The Yale Ethnography and Social Theory Colloquium and second-year sociocultural anthropology cohort is pleased to have Dr. Zoe Todd of Carleton University, Yale Presidential Visiting Fellow and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and History of Science and Medicine, present a talk entitled, “Fossil fuels and fossil kin: re-imagining Alberta’s ‘Energy Heritage’ through a Metis feminist lens.”
Alberta, Canada is home to immense oil and gas deposits, which drive both the provincial and national economy. In 2017, the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta launched an exhibit titled ‘Grounds for Discovery’, which features fossil specimens uncovered by mining and other industrial activities in the province. One specimen is a ‘nodosaur’, Borealopelta markmitchelli, preserved such that it is referred to by Royal Tyrrell staff as a ‘3D fossil’. This specimen was discovered in a Suncor tar sands mine in northern Alberta. In this talk, I examine the relationships between fossil fuels and fossil kin in the Alberta public imaginary, and what these relationships mean for contemporary efforts to disrupt settler colonial logics of extraction that are impacting watersheds across Indigenous territories throughout the province.