Anthropology PhD candidate Felix Giroux presented a talk at Harvard University earlier this month. The talk is part of the Weatherhead Canada Program seminar series which offers presentations by public figures, scholars, artists, and experts in various fields, and provides a forum for the lively exchange of ideas on a wide range of issues. Giroux’s talk was based on his PhD research and was called: Empowering Indigenous Communities through Clean Energy: The Development of Green Hydrogen Highway in the Pacific Northwest.
Abstract
In remote areas of the Pacific Northwest, an Indigenous-owned company, Salish Elements, is aiming to transform communities’ relationship with power by developing a green hydrogen highway. While their project is embedded within broad discourses of the energy transition, it is equally about the transformation of capitalism and the modern settler state. Their goal is to empower local and Indigenous communities with clean energy and showcase that the green transition can be respectful of our shared land and environment. As an anthropologist invited to collaborate with Salish Elements, I showcase how political and cultural realities matter just as much as the technical elements of the energy transition. By breaking open themes including but not limited to ownership, sustainability, the distribution of impacts and benefits, decision-making and hierarchies, and epistemological and ontological silencing, my fieldwork seeks to challenge the hegemony of technocracy and invite a more grounded and human-centered approach to the field and practice of the energy transition.
The Canada Program at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs presents rich intellectual opportunities for Canadian studies at Harvard: graduate and undergraduate courses offered by distinguished visiting Canadianist scholars across the social sciences and professional schools, dissertation research grants for Harvard graduate students, thesis research and travel funding for Harvard undergraduates, funding for Harvard faculty-hosted Canadian studies specialists, a vibrant seminar series of esteemed Canadianist guest speakers, and an annual faculty conference.
