Caitlin Chaisson
No. 110 – spring-summer 2015

Black Gold: The Esoteric and the Ecological


Our society’s rituals of consumption are marked out in prehistoric time. Ossified imagination fuels the quest for energy, propels drilling deeper and deeper into the ground. However, the forthcoming risks associated with oil extraction will soon be subterranean in only the shallowest sense. No longer deeply hidden, the energy problem will course through steel tubes just below the soil. The present and ongoing debates regarding the proposed British Columbia oil pipelines constitute a liminal moment in Canada’s history. The ecological considerations of this specific issue address not only environmental ramifications, but also the social implications of capital-driven development on vast swaths of unceded Indigenous territories. At least 40 different First Nations in Alberta and British Columbia would be affected.1 While the pipeline route has been geographically mapped from the interior to the coastal marine corridor, it also has been clearly staked out by the interconnected networks of federal, provincial, judicial, corporate and community-based power.

This timely issue has impacted artistic and socio-cultural production in the province. From protests to poetry, many individuals have taken up strategies of resistance, reflection and contemplation in creative forms. One of the many responses to the issue includes Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Futures, a research and creation project that focuses on the intersecting geographies of Indigenous trade routes (specifically oolichan fish grease trails) and the proposed pipeline. The project, led by artist Ruth Beer, is like a circuit connecting artists, academics, and stakeholder communities, and has the aim of sparking multi-nodal


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