Presentation short abstract

Through an analysis of infrastructural disruptions caused by flooding in the Bow Valley during the summer of 2013, this paper introduces the concept of other-than-human refusal. It suggests that other-than-human agency has the power to reject settler infrastructure and generate new futures.

Presentation long abstract

In the summer of 2013, the Bow River in Southern Alberta, Canada experienced a significant high-water event caused by a large rainstorm which had widespread impacts on infrastructure throughout its watershed. Affected communities along the river included Banff national park, the town of Canmore, city of Calgary, and the Siksika First Nation reserve. There was significant flooding throughout the region which damaged buildings, roads, rail lines, and other critical infrastructure of the settler state. However, viewed through an other-than-human lens, these moments of infrastructural disruption caused by the high waters can be interpreted as generative acts which have the capacity to refresh the land. Throughout the watershed, as the Bow River and its tributaries reorganised their morphological bodies through the inundation of old stream channels and the formation of new watercourses, they created a landscape primed for the inception of emergent ecologies. These reorganised landscapes can influence both human and other-than-human worlds. Using this flood as a case study, this paper introduces the concept of other-than-human refusal, suggesting that the infrastructural disruptions caused by the agency of the waters of the Bow Valley can be interpreted as a rejection of settler colonial infrastructure. Not only did the flooding cause discontinuities to the infrastructure of the settler state, but it also fostered emergent ecological futures and instigated productive interspecies dialogues and collaborations. Bringing together frameworks from Indigenous studies and posthuman theory, this paper seeks to broaden understandings of infrastructure and refusal, calling for a reimagining of landscapes that embrace other-than-human agency.