While mainstream climate discourse often fails to center Indigenous perspectives on land and resource governance, critical Indigenous theory demonstrates that any truly 'just' transition must begin with Indigenous voices, sovereignty, and place-based knowledge at its core.
Introduction
In recent decades, the idea of fighting climate change has gained much attention in policy and governance circles, though responses remain deeply fractured. Many governments, including signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement have publicly committed to climate change mitigation while continuing to promote extractivist practices in the name of economic growth and market-driven logistics. For instance, resource-rich countries like Canada promote lithium mining for batteries in electric vehicles, and the establishment of solar and wind farms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, such initiatives have long overlooked the realities faced by Indigenous communities whose natural resources and legal systems are being exploited in the name of ‘green’ progress.
The Transformative Business Law Summer Academy (TBLSA) held in May 2025, was an intensive six-day course at McGill University’s Faculty of Law in Montreal, Canada, where students from diverse academic backgrounds worked collaboratively on a case study theme. Academy Fellows examined sustainability through the lenses of business, human rights, and governance. Fellows were divided into teams where they studied different topics under the mentorship of faculty advisors and wrote a policy paper that proposed actionable recommendations. The 2025 TBLSA case study theme was Contested Sustainabilities. A full version of the policy paper is now available on SSRN.
One theme group examined contested sustainability in the context of Indigenous knowledge and human rights. Its members focused on analyzing how climate policy and a push for a so-called ‘just transition’ have reproduced colonial power dynamics under the guise of sustainability. In particular, the Fellows explored the concept of ‘green colonialism,’ which highlights how the urge to save the Earth from climate change has prompted corporations and state actors to render marginalized communities, including Indigenous populations, as sacrificable. This blog post will reflect on the structural flaws in mainstream climate discourse, especially the failure to valorize Indigenous perspectives on natural resource governance. By drawing on critical Indigenous theory and real-world case studies, it is clear that a truly ‘just’ transition to a greener Earth is impossible without including Indigenous voices at its center.
Critical Indigenous Methodology
It is useful to employ a critical Indigenous methodological framework when challenging the colonial underpinnings of climate change reversal. Critical Indigenous theory, as elaborated by Dale Turner, Vanessa Sloan Morgan, Judith F. Sayers, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, valorizes Indigenous perspectives that have often been overlooked in policy and governance spaces. It thereby explains how colonial ideologies exist in policies that govern natural resources throughout the world today. Here, it is important to note that Indigenous conceptualizations of land, sovereignty, and the environment have been systematically neglected. Critical Indigenous theory promotes the reimagination of a framework whereby Indigenous and state understandings of natural resource extraction processes can coexist with mutual respect and recognition. This kind of engagement is essential, as there has long been a lack of critical scholarly focus on the everyday realities that Indigenous communities face in voicing concerns about the management of natural resources on their land. As such, many Indigenous groups often experience challenges in having their inherent authority over natural resources recognized. The lack of academic discourse about these lived realities ultimately overlooks systemic barriers experienced by many Indigenous populations. Subsequently, critical Indigenous methodology amplifies discourse about how the exclusion of Indigenous groups from governing natural resources is fostered by the state and corporations.
The Flaw in a ‘Just Transition’ and its Exacerbation of Green Colonialism
Just Transition
With the acceleration of climate change, governments are racing to meet the United Nations’ Net Zero Coalition targets which were introduced in 2022 at COP27, such as reducing global emissions by a staggering 45%. However, the effects of climate change impact populations throughout the world unevenly, and the efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are also unequally yoked. Here, the concept of a ‘just transition’ must be noted. Articulated in the preamble of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the concept is now often used in climate change discourse, particularly to describe the importance of including all countries, communities, and groups (including systematically marginalized peoples) in the vision of a net-zero world. A just transition is purported to create new jobs, and avoid creating economic changes that exacerbate social inequality, worker discontent, and strikes. In other words, as argued by the International Labour Organization, a just transition would leave no one behind.
Despite the popularization of this concept, it has also been the subject of much scholarly critique. For instance, Cambou and Buhmann argue that mainstream academic discourse surrounding a just transition has been increasingly general, focusing on an overarching idea of ‘human rights’ as a whole, rather than examining the impact of green energy transitions on particular groups. Drawing on the work of Sovacool et al, Cambou and Buhmann highlight how mainstream discourse about the just transition has marginalized Indigenous legal orders and epistemologies. They also contend that the just transition tends to obscure intersectional dimensions such as gender, race, and class, thereby reinforcing discriminatory hierarchies. Although a ‘just’ transition requires the involvement of Indigenous communities, the reality is that they have largely been excluded from its benefits, thus calling into question whether the transition can be described as ‘just’ at all.
Green Colonialism
The ‘just transition’ has exacerbated green colonialism by amplifying patterns of dispossession and exploitation towards marginalized populations, all while being framed as a socially responsible and sustainable path forward. For instance, wind farms in Oaxaca, Mexico, and lithium mining the Atacama Desert in Chile have displaced many Indigenous groups and eroded their authority over traditional territories, often proceeding without meaningful discussions between states, corporations, and Indigenous communities. Accordingly, as highlighted by Madzimure, green development projects continue to promote the idea that environmental progress can be achieved through the large-scale industrial development of natural resources. On the other hand, Indigenous peoples govern over 42% of the world’s biodiversity, and many communities want to build their knowledge and belief systems into the global energy transition movement, while maintaining biodiversity and conserving land. This tension between Indigenous perspectives and colonial ideologies exemplifies Vivian Plumwood’s argument that, in tandem with Eurocentric understandings of property, colonized lands reflect a shadow of denied relationality. Here, systems of stewardship and relationality, often upheld by Indigenous communities, are invisibilized in exchange for capitalism and commodification.
Natural Resource Extraction and Its Impacts in Canada
Technologies central to the global shift to low-carbon economies, such as renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, and large-scale infrastructure, rely on a steady supply of natural resources. These include minerals such as silver, coal, copper, nickel, and water sources that fuel hydroelectric power, which are abundant in Canada. Subsequently, Canada has positioned itself as a key supplier of natural resources during the green transition.
However, this push for sustainable technology and energy has often come at the expense of Indigenous communities. Across provinces, governments and corporations have advanced extractive processes on Indigenous territories without obtaining free, prior, and informed consent or employing meaningful consultation. For instance, large-scale hydroelectric projects have caused significant harm to Indigenous communities, with notable examples in Manitoba, Quebec, and British Columbia. These developments have led to the flooding of traditional lands, the destruction of wildlife habitats, the marginalization of Indigenous treaty rights, and the disruption of cultural practices for many Indigenous Nations.
Additionally, legal disputes further underscore the tensions between governments, corporations, and Indigenous nations. In Eambametoong First Nation v. Ontario (Minister of Northern Development and Mines 2018 ONSC 4316, the Ontario Divisional Court reviewed the Government of Ontario’s decision to issue an early-stage mineral exploration permit to Landore Resources Canada Inc., for drilling on lands within the Eambametoong Nation’s traditional territory. While the Crown acknowledged its constitutional duty to consult, the Eambametoong Nation argued that the consultation process was inadequate. Specifically, the Eambametoong Nation emphasized that both the Crown and Landore had set clear expectations that a community meeting and formal Memorandum of Understanding would occur with the Eambametoong Nation before any permit was granted. Instead, following a private meeting with Landore during which the company disclosed pending negotiations with a major mining corporation, the Ministry abruptly changed course and issued the permit without further consultation. The Court ultimately found that this shift violated the Crown’s duty to consult, holding that the Ministry rendered the process of consultation as a procedural formality by the Crown, rather than a genuine effort to talk together with Indigenous populations for mutual understanding. While the Divisional Court ultimately overturned the permits, Eeambametoong highlights how governments often attempt to bypass their duty to consult Indigenous Nations when engaging in natural resource extraction in order to accelerate capitalist resource development. To this end, efforts to build a green economy risk replicating colonial models of land use if they cannot uphold Indigenous perspectives.
Conclusion
Ultimately, for governments to meet their climate goals without deepening inequality, they must confront the political and economic frameworks that continue to prioritize large-scale resource extraction over Indigenous sovereignty and ecological stewardship. The goal should not be to end all extractive development, but to ensure that development no longer comes at the cost of Indigenous lives. Sustainability must therefore also be grounded in justice, reciprocity, and a respect for Indigenous worldviews. A just transition, as argued in the 2025 TBLSA policy paper, requires centering Indigenous legal orders in environmental governance, implementing consent-based decision making, and recognizing Indigenous Nations as full partners in shaping sustainable futures. Without these commitments, climate policy risks reproducing colonial patterns under the guise of green process. A ‘just’ transition must therefore move beyond rhetorical inclusion and toward structural transformation led by Indigenous perspectives, especially since their lives, legal orders, and lands are most directly affected by resource extraction.