Paper short abstract:

My research aims to analyze the role that emotions play in a territorial conflict between contrasting ways of being, doing, and knowing, "worlding", or building worlds "in a world made of many worlds".

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on a methodological approach that involved visual ethnography and combined content and narrative analysis, my research aims to analyze the role that emotions play in the territorial-ontological conflict between the State of B.C., Coastal GasLink, and the Wet’suwet’en. Using high-quality online audiovisual material produced by the Wet’suwet’en –allowing a critical perspective, throughout the manuscript, on the politics of self-representation– I was able to get into the conflict with a phenomenological approach, employing my senses to analyze body movements, tone of voice, and language. Theoretically, I articulate a framework made up of Ingold’s phenomenology, Blaser’s ontological conflicts, and Escobar's studies of culture. Then, I build on the spiderweb, a metaphor developed by Ingold, to expand the scope of González-Hidalgo’s emotional political ecologies. The results show that Coastal Gaslink, taking culture “as a symbolic structure”, proposes as a central mitigation strategy –through their environmental impact assessment–, what I call “an ontological interruption” of the Yintakh. Besides, I demonstrate that the processes of political inter-subjectivation sought at the Unist’ot’en Healing Center help understand the worry, frustration, and stress of the Wet'suwet'en facing the world-creating practices of Coastal GasLink. On the other hand, the Healing Center also reveals how the affections for the other-than-human and their spiderweb (Yintakh or relational world) inform Wet’suwet’en resistance. Lastly, I unveil how Coastal GasLink and the Ministry of Aboriginal Rights, through practices of inclusion and gender equality, seek to blur radical cultural differences, delegitimize the Wet’suwet’en pre-colonial governance system, and create affections for the Western-modern world.