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SUMMARY:“What Can We Learn from Ignorance? Arctic Energy Frontiers\, Env
 ironmental Regimes\, and Indigenous Rights Movements Since the 1970s” - 
 Prof. Andrew Stuhl\, Bucknell University
DTSTART:20211012T153000Z
DTEND:20211012T170000Z
UID:TALK162886@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Professor Michael Bravo
DESCRIPTION:Doug Pimlott was shocked. The University of Toronto zoologist 
 — one of Canada’s leading environmentalists — had just discovered a 
 government secret. In 1973\, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs
  was planning an oil drilling program in the ice-choked Beaufort Sea (Arct
 ic Ocean). What stunned Pimlott was not that the Department would target s
 uch a remote and challenging place for oil exploration. After all\, the en
 ergy situation in North America in 1973 had grown desperate. Rather\, it w
 as that the entire discussion of the risks involved — to the delicate ma
 rine environment and to thousands of Inuit who relied upon its bounty — 
 had been shielded from public scrutiny. “Nearly all the substantive info
 rmation on offshore drilling plans is contained in various confidential pr
 oposals put forward by the oil industry and in restricted reports by the D
 epartment of Indian and Northern Affairs\,” the scientist wrote. “Why 
 had native communities in the region not been consulted about offshore dri
 lling plans? Why was this new phase of exploration cloaked in secrecy?” 
 As Pimlott searched for answers\, Canada’s Cabinet pressed forward. In 1
 976\, they approved two wells for the Beaufort Sea’s outer continental s
 helf. A year later\, they supported long-term drilling there. The world’
 s northernmost oil frontier had been opened.\n\nIn this talk\, Prof. Andre
 w Stuhl will examine the state of knowledge that Pimlott experienced as a 
 constitutive element of energy frontiers\, environmental regimes\, and str
 uggles for Indigenous rights in the late twentieth-century Arctic. That is
 \, while actors in the oil industry and the Canadian government produced d
 etailed studies about the risks and rewards of drilling in the Beaufort Se
 a\, their circulation was limited — which also produced deliberate\, wid
 espread ignorance. Their efforts to maintain a state of limited knowledge 
 blunted resistance from environmentalists and Indigenous rights advocates 
 whose political power was on the rise. These activists attempted to slow o
 r delay oil development by pointing out that oil companies knew very littl
 e about the sensitive ecologies and Indigenous claims to land in the Arcti
 c. In response\, oil companies designed elaborate consultation campaigns t
 o nurture local support and undercut opposition to oil exploitation. Drawi
 ng on recently declassified sources from the Canadian federal government a
 nd the oil and gas industry\, Prof. Stuhl will explore how studies of igno
 rance can thus help explain the shape of public interest groups\, corporat
 e social responsibility campaigns\, oil and gas schemes\, research agendas
  in the natural sciences\, and environmental politics in Arctic North Amer
 ica over the last 50 years. 
LOCATION:Co-hosted with Pardee Center\, Boston University
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