This seminar, part of Toolkit for Today: Legalities for Living, covers interlocking themes of infrastructure, jurisdiction, and colonialism in Canada. Arguing that infrastructure gives us a unique view of how jurisdiction works to organize governance, Shiri Pasternak looks at several examples of infrastructure design, financing, and construction (e.g. ice roads, housing, pipelines) to contemplate the power of the built environment to abet colonial settlement and the countervailing powers of Indigenous law and jurisdiction.

Shiri Pasternak is an assistant professor of criminology at X University in Toronto. She is the co-founder and former Research Director of the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nations-focused think tank based at XU. She is also the author of the award-winning book Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State, as well as the co-author of several major Yellowhead reports, like Land Back and Cash Back. Her current work is focused on Indigenous jurisdiction and infrastructure, with one project in development on ice roads and climate change, and the other on the risk of Indigenous law to the resource economy.

This event is free and open to the public. To register, click here.