to “engage internationally”, but otherwise offer little discussion of how Canada
might itself address the causes of climate change rather than simply defend against its effects.
Present throughout their analysis is the unspoken fact that there is little Canada can do on its own
other than respond defensively to the hazards posed by environmental change.
Securitization’s emphasis on the legitimation of exceptional measures raises one peculiar
possibility with respect to effectively responding to global environmental change. In the context
of threats to the global biosphere, one possibility of how states might respond is through geo-
engineering, or deliberate human interference in the climate system in order to mitigate the
unintended consequences of human GHG emissions. Geo-engineering involves artificially
forcing climatic or ecological systems into new equilibria through technological interventions,
proposals for which range from high technology to rudimentary science.847 Specific
interventions proposed for the Arctic include seeding the stratosphere with sulphur particles to
increase reflectivity of solar radiation and pumping and spraying water in order to reform sea
845 Buzan and Wæver 2009. 846 Purdy and Smythe 2010. 847 David Keith, A Case for Climate Engineering (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013).
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ice.848 To date, most states have been reticent to accept geo-engineering as a valid or appropriate
response to climate change, but research on the subject has nonetheless persisted for decades. As
such, geo-engineering offers an example of just the kind of extraordinary policy response that
might be legitimated through successful securitization of climate change. However, therein lies
the problem: states are not the only authoritative audience for securitizing moves that possesses
the power to respond to climate change through the deployment of geo-engineering techniques.
Indeed, there have been substantial concerns over the prospect that some geo-engineering
measures are sufficiently inexpensive and simple to implement that non-state actors might be
able to employ them without state support or authorization.849
An instructive example of geo-engineering was the depositing between July-August 2012 of 120
tonnes of iron ore in international waters off the west coast of Canada.850 The experiment
caused a 35,000 km2 plankton bloom 200 nautical miles west of Haida Gwaii, an exercise in
“ocean fertilization” that appears to contravene the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the
Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution, and Canadian law.851 The experimenters –
operating through a company called the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC), which
is co-owned by the Haida First Nation community of Old Massett and a controversial geo-
engineering entrepreneur and amateur scientist named Russ George – claim this plankton will
absorb atmospheric carbon while encouraging spawning by local salmon populations.852 They
848 Paul J. Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma,” Climatic Change 77, no. 3-4 (2006): 211-220; Ken Caldeira and Lowell Wood, “Global and Arctic Climate Engineering: Numerical Model Studies,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 366, no. 1882 (2008): 4039-4056. 849 Adam Corner, “Profitable climate fixes are too tempting for rogue geoengineers to resist,” The Guardian (October 19, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/19/climate-fix-geoengineering on November 1, 2015. 850 Holly J. Buck, “Village Science Meets Global Discourse: The Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation’s Ocean Iron Fertilization Experiment,” Geoengineering Our Climate Working Paper and Opinion Article Series. Accessed at https://geoengineeringourclimate.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/buck-2014-village-science-meets-global-discourse-click-for-download.pdf on November 1, 2015. 851 Martin Lukacs, “World’s biggest geoengineering experiment ‘violates’ UN rules,” The Guardian (October 15, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering on November 1, 2015; Zoe McKnight, “Why was iron dumping a surprise?” Vancouver Sun (September 3, 2013). Accessed at http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/iron+dumping+surprise/8865130/story.html?__lsa=1097-99cb on November 1, 2015. 852 Zoe McKnight, “B.C. company at centre of iron dumping scandal stands by its convictions,” Vancouver Sun (September 4, 2013). Accessed at
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also claim to have been operating in the interest and with the authorization of the Haida
Nation.853 In 2013 and 2014, western North America experienced some of its largest salmon
runs ever; the number of salmon caught in the northeastern Pacific the year after the ocean
fertilizing experiment more than quadrupled to 226 million fish. Supporters argue these data and
other remote observations in the area where the ore was deposited indicate the project was a
success, should provide a model for collaborative community-based scientific research, and that
micro geo-engineering projects can be fruitfully deployed to mitigate climate change and
produce local ecological benefits.854 Meanwhile, though some scientists have voiced their
support, numerous international organizations and environmental groups have decried the actions
of HSRC, and as of 2014 an Environment Canada investigation appeared likely to result in
criminal charges, though it does not appear that any were ever laid.855
This experiment in geo-engineering speaks directly to the complexities of Indigenous politics
and sources of legitimacy for responding to threats associated with environmental change. The
project was approved and funded by the village of Old Massett after a vote by fewer than 200 of
the community’s 700 members, in which 57 voted against. Some community members
expressed their strong opposition before and after the actual experiment,856 with one elder
lamenting the experimenters invocation of Indigenous legitimacy to defend their actions:
“[HSRC] is always telling the world that ‘Haida people’ support them. It’s the Old Massett
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/company+centre+iron+dumping+scandal+stands+convictions/8860731/story.html?__lsa=1097-99cb on November 1, 2015. 853 Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation. Accessed at http://www.haidasalmonrestoration.com/ on November 1, 2015. 854 Robert Zubrin, “The Pacific’s salmon are back – Thank human ingenuity,” National Review (April 22, 2014). Accessed at http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376258/pacifics-salmon-are-back-thank-human-ingenuity-robert-zubrin on November 1, 2015. 855 Dene Moore, “Ocean fertilization experiment loses in B.C. court; charges now likely,” The Globe and Mail (February 3, 2014). Accessed at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/ocean-fertilization-experiment-loses-in-bc-court-charges-now-likely/article16672031/ on November 1, 2015; McKnight, “B.C. company at centre of iron dumping scandal stands by its convictions”. 856 Zoe McKnight and Gordon Hoekstra, “Some in Old Masset had concerns over iron-dumping scheme,” Vancouver Sun (October 22, 2012). Accessed at http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/some+masset+concerns+over+iron+dumping+scheme/7429860/story.html?__lsa=1097-99cb on November 1, 2015.
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Village Council that goes along with it … [but] it isn’t the ‘Haida people’ they’re
representing.”857 Dissenting community members also observe that ocean fertilization was only
the most recent in a series of local environment-related “get rich quick schemes”. While the
project proceeded without the permission of the self-governing Council of the Haida Nation, of
which Old Massett is a part, it is alleged to have occurred with the knowledge of various
agencies of the Government of Canada.858 Thus the question of authority to authorize responses
to environmental change is inextricably intertwined with questions of Indigenous representation
and governance within settler societies. Does one small community possess the authority to
legitimize human interventions in response to climate change and local environmental hazards,
especially when those interventions may affect many more people from outside the community?
Should such a community be bound by the authority of the larger, albeit still numerically small,
Indigenous nation to which it belongs? What is the role of settler governing authorities in
restricting or permitting the agency of Indigenous actors to respond to environmental threats?
Are settler institutions, such as Environment Canada or the criminal justice system, appropriately
able to restrict the decision making or activities of Indigenous communities with respect to such
environmental threats upon, and to, their unceded territories? Geo-engineering is an issue with
potentially global applications and implications, and cases such as this demonstrate the
challenges associated with authorizing its use as an extraordinary policy response to the hazards
of environmental change.
Ultimately, interrogating the relationship between in/security and radical environmental change
raises the question of whether the logic that underpins securitization is best equipped to guide
policy action and public consciousness on climate change. The theory’s emphasis on successful
securitization as the legitimation of exceptional policy measures may cause it to misunderstand
the nature of environmental in/security in the Anthropocene, in which threats are existential but
neither sudden nor exceptional. To the contrary, scholars have observed that central challenges
with respect to mobilizing an effective response to climate change are the facts that: it has been
occurring gradually over decades, its effects are rapid in geological terms but relatively slow-
857 Quoted in McKnight, “Why was iron dumping a surprise?”. 858 Martin Lukacs, “Canadian government ‘knew of plans to dump iron into the Pacific’,” The Guardian (October 17, 2012). Accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/17/canada-geoengineering-pacific?intcmp=122 on November 1, 2015.
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moving in human ones, and no single policy can adequately defend human beings or the global
biosphere from its effects.859 Moreover, if scholars and activists are correct in their assessment
that climate change arises from the normal, indeed ‘successful’, functioning of an industrialized,
globalized, capitalist economy, and therefore effectively responding to climate change truly
“changes everything”, then neither does environmental in/security appear to be exceptional.860
To the contrary, it is caused by the operation of the global normal, is now the everyday context
within which people and communities must make their collective decisions over how to live and
how to prioritize their respective security issues. In such a context, it is perhaps unsurprising that
even when securitizing environmental change has been discursively successful, it has not always
succeeded at generating an adequate policy response. Environmental security scholars
increasingly struggle with the fact that
the dynamics of linking security and climate change illustrate significant ambiguities over which audience/s are addressed and what emergency measures follow representations of threat … These challenges are oriented around complex questions raised by environmental change regarding what constitutes the referent object of security (states, people, future generations, the biosphere or other living beings?), and what actions might constitute legitimate security provision.861
It is notable, therefore, that statements and actions by Indigenous peoples identifying climate
change as a threat also routinely identify the need to reform capitalist economies and limit the
behaviour of corporate actors whose business models currently rely upon the extraction,
transportation, and consumption of fossil fuels.862 Many Indigenous peoples have sought to
disrupt dominant narratives employed by national governments, regional organizations, and the
IPCC by foregrounding the connection between climate change and exploitation of their lands
and resources. This connection is what has enabled Indigenous peoples to link new insecurities
associated with environmental change with pre-existing threats associated with colonialism and
859 Hulme 2009. 860 Barnett 2001; Saurin 2001; Dalby 2002, 2009; Foster, Bellamy and Clark 2010; Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015). 861 McDonald 2012, 582. 862 Smith 2007; Smith and Parks 2010; Chapters 5 and 7 of this dissertation.
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modernization: both stem from the same source, namely the expansion of capitalist economies
into their territories through the forced implementation of policies by settler governments. Thus,
“without question, the Indigenous peoples’ statements concur that climate change is a serious
problem. They clearly articulate that we are in crisis. But the crisis they identify is one
embedded in a completely dysfunctional economic order. The threat is not some abstract, long
term environmental change. The threat is in the commodification of nature, and the production
and consumption patterns of industrialized states.”863 By emphasizing that environmental
insecurity is linked to the globalization of a fossil fuel-based economy, and that climate change
poses particular threats to their lands, communities, and ways of life, Indigenous peoples further
align their stated security interests against the dominant economic interests of the majority, non-
Indigenous society. This underscores the unequal distribution of power between Indigenous
peoples and settler governments, while calling into question the underlying logic that views
security threats as phenomena that can necessarily be named, defined, and defended against.
Human civilization is usually the ultimate referent object of environmental security claims, yet it
is also the very structures of our current civilization that is causing global environmental change.
If the nature of a referent object is productive of the threats that endanger its own survival, it is
unclear how it can be defended without compromising the very object it seeks to defend. Since
Indigenous peoples have generally been positioned outside of the dominant society – and have
been historically oppressed and victimized in the name of ‘civilization’ – their security is
simultaneously linked to and separate from that of broader, non-indigenous societal referent
object. It is an irony that environmental changes increasingly affecting all of society threatened
many Indigenous peoples first, yet their security claims have been ignored. Now that climate
change is unavoidable, and all people increasingly experience its impacts, it is unclear whether
in/security can provide a conceptual guide for understanding what to do about it. No state can
combat climate change alone, or effectively respond to environmental change as the source of
danger for its citizens. Nor can settler states now accept indigenous securitizing moves without
accepting their own construction within those moves as the source of insecurity for Indigenous
peoples and everyone else as a result of being the major GHG emitters historically responsible
for climate change, and for having taken so long to take seriously the challenges it poses.
863 Smith 2007, 208.
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Understanding climate change as a security threat thus risks undermining the self-conception of
states in the Global North as sites of security for their citizens, and as leaders of a liberal
international order premised on cooperation, interdependence, and absolute gains. And even if
they were prepared to accept such a challenge to their ontological security864 – their very sense
of self as idealized sovereign spaces – they would still lack the capabilities to effectively deal
with environmental change, simultaneously making the acceptance futile and undermining the
logic that successful securitizing moves require an appropriate defence-response.
8.6 Critical Environmental Security in the Arctic
Perhaps in/security is not the right concept through which to frame our understanding of the
dangers associated with human-caused environmental change, or through which to mobilize
effective political action on climate change. Alternatively, if in/security is a social construct
established through the intersubjective agreement of social actors, perhaps it is possible to
redefine it in a way that better reflects the nature of current environmental challenges in the
Arctic and elsewhere. Dominant current understandings of security in the Arctic are not only
insufficiently focused on addressing the challenges of environmental change, but seem
committed to actually worsening that change. The sixth and final conclusion of this dissertation,
and its third theoretical implication, is thus that security, environmental change, and the Arctic
must be critically reconceived in order to reflect the magnitude of global environmental changes,
and adequately provide meaningful conditions of security for people and states in the
circumpolar region. While this could be described as a call for greater environmental security in
the Arctic, I argue that, to be meaningful, it must be a critical understanding of environmental
security that engages with ecological sustainability more deeply than the conventional inclusion
of environmental issues into security policy or analysis. Moreover, given the security claims
made by Arctic Indigenous peoples, it can be understood as an indigenized understanding of
Arctic security that not only reflects the security priorities of the region’s original inhabitants,
864 Jennifer Mitzen, “Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 3 (2006): 341-370.
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but also recognizes the benefits of their understandings of security for all people within and
beyond the circumpolar region.
As discussed in Chapter 3, the term “environmental security” has been commonly used since the
1970s, though initially research shied away from interrogating the sources of environmental
problems in favour of examining the costs and consequences of environmental damage.
Gradually, transnational issues such as nuclear irradiation; chemical use in industry, agriculture,
and warfare; resource scarcity; and human-caused environmental changes influenced alternative
conceptions of security mobilized in opposition to Cold War discourses of superpower
conflict.865 But even after the environment emerged as a legitimate sector of security analysis,
many scholars employed state-centric conceptions of environmental security that precluded
threats to non-state referent objects and obscured the role of states, corporations, and individuals
in constituting environmental hazards.866 Environmentally induced violence remained the focus
of most environmental security scholarship, limiting its analytical and normative potential.867 In
this way, conventional accounts of environmental security disciplined the radicalism inherent in
incorporating the environment into security analysis.
This de-radicalization of environmental security resembles the generalized disciplining of
environmentalism within global politics. In his comprehensive account of Green political theory,
Andrew Dobson differentiates “environmentalism” from “ecologism” as distinct dispositions
towards the human-nature relationship. Whereas environmentalism connotes “a managerial
approach to the environment within the context of present political and economic practices,”868
“ecologism holds that a sustainable and fulfilling existence presupposes radical changes in our
relationship with the non-human natural world, and in our mode of social and political life.”869
Environmentalism, so defined, dominates current discourses of global environmental problems,
advocating ‘greener’ modes of production and consumption without questioning the underlying
865 Buzan and Hansen 2009: 128. 866 Barnett 2001; Greaves 2014. 867 e.g. Homer-Dixon 1991, 1994, 1999. 868 Dobson 2007, 26. 869 Dobson 2007, 3.
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ecological sustainability of such practices. Indeed, mainstream environmental policies generally
favour “technological fixes” precisely because these do not disrupt the technologies, systems, or
behaviours that cause environmental problems in the first place.870 By contrast, ecologism
begins from the premise that humanity is embedded within natural systems, and what must be
sustained is the viability of Earth as a “safe operating space for humanity.”871 Thus, ecologism
views a globalized “hydrocarbon society” based on the extraction and consumption of non-
renewable fossil fuels as incompatible with ecological sustainability.872
Environmentalism and ecologism demonstrate the distinction between “problem-solving” and
“critical” forms of social theory. According to Robert Cox, problem-solving theory “takes the
world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into
which they are organized, as the given framework for action.”873 Such theories are
commonplace and often useful: they can resolve discrete problems such that the social, political,
and economic structures within which they occur remain intact. Problem-solving theories are
unproblematic so long as benefits generated by existing structures outweigh their negative
impacts. By contrast, critical theory rejects the limitation of problem-solving theories to existing
configurations of material and ideational power. To Cox, critical theory
is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came about. Critical theory, unlike problem-solving theory, does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing. It is directed towards an appraisal of the very framework for action, or problematic, which problem-solving theory accepts as its parameters.874
Environmentalism reflects a problem-solving approach to humanity’s impacts on the rest of the
natural world. Precisely because it attempts to solve environmental problems within existing
political and economic structures, mainstream “green politics presents no sort of a challenge at
all to the twenty-first century consensus over the desirability of affluent, technological, service
870 Greaves 2013. 871 Rockström et al. 2009. 872 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003). 873 Cox 1981, 128. 874 Cox 1981, 129.
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societies … Its dominant guise [is] an environmentalism that seeks a cleaner service economy
sustained by cleaner technology and producing cleaner conspicuous consumption.”875 By
contrast, ecologism seeks to realign relations between humanity and the complex ecological
network in which it exists, upon which it subsists, and which it is disrupting. Ecologism thus
reflects the application of critical theory to the structures and practices of human civilization that
are undermining the ecological basis for our continued survival and prosperity.
Following Cox and Dobson, critical environmental security can be deduced by applying critical
theory to the area of security and the environment. Unlike problem-solving approaches to
environmental security that seek to mitigate environmentally driven threats to states and their
interests, critical environmental security prioritizes the maintenance of a stable natural
environment conducive to human flourishing. Under the former, environmental factors catalyze
inter-group conflict or the environment itself is perceived as threatening state or human security.
In the latter, the environment is a series of systems and sub-systems upon which human life
depends, and whose functioning in a manner consistent with human survival is being undermined
by humanity’s own on-going activities. In this account, three features characterize critical
environmental security: it rejects the a priori link between security and violence; recognizes
human and non-human objects of security analysis above and below sovereign states; and
acknowledges how security is mediated by environmental factors originating within, as well as
beyond, national boundaries. Indeed, the current sources of global environmental insecurity
emanate from the very structures that govern most human activity. Global industrialized
capitalism, with its reliance on carbon fuel, and the neoliberal economic order, which privatizes
wealth while collectivizing environmental costs, are thus central to critical environmental
security: “It is the broader social and ecological degradation wrought by modernity which is the
overriding context for any discussion of security.”876 Critical environmental security thus
recognizes that the very ways in which humanity has organized its civilization are what is
causing the global ecological crisis threatening people across the world.
875 Dobson 2007, 5-7. 876 Barnett 2001, 65.
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What might a critical perspective examine differently than a mainstream problem-solving
approach to environmental security in the Arctic? A starting point might be to observe how the
division of security into distinct areas of analysis – such as the Copenhagen School’s distinction
between the military, political, economic, societal, and environmental sectors of security 877 –
marginalizes the impacts of non-environmental threats on ecological systems, while obscuring
the ways environmental factors contribute to the emergence of other types of threats. While
sectors may help categorize security issues, threats in one sector can endanger referent objects
and generate new threats in other sectors, as might the very responses states and other actors take
to defend themselves. A critical approach suggests environmental security must embrace the
ecological maxim that ‘everything is connected to everything else’, and move beyond sectoral
taxonomies and secure/insecure binaries to understand the role that choices made by states and
people play in rendering themselves in/secure.
Thinking critically about environmental security in the Arctic also entails exploring prospective
policy options that may contribute to environmental sustainability even if they challenge existing
institutions. This involves imagining, and working towards, distinct futures for the Arctic and its
people based on emerging and possible configurations of factors in the social, political, and
ecological realms, and directing analytical attention “towards the question of how humans,
groups and communities navigate in and create life-worlds of socially informed choices and
possibilities.”878 By definition, the process of imagining alternative futures inclines towards
questioning existing structures, and envisioning how they might change or be changed.
As laid out in this dissertation, such alternative possibilities for Arctic security are imagined in
some of the securitizing moves made by Indigenous peoples. By their nature, security claims
pertaining to objects such as communities, the natural environment, culture and identity, political
and cultural autonomy, and the integrity of human-nature systems and relationships call into
question the traditional association of security with the sovereign territorial state. Indigenous
peoples are quite clearly critical in their attitudes towards security and the environment by virtue
of their willingness to question existing configurations of institutional and social power
877 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998. 878 Sejersen 2015, 192.
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responsible for creating the threats to which they are responding, particularly in so far as those
systems reproduce historical patterns of colonial domination. Inuit challenge Canada’s authority
to impose decisions over Arctic lands and resources upon their people, and to make such
decisions without their free, prior and informed consent. Sámi question the right of the
Norwegian government to make decisions adversely affecting traditional land use and reindeer
grazing in violation of customary, statutory, and international law, or to infringe on the use of
Sámi languages. The relative importance of these security claims is largely derived from the fact
that Indigenous peoples have already achieved significant success in re-imagining the Arctic as a
political space. The contemporary Arctic is characterized by a cooperative governance regime
that includes – through the efforts of Indigenous leaders, organizations, and activists –
Indigenous peoples as permanent participants in regional institutions such as the Arctic Council,
the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, and Northern Forum. It is also experiencing the emergence of
new, transnational, and indigenized forms of sovereignty and political organization, including
possibilities for post-colonial political communities that better reflect Indigenous priorities and
dispositions towards culture, resources, and environmental sustainability.879 Such post-colonial
institutions, in turn, might help protect the referent objects identified by Indigenous peoples and,
conceivably, serve as an alternative audience for future securitizing moves. Alternative futures
thus include asking how institutions like the Arctic Council might evolve to be responsible for
protecting the regional environment and helping provide security for Arctic inhabitants.880
The adoption of Inuit and Sámi understandings of Arctic security would not only benefit
Indigenous peoples, however. Many people stand to benefit from decolonizing and indigenizing
the meaning of Arctic in/security, in so far as the security claims of Indigenous peoples identify
the importance of maintaining human-nature systems on which all Arctic inhabitants depend, and
which act as vital indicators of the health of the global ecology. Critically reimagining
environmental security in the Arctic thus invites questioning whether state policies that prioritize
militarism and non-renewable resource extraction can actually sustain the regional ecology,
provide for the survival of Arctic communities, and support the wellbeing of Arctic
879 Wilson 2007; Ejesiak 2013; Shadian 2014. 880 Page Wilson, “Society, Steward or Security Actor? Three Visions of the Arctic Council,” Cooperation and Conflict: 1-20. Published online July 9, 2015.
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inhabitants.881 In their place, we might imagine an Arctic in which extractive activities most
responsible for damaging the Arctic ecology through climate change and local contamination are
replaced with economic activities that support the priorities and traditions of Arctic inhabitants
themselves. Inherent in such a vision is a commitment to decarbonization of the global economy
as the only long-term solution to climate change capable of maintaining the viability of Earth’s
biosphere as a “safe operating space for humanity”.882
This shift will not be simple or painless for Arctic communities themselves, which are highly
dependent on fossil fuels for electricity production, local and extra-Arctic transportation, and to
support the import of essential consumer products including food. But the choice amounts to
whether Arctic peoples and communities are more secure being at the extreme vulnerable end of
global production and shipping chains that rely on hydrocarbons, the burning of which directly
contributes to destabilizing Arctic ecologies, or would experience greater security by becoming
more resilient and autonomous through a transition away from hydrocarbon energy. Such
visions reflect more critical and environmentally sustainable conceptions of security in and for
the Arctic region, and demonstrate attempts “to open up the study of environmental security by
thinking critically about existing approaches, and beginning to think alternative possibilities.”883
Elsewhere, I have argued that dominant conceptions of Arctic security are pathological – as
derived from the Greek pathos, for suffering – in that they deviate from a healthy, efficient, or
sustainable condition. The security policies of Arctic states suffer from three distinct
pathologies: (re)militarization in the absence of a military threat; constrained inclusion of
Indigenous peoples in regional governance; and hydrocarbon extraction in the context of the
Anthropocene.884 Of these, however, the third has the gravest implications for local, regional,
and global in/security. At the core of this security pathology is the fact that human-caused
climate change is enabling access to offshore Arctic hydrocarbon resources will exacerbate and
accelerate climate change. Arctic states have broadly disregarded concerns over regional
881 Broadhead 2010; Smith 2010; Greaves 2012b; Nickels 2013; Harrington and Lecavalier 2014; Sejersen 2015. 882 Rockström et al. 2009. 883 Barnett 2001, 156. 884 Chater and Greaves 2014.
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environmental insecurity and focused their national policies on the economic benefits to be
gained by exploiting Arctic resources.885 By pursuing hydrocarbon resource extraction, Arctic
states are committing themselves to an apocalyptic development strategy that will further
destabilize the Arctic environment and exacerbate the pace and severity of global climate
change. In contrast, a critical approach to environmental security would heed the scientific
assessment “that all Arctic [energy] resources should be classified as unburnable,” and must
remain unexploited if the planet is to avoid global temperature increase of more than 2° C.886
Indeed, a critical perspective might question the 2-degree target set by states under the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change.887 Already, the effects of climate change pose
extraordinary challenges worldwide, yet the current international regime dedicated to ‘solving’
the problem accepts and enables twice as much global warming as occurred over the 20th
century. In so far as they presuppose a degree of warming that will entirely reorganize the
ecologies and societies of the circumpolar region, multilateral climate negotiations have little to
offer future prospects for sustainable conditions of Arctic environmental security.
By pursuing policies that will contribute to climate change, circumpolar governments contribute
to present and future insecurity for their citizens and everyone else. Despite calls for and claims
of sustainable development, there is no official acknowledgement of the incompatibility of
hydrocarbon extraction, transportation, and consumption with the maintenance of a stable Arctic
environment. The roadmap to an Arctic resource boom is thus, in actual fact, a path towards
global ecological breakdown. The extraction and consumption of hydrocarbon resources will
further exacerbate climate change, which will expand access to such resources while
undermining the capacity of vulnerable ecosystems in the Arctic and elsewhere to sustain
established modes of human life. The pursuit of Arctic hydrocarbons, like the continuation of
other industrial and consumer processes driving climate change, represents a pathological
approach to security rooted in the tension between catastrophic climate change and perpetuation
of the activities that are causing that change to occur. It is inherently unsustainable, and ceteris
885 Smith 2010; Backus 2012; Greaves 2012b; Huebert and others 2012; Morozov 2012. 886 Christopher McGlade, and Paul Ekins, “The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Fuels Unused When Limiting Global Warming to 2° C,” Nature 517, no. 7533 (2015): 187-190. 887 Christopher Shaw, “Choosing a Dangerous Limit for Climate Change: Public Representations of the Decision Making Process,” Global Environmental Change 23, no. 2 (2013): 563-571.
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paribus cannot be reconciled with a critical conception of environmental security. Though this
paradox is not unique to the Arctic – indeed, it is a global phenomenon inherent to “hydrocarbon
civilization” – it is most pressing in the Arctic because few other places are simultaneously sites
of fossil fuel extraction and potential extraction and on the front line of such rapid environmental
transformation. The romantic myth of the Arctic as sublime wilderness untouched by human
activity throws into violent relief the twin realities of hydrocarbon extraction and the rapid,
dramatic, and potentially uncontrollable impacts of human-caused environmental change.
8.7 Seeking Security in the Anthropocene
Environmental changes in the Arctic are driving complex physical and social processes that
place circumpolar states and peoples on the front line of global environmental insecurity. In
these ways, climate change in the Arctic is a powerful manifestation of the global ecological
moment at which humanity stands, and reflects many of the challenges of addressing the link
between security and the environment in the Anthropocene. The collective magnitude of
humanity’s impacts on the global biosphere have resulted in a new geological era that threatens
to undermine the conditions of security that sustain all manner of referent objects, be they states,
other human communities, or non-human referent objects. Effectively responding to these
hazards requires a critical approach to environmental in/security. Likewise, adopting a critical
theoretical perspective allows the production of insecurity in the Arctic to be linked to activities,
processes, and systems located outside the region and around the world. The Arctic may be
distinct due to the confluence of its distinct ecological, social, and political characteristics, but it
is not a region isolated from the rest of the globe. Environmental change poses significant
challenges for the circumpolar region, but the Arctic’s crucial role in regulating global climate
systems implicates it in the maintenance of ecological security at the global level. Mitigating
environmentally damaging human activities in and on the Arctic is essential for global
environmental in/security, because the Arctic is the harbinger of ecological instability that will
affect people, states, and regions around the world.
The need for a critical approach to environmental security is all the more necessary because it
stands in radical contrast with the dominant manner in which in/security in the Arctic has
actually been constructed by circumpolar states. As discussed in this dissertation, states such as
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Canada and Norway have articulated and enacted conceptions of Arctic security that link the
military defence of sovereign territory with the extraction of non-renewable resources. These
states have embraced the economic opportunities afforded by climate change as benefiting their
national security interests, rather than viewing the environmental hazards caused by climate
change as threatening the ecological and social conditions in the Arctic that underpin their
national security interests. Ironically, the very practices mobilized by circumpolar states under
the framework of Arctic security will only contribute to environmental change at the global,
regional, and local levels.
Moreover, how Canada and Norway have constructed their Arctic security interests in the
context of climate change differs significantly, if it does not outright contradict, how the
Indigenous peoples inhabiting their northern regions understand the security implications of the
changing environment. Inuit in Canada and Sámi in Norway both identify the maintenance of
natural environments conducive to their cultural and subsistence activities, and the Indigenous
identities that rely upon them, as among their highest security priorities. Inuit have loudly and
repeatedly identified that the environmental changes already occurring in the Arctic threaten
their ways of life, culture, and identity, and constitute an infringement of their rights by states
and other actors located far from the Arctic. While Sámi have not identified environmental
changes as threatening their security to a comparable degree, the relatively mild environmental
change experienced to date by Scandinavia versus northern Canada may indicate that it is only a
matter of time. As climate change and ecological degradation increasingly affect the abilities of
Sámi to herd reindeer, fish offshore, and otherwise sustain themselves in Sápmi, they, too, may
choose to employ the discourse of security as a means of articulating their deteriorating
conditions and the threats confronting their communal interests. This may be especially likely if
governments in Canada and Norway continue to adopt policies opposed by Inuit and Sámi, who
have identified the role that autonomous Indigenous institutions have to play in helping them
preserve and protect their ecologies, communities, and interests within the context of settler
states that have historically imposed their will over Indigenous minorities.
Environmental insecurities are inherent to our contemporary civilization that relies upon an
economic system powered by fossil fuels. These insecurities are increasingly evident, and draw
greater attention from scholars and policymakers with each passing year, and with each failed
attempt to negotiate a new global climate governance framework. They pose profound
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normative and policymaking questions around the world, but most especially in those countries
that bear historical responsibility for climate change, and which today are leading the charge for
the development of new and more dangerous forms of hydrocarbon energy, including in the
Arctic. Thus, I argue critical environmental security is vital because it links state and human
security issues in a changing Arctic environment with the broader global systems driving this
transformation. Collectively, we must acknowledge the environmental security dilemma we face
in the Arctic and around the world. One way to start would be to heed the security claims being
made by Indigenous peoples, and move towards a post-colonial Arctic politics that sustains
human communities and the natural systems on which they depend. Sustainable conditions of
security – in the Arctic and everywhere else – depend on it.
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Appendices
APPENDIX 1 – Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Securitizing Moves 2001-2011
Year Actor/ Organization Document Title Document
Type Enviro
Security Food
Security Cultural Security
Other Security
1 2011 ICC “A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in
the Arctic” Declaration X
2 2011 ICC
“Inuit Deeply Concerned About
Canada’s Decision to
Withdraw from Kyoto”
Press Release X
3 2011 AAC Newsletter
Spring/Summer 2011
Newsletter X X X
4 2010 ICC “Nuuk Declaration 2010” Declaration X
5 2010 ICC
“Inuit Call on Global Leaders at CoP16: Help Us
Sustain our Homeland – Take Immediate Action
on Climate Change”
Press Release X X
6 2010 ICC
“General Assembly of Inuit
from Russia, USA, Canada and
Greenland in Nuuk, Greenland to Address Issues
of Critical Importance to the
Future of the Circumpolar
Arctic, and the place of the Arctic
in the wider world”
Press Release X
7 2009 ICC
“Inuit Call on Global Leaders:
Act Now on Climate Change
in the Arctic”
Press Release X X
8 2009 ICC
“A Circumpolar Inuit Declaration
on Resource Development
Principles in Inuit Nunaat”
Declaration X X X
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9 2008 GCI “Canadian Arctic
Summit Presentation”
Doc X X X
10 2008 ITK
“Statistics Canada Report Confirms
Inuit Children Lack from Food
and Shelter”
Media Release X X
11 2008 ITK “Integrated Arctic Strategy” Publication X X
12 2008 GCI “Arctic Peoples:
Culture, Resilience, and
Caribou Proposal” Document X X
13 2006 AAC Newsletter Spring 2006 Newsletter X
14 2006 ICC “Utqiagvik Declaration 2006” Declaration X
15 2005 ICC
“Connectivity: The Arctic-The
Planet” Remarks by Sheila Watt-
Cloutier, Chair of the ICC, at the
Award Ceremony for the 2005 Sophie Prize
Speech X X
16 2005 ITK
“Unikkaaqatigiit: Putting the
Human Face on Climate Change – Perspectives from Inuit in Canada”
Publication X X X
17 2004 ITK
“Inuit Call on Canada to Act on
International Climate Change
Report”
Media Release X
18 2004 ICC/ITK
“Inuit Call on Canada to Act on
International Climate Change Report: Canada Lacks National
Position as Arctic Melts – Inuit Way
of Life Jeopardized”
Press Release X X
19 2004 ICC
“Arctic Climate Impact
Assessment – Inuit in Global
Issues”
Journal, No. 18 Jan-
June X X
20 2003 ICC “Renewal of the
Northern Contaminants
Program”
Press Release X X
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21 2003 ICC
“Climate Change in the Arctic:
Human Rights of Inuit
Interconnected with the World”
Press Release X X
22 2003 ICC “Speaking to the
World About Climate Change”
Journal, No. 17
July-Dec X X X
23 2002 ICC
“Contaminants in the Arctic: the
Inuit Circumpolar Conference Urges
Foreign Affairs Ministers from the
Eight Arctic States to Accept
the Implementation
the Recommendations
of the Arctic Monitoring and
Assessment Programme”
Press Release X X
24 2001 ICC
“Inuit Applaud Canada’s
Leadership and the Global Effort
to Eliminate Toxic
Substances”
Press Release X X X
25 --- AAC “Climate Change
and Human Rights”
Website X
AAC – Arctic Athabaskan Council
GCI – Gwich’in Council International
ICC – Inuit Circumpolar Council
ITK – Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
Total Documents Analyzed: N1= (190 ICC) + (24 AAC) + (29 GCI) + (295 ITK) = 538
With Securitizing Moves: N2 = 25
NB: All documents were accessed online from the websites of ITK, the national Inuit organization in Canada, and the three Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council representing Canadian Indigenous peoples (AAC, GCI, and ICC), and were identified using textual search terms ‘security’ and ‘threat’.
295
APPENDIX 2 – Sámi Securitizing Moves, 2001-2011
Document Title Actor/ Organization
Document Type Publication Referent Object Threat
1
Statement from Saami
Communities at Scandinavian
Resources AGM
Saami Council Statement November 25, 2011
Reindeer herding grounds
Mining developments by Scandinavian Resources
2 Saami Council
Letter to Beowulf Mining
Saami Council;
Mattias Åhrén Letter January 12,
2011 Reindeer herding grounds
Mining developments by Beowulf Mining plc
3
Statement By Finnish Saami Parliament On
The Realization Of Saami
People’s Right To Self-
determination In Finland
Saami Parliament of
Finland Statement April 25, 2010
Saami culture, society, livelihoods, and language.
Assimilation, loss of cultural integrity, and lack of autonomy/funds necessary to prevent such problems
4
Indigenous Children’s
Education as Linguistic
Genocide and a Crime Against Humanity? A Global View
John B. Henriskon
(editor) Journal April 23, 2010
Indigenous languages worldwide, including but not limited to the Saami language
Assimilation, loss of mother tongue and by extension indigenous identity
5
Scandinavia's Indigenous
Saami Way of Life Threatened
by Thawing Tundra
Lars Anders Baer, former President of the Saami
Parliament of Sweden
Report 2009 Saami culture and livelihoods
Disappearance of reindeer herding grounds due to climate change, cultural exposure brought by industrialization of Saami territory
6
The Sami Parliament’s
Living Environment
Program
Saami Parliament Report February 19,
2009
Arctic environment, specifically the Saami culture and livelihoods that depend on it
Anthropogenic climate change caused by natural resource exploitation and landscape fragmentation
7 The Rovaniemi
Declaration
Saami Council at the 19th
Saami Conference
Declaration
October 31, 2008
Saami cultural integrity vis-a-vis traditional subsistence livelihoods and self image
Cultural misappropriation by the private sector; private sector competition and development of indigenous territory; climate
296
change
8
Arctic Indigenous
Caucus: Nordic States Must Ratify the
Saami Convention
without further delay
Olav Mathis Eira, vice
president of the Saami Council
Statement April 25, 2008
Saami and indigenous cultural integrity and language
Loss of language and cultural assimilation
9
Analysis of The UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples
Henry Minde, Asbjørn Eide,
and Matias Åhrén
Journal April 24, 2008
Indigenous peoples worldwide, including but not limited to the Saami people
Assimilation, loss of cultural integrity, marginalization, dispossession
10
Companies and Swedish State Both Breach Saami Rights
Saami Council; National Swedish Saami
Association
Joint Press Release
February 21, 2008
Saami rights and livelihoods vis-a-vis reindeer herding grounds
Mining developments by Blackstone Ventures Inc.
11
Journal of Indigenous
Human Rights No. 3
Mattias Åhrén Journal 2007
Saami autonomy, right to land, language, culture, and trade/livelihoods
Closed borders, assimilation, loss of language, industrialization and land exploitation,
12
Climate Witness: Olav Mathis Eira,
Norway
Olav Mathis Eira, vice
president of the Saami Council
Article September 17, 2007 Reindeer herding
Climate change: higher tree line, unsafe ice, unseasonal rains, change in wildlife, extreme weather
13
Address by Aili Keskitalo at the
Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues
Sixth Session
Aili Keskitalo Speech May 14, 2007
Saami culture and traditional livelihoods vis-a-vis environmental integrity
Environmental degradation, climate change, industrialization, resource exploitation
14
Report From the Arctic Regional Workshop On
Indigenous Peoples’
Territories, Lands And
Natural Resources
The Workshop was organized by the regional
indigenous parliaments
and organizations, in cooperation
with the Nordic States.
Report March 27, 2007
Saami culture and traditional livelihoods vis-a-vis environmental integrity
Climate change, resource exploitation, and marginalization
15
Some Legal Considerations
Concerning Saami Rights in
Saltwater
Elisabeth Einarsbøl
Journal Article May 9, 2006
The livelihoods and culture of coastal Saami vis-a-vis their rights to fish
Restrictions imposed on the Saami by the Norwegian government, privatization of
297
fisheries and fishing rights
16
Arctic Oil and Gas –
Corporate Social
Responsibility
Rune S. Fjelheim
Journal Article
January 7, 2006
Saami land rights, environment, language, culture, and trade/livelihoods
Corporate developments on Saami territory, environmental degradation, climate change, industrialization, resource exploitation
17
Oil and gas operations in Indigenous
peoples lands and territories in
the Arctic: A Human rights perspective
John B. Henriskon
Journal Article
January 7, 2006
Saami land rights, environment, culture, and trade/livelihoods
Corporate developments on Saami territory, environmental degradation, climate change, industrialization, resource exploitation
18 The
Honningsvåg Declaration
Saami Council at the 18th
Saami Conference
Declaration October 9, 2004
Saami autonomy, right to land, environment, culture, and trade/livelihoods
Marginalization by host countries
19 The Warmer Arctic
Saami Council at the 18th
Saami Conference
Resolution October 9, 2004
Arctic environment, specifically the Saami culture and livelihoods that depend on it
Anthropogenic climate change
20
Protection of Rights of
Holders of Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Peoples and
Local Communities
Lars Anders Baer, former President of the Saami
Parliament of Sweden
Article 2002
Intellectual property rights concerning Saami culture, heritage, and folklore
Assimilation and loss of cultural integrity.
Total Documents: N1 = 46
With Securitizing Moves: N2 = 20
NB: Documents were drawn using textual search terms ‘security’ and ‘threat’ from an exhaustive search of the
online documents available from the Saami Council and the Gáldu Research Center for the Rights of Indigenous
People.