Naturalising Finance, Financialising Natives: Indigeneity, Race, and “Responsible” Agricultural Investment in Canada

What is it about?

This article examines the racialized political ecologies inscribed by financial investments in a large scale corporate farm engaging Indigenous peoples in the Canadian prairies. Established in 2009, One Earth Farms (OEF) became one of Canada’s largest farms by leasing First Nations’ farmland. I argue that OEF’s early success hinged on its promise of “naturalizing finance” by engaging agriculture as a purportedly more real and stable financial vehicle relative to traditional assets. Simultaneously, OEF claimed to facilitate First Nations’ participation in agriculture by integrating their land and labour with financial flows – effectively “financializing natives”. I document the specific opportunities for capital accumulation and valuation mobilized by the project’s claims to be providing reparative historical redress to First Nations through investor and corporate ecological and social “responsibility”. Reflecting on colonization and racialization processes, I demonstrate the ways that Indigenous histories and subjectivities are mobilized and monetized in contemporary political ecological projects.

Featured Image