A Plenary of Acknowledgements: The Hemi Encuentro Work Group on Resisting Extractivism, Performing Opposition

The From Relajo to Refusal: Resisting Extractivism, Performing Opposition Work Group consists of Sofia Acosta, Selena Couture, Alanna Dunlop, Valérie Frappier, Zoë Heyn-Jones, Cordelia Istel, Gabriela Jiménez, Kate Klein, Sydney Lang, Laura Levin, Merle Davis Matthews, Dana Prieto, Ella Tetrault, and Helene Vosters

The From Relajo to Refusal: Resisting Extractivism, Performing Opposition Work Group with a banner created for a video made in solidarity with REMA-Mujeres. The banner reads “La Vida Vale Más Que El Oro!” which translates in English as “Life is worth more than gold.” (Top-to-bottom, l–r): Zoë Heyn-Jones, Laura Levin, Valérie Frappier, Dana Prieto, Cordelia Istel, Selena Couture, Gabriela Jiménez, Sol Pérez Jiménez, Ella Tetrault, Helene Vosters, Sofia Acosta, Merle Davis Matthews, Sydney Lang, Kate Klein, and Alanna Dunlop.

Photo by José Luis Granados Ceja

Resource extraction shapes the world in myriad ways, many of which are invisible in the academic and financial centres that support and benefit from extraction. Academic research and institutions are often materially extractive themselves, from buildings and programs financed by and named for mining and oil companies,¹ to their reliance on student and precarious labour, to research conducted on (rather than with) communities that see few benefits from said research.

It was in this context that a group of scholars, activists, community organizers, and artists gathered at the biannual Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, held on 9–15 June 2019 at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City. The Resisting Extractivism, Performing Opposition Work Group convened to explore collective strategies for resisting extractivism. Encuentro work groups met Monday through Thursday mornings; we spent our time together discussing readings, sharing activist skills around intervention, and presenting our individual work. We were invited to present with several other Encuentro work groups during a closing panel and decided to use the performative structure of a land acknowledgement to share what we had worked on—and through—together.

Macarena Gómez-Barris defines extractivism as “an economic system that engages in thefts, borrowings, and forced removals, violently reorganizing social life as well as the land by thieving resources from Indigenous and Afro-descendent territories” (xvii). Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson asserts that this system is ideologically fundamental to and endemic in colonialism and capitalism (in Klein). Recognizing that effective interventions draw on an expansive—and often performatic²—tool kit, we saw an imperative to discuss how narrative, performance, and visual cultures are vital both to the perpetuation of extractivist ideologies and to resistance against them. By attending to the ways in which satire, mockery, and jubilant denunciation have disrupted and contested extractivist logics, we aimed to fortify our capabilities to creatively refuse, resist, and reimagine this paradigm.

We began our time together by acknowledging land and water, and our discussions were shaped by questions Ojibwe/Swampy Cree/English/Irish theatre artist Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen poses: “How are you going to answer the questions that you have around land acknowledgement? And are you able to integrate any of these intentions, states of being, and actions in your own bones and blood and breath, as a way to enact the future that you want for your children, and their children, and their children, seven generations down the line?” (in Robinson et al. 30). The performativity and problematics of land acknowledgement were a through line during our discussions, as we stumbled through how to unsettle the ways that predominantly white settlers (including the settler members of our work group) do land acknowledgements.

Place-based solidarity workshop led by Mining Injustice Solidarity Network members Kate Klein and Merle Davis Matthews. (l–r): Kate Klein, Alanna Dunlop, Cordelia Istel, Helene Vosters, Gabriela Jiménez, Merle Davis Matthews, Dana Prieto, Selena Couture, and Sol Pérez Jiménez.

Photo by Zoë Heyn-Jones

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