Life against States of Emergency

For six weeks in the winter of 2012–13, Attawapiskat chief Theresa Spence undertook a high-profile ceremonial fast to advocate for improved Canadian-Indigenous relations. Framed widely by the media as a hunger strike, her fast was both a call to action and a gesture of corporeal sovereignty.

Life against States of Emergency responds to the central question that Spence asked the Canadian public to consider: What does it mean to be in a treaty relationship today? Arguing that treaties are matters of environmental justice, Sarah Marie Wiebe offers a nuanced discussion of the political environment in which Attawapiskat suffered repeated state-of-emergency declarations amid a climate of normalized state-sanctioned violence. Her analysis documents the slow emergency resulting from the breakdown of treaty relations.

This incisive work draws on community-engaged research and lived experiences, critical discourse analysis, ecofeminist and Indigenous studies scholarship,...