Toxic Encounters, Settler Logics of Elimination, and the Future of a Continent

What is it about?

This paper engages the relationship between toxic geographies and settler colonialism. Here, I examine a series of toxic encounters and consider the racialized hegemonic narratives that enable the production toxicity. Among these is a methylmercury contamination in Northern Ontario, just upstream from Grassy Narrows First Nation, and a cluster of toxic conversations that bled through social media in the wake of the murder of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old man Cree man in Saskatchewan, Canada. I argue that examining the socio-political structures that are involved in the production of toxicity provides valuable insight into the colonial logics that define the lives that are privileged as the standard, and those that are subject to elimination.

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