In my new book project, “Contested Icescapes, Land, Politics, and Change on an Arctic Agricultural Frontier,” I explore how marginal Arctic land is being imagined as a new frontier for agriculture under climate change, and what the implications are for rural and Indigenous lands, livelihoods, and governance. In this talk, I will discuss a chapter of the book that examines the political history of agriculture in the Northwest Territories, Canada, and its development alongside recent climate crises in the territory. Drawing on ethnographic research between 2021-3, I will discuss how Sambaa K’e First Nation and Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation are transforming agriculture from a settler-colonial tool of assimilation into an exercise of Indigenous sovereignty. How do these Dehcho First Nations communities make meaning of and assert authority over colonial projects? And what are the possibilities of climate adaptation more broadly, if we recognize Indigenous sovereignty in syncretic land use practices?

Mindy J. Price is a William Lyon Mackenzie King Postdoctoral Fellow in the Canada Program at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. As a political ecologist, her research focuses primarily on how climate change and climate change governance (re)structure inequalities in race, class, and gender. Her current work at Harvard examines the governance mechanisms behind new agricultural land use policies in Alaska and the Northwest Territories.