This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The issue of whether Indigenous communities support or oppose energy or infrastructure projects is increasingly making headlines, both in Canada and elsewhere. A case study from the Philippines exemplifies the complex realities on the ground, well beyond a binary yes-or-no divide.
Canada, like many other countries, has a turbulent history with the Indigenous communities living within its borders. In Quebec, large dams and other energy projects are often at the center of conflicts. Recently, the Innu community of Pessamit rejected an agreement negotiated between its band council and Hydro-Québec.
Across the country, various Indigenous communities are also resisting projects by the mining industry, as well as the oil and gas sectors. They oppose the exploitation of their lands and point to the failure of governments and companies to fulfill their consultation obligations, as well as their tendency to negotiate bilaterally with individual communities rather than collectively. However, some communities do consent to certain projects on their ancestral lands, even though those lands are central to their cultural identity, territorial sovereignty and livelihoods.
Understanding why can shed light on today's debates. As a Ph.D. student in international business at HEC Montréal and a researcher affiliated with the Center for International Research and Studies at Université de Montréal (CÉRIUM), my work focuses on forms of resistance to mining extractivism amid the global energy transition. Together with Dominique Caouette, holder of the Chair in Asian and Indo-Pacific Studies, and Dalia Aktouf, who holds a master's degree in political science from Université de Montréal, we examined the case of Agusan del Norte province in the Philippines.
Our study, soon to be published in a special issue on Indigenous issues in the journal Les Cahiers du CIERA (Inter-University Center for Indigenous Studies and Research), reveals complex dynamics. In the north on the island of Mindanao, an ancestral territory belonging to five Indigenous clans has been exploited by Agata Mining Ventures Inc. for nickel extraction. Aktouf conducted 40 interviews there over several months with the various Mamanwa and Mamanwa-Manobo clans.
Our study reveals the complexity of Indigenous communities' political agency. They are not homogeneous groups, and they respond to mining in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. As a result, their positions on mining projects are shaped by internal tensions, power dynamics, compromises and forms of ambivalent engagement.
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