This presentation focuses on three high-profile and ongoing pipeline protests over the past five years: Standing Rock Sioux opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, Giniw Collective activism against Line 3, and Wet’suwet’en resistance to Coastal GasLink at the Unist’ot’en Camp. Each of these protests serves as a case study of one element of planning: sovereignty, values, and futurity. Recognizing Indigenous pipeline protests as planning is important because it disrupts the reification of planning by the settler state and affirms Indigenous pipeline self-determination. Understanding how Indigenous communities continue to plan under occupation and affirming that as planning will allow settler planners to shift towards models of co-governance rather domination.
Lila Asher (she/her) is Master’s student in City Planning at the University of Manitoba. Her focus areas include planning for climate resilience and co-governance with Indigenous nations. Lila holds a BA in Equity Studies and Environmental Studies from the University of Toronto, where she contributed to the research of Dr. Joe Cunrow’s RadLab around activist politicization and the limits of territorial acknowledgements as practiced by settlers.