By Melina Laboucan-Massimo, David Suzuki Foundation Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change Fellow. This piece originally appeared on the David Suzuki Foundation website.

On International Women’s Day, I doubt industrial projects like Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline are top of mind for most. But there is a direct link between natural resource extraction and violence against largely Indigenous women and girls, which serves as an important reminder: violence against the land begets violence against women.

Along with pipelines and the extractive economic engines they support — like Alberta’s oilsands — come so-called “man camps.” Located near extraction sites, these are where mostly male workers live in close quarters for weeks or months at a time.

Most are outsiders to the region, lured in by the prospect of making a lot of money in a short time. Many must leave their families and communities to find work in the oilsands, when their preference would be to stay put, due to economic downturns at home. They seldom have ties to neighbouring First Nations communities.

It’s not surprising that some workers turn to drugs, alcohol and sex to blow off steam during days off. Studies show that demand for sex work accompanies intensive resource development due to the high number of male workers with excess income. This creates a dangerous mix for women in nearby communities, as the transience of the mostly male workforce means few are held accountable for what they do in or near camp.

A recent Amnesty International study confirms what I and many other Indigenous Peoples have known for a long time: Indigenous women living near these camps suffer disproportionately high rates of violence.

In 2016, Amnesty’s Out of Sight, Out of Mind report found that resource extraction in northern communities puts women at risk. It spoke to women in B.C.’s Peace River region, like Helen Knott, who has experienced gender-based violence by workers serving Canada’s resource economy.

In the report, Knott alludes to the sense among many workers that their economic power allows them to express sexist and racist beliefs they would otherwise withhold. To justify violence, Knott adds that some workers would assume Indigenous women and girls were “drunk, easy and wanted it anyway.”

The problem plagues Indigenous women and their communities wherever resource extraction takes place. In North Dakota, a 2010-13 oil boom resulted in a dramatic increase in gender-based violence toward Indigenous women living in and around the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Research compiled by Honor the Earth found that the number of reported rapes increased as man camps more than doubled the region’s population, supporting the Bakken oil boom.

Indigenous women and girls already suffer the highest rates of violence in Canada. Development of environmentally destructive projects like pipelines only heightens the risk.

A 2015 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on murdered and missing Indigenous women documented how, “the police have failed to adequately prevent and protect indigenous women and girls from killings, disappearances and extreme forms of violence, and have failed to diligently and promptly investigate these acts.”

Violence against Indigenous women has systemic causes that are colonial in nature, dating back to racist policies that included separating Indigenous children from their parents and forcibly placing them in residential schools.

We need to unpack the patriarchal, racist and colonial mentalities of Canadian society to ultimately address the reasons why Indigenous women’s lives are not valued in Canadian society as much as the lives of non-Indigenous women. This was so clearly exemplified in the recent court case regarding the murder of Tina Fontaine.

As tensions flare in British Columbia, Alberta and across Canada around the future of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, the largely ignored consequence of further injustice and abuse toward Indigenous women and girls is yet another reason — on a growing list — to shelve the project once and for all.

If we are serious about social equity for all women and girls — especially Indigenous mothers and sisters — then this International Women’s Day, we must recognize that violence against Earth is violence against women. The path toward a cleaner, safer and more just world means reconciliation with all women, girls and Mother Nature alike.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

By Jeffrey Monaghan, researcher with the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University and Kevin Walby, Assistant Professor, Sociology, University of Victoria.

A recent example of RCMP surveillance of environmental activists was reported last month by the Montreal Gazette.  According to documents released under the Access to Information Act, it appears that a branch of the expansive RCMP national security apparatus – the Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team – has been monitoring a group of Quebec residents opposed to shale gas development.  The group under surveillance – la Regroupement Interrégional sur le gaz de schiste de la Vallée du St-Laurent – represents more than 100 anti-shale gas citizen committees in Quebec. 

Surveillance practices targeting the environmental movement should not be surprising given recent trends toward an increasing allocation of resources to counter-terrorism programs across the country.

The RCMP’s rationale behind their surveillance of shale gas opponents relies on the potential threat of ‘homegrown extremism.’ As an increasingly visible ploy (particular since Minister Joe Oliver’s polemic regarding opponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline), references to domestic extremism represents a shift in the working definition of terrorism where groups like al-Qaida or the Taliban are no longer the central antagonists.

Instead, national security agencies have presented a conflated threat of terrorism and extremism to castigate a host of groups and causes, including pacifists that organize petitions against shale gas development.

While troubling, these practices have become the norm within national security agencies.

We have recently published an academic report on security preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics using access to information requests with the RCMP and CSIS. Examining threat assessments from 2005 and 2010, our findings show how terminology of ‘extremism’ was used as a code word to describe critics of the Games.

As the Games approached, the category of ‘extremism’ was used to refer to a surprising range of actors but mostly as a catch-all for a host of left wing groups, particularly those associated with the global justice movement, environmentalists, anti-capitalists, and animal rights activists. Groups like Greenpeace, PETA, and Sea Shepherd were frequently mentioned in these threat assessments.

Groups that are catalogued in these surveillance campaigns cannot challenge such accusations, nor can they see the substantive materials that gathered by state surveillance practices. Labels like ‘extremist’ cannot be challenged.

What is important to understand about the category of ‘extremism’ is that almost any activity or communication contrary to the government can get you labeled this way.

Looking at primary documents from the RCMP and CSIS, it appears that a range of innocuous low-level political activities (i.e. riding on a bus to a protest, attending an environmental rally, advocating maple syrup boycotts) can get you lumped under this label. Further, there is a troubling association between this category and threats of violence.

RCMP and CSIS view a number of activist activities – particularly civil disobedience – as forms of attack.  Blocking access to roads or buildings are framed as violence, depicting pacifists as national security threats. In the lead up to the Olympics in Vancouver, national security agencies also used the label in association with private property destruction, specifically the property of corporate sponsors. During this time period, the label of extremism allowed national security resources to be mobilized for the protection of tarsands companies and other sponsors. 

Expanded categories for policing and surveillance practices can have a number of ripple effects. Namely, these practices can lead to the criminalization of public advocates and a broad ‘chilling effect’ on participatory democratic practices.

This is entirely consistent with the Conservative agenda on security and crime that aims to neutralize and invalidate those who challenge their policy positions. This approach is troubling given their support for controversial projects like the Northern Gateway pipeline and the groundswell of political opposition that it has garnered.

This all begs a larger question: what exactly does the government mean when it conflates ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ in their counter-terrorism policies?

It is no longer clear whom the RCMP, Stephen Harper or Vic Toews count as terrorists. If almost any dissent can get one’s actions classified as ‘extremism’ how much more does it take to be labeled and prosecuted as a terrorist in Harper’s Canada? 

Notably, one shale gas opponent has been charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act because of allegations concerning threatening letters. Likewise, student activists from Quebec are facing terrorism-related criminal charges for allegedly releasing smoke bombs during last year’s student strike.

These prosecutions point to a significant expansion of criminal liability for ‘terrorism activities.’ Coupled with efforts to include damage to, or disruption of, private property as acts of terrorism, the environmental movement should take note of the changing field of struggle – and the resources that are being amassed against it.  


Expanding the definition of terrorism allows for national security agencies to broaden their scope of operations and cast their surveillance net upon a larger spectrum of groups and activities. In an era where Canada increasingly resembles a petro-state, surveillance agencies are regularly caricaturizing activists as threats to national security. With an appetite for larger budgets and greater resources, Canada’s counter-terrorism strategies seem to be making up new threats that are used to justify further surveillance.

But what the RCMP will rarely disclose is that the threat of terrorism attacks in Canada is very low and Canadian spending on national security issues is completely incommensurate with these risks.

A much larger threat – the RCMP won’t mention – are the impacts of these surveillance campaigns on social movements: suspicion, paranoia, stress, internal divisiveness, and the potential for significant ‘chilling effects’ on supposedly protected activities like speech, association, and rights to organize. Part of contesting these mega environmental catastrophes in-the-making must also be ongoing critique of state attempts to categorize, frame, slander and maim dissent.

Looking at the flipside to these surveillance projects reveals another important dynamic at-play: the strength of ecological movements is being acknowledged.

While government would like to dismiss opposition to the current growth-at-any-cost model as a threat to national security, the PR-games associated with labeling environmental groups as terrorists might just backfire. This is likely only the beginning of a long standoff. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.