Pipeline Resistance

Pipeline resistance is where an often abstract and wonky climate movement meets the bravery and boldness of Indigenous and other frontline defenders of land and water who inspire direct action for environmental justice and foster creative imaginaries well beyond business-as-usual capitalism and colonialism. Especially since 2009–2016, when opposition to the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines became central to the global climate movement, scholarly literature has emerged around the theme of pipeline resistance. We chose the title “Pipeline Resistance” rather than “Pipeline Activism” because while many pipeline fighters are proud activists, many others, including many Indigenous people, decline the activist label as marginalizing, trivializing, reductive, or inadequate to describe their impetus for environmental defense. Scholarship around earlier pipeline conflicts and anti-extraction movements, especially in the Global South, is one progenitor of emergent pipeline resistance literature. Literature on pipeline resistance also draws from, and contributes to, scholarship on environmental justice, climate justice, energy democracy, and objections to the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure more broadly (whether anticolonial, anticapitalist, or otherwise). In both the historical and the more recent anti-extraction movements, Indigenous-led resistance and concomitant anti-colonialism have played a major role. In this article, we summarize existing literature in English on activism to halt or remediate oil and gas pipeline construction around the world. We begin with some core resources for those trying to enter this literature base, perhaps for the first time. Then, we focus on texts that provide global historical contexts for the precedents to pipeline resistance; resistance to the Dakota Access (DAPL) pipeline, a key pipeline fight that grounds the literature; Indigenous resurgence; and gendered activism. Next, we cover modes of resistance to pipelines as well as motivations for, and transformations from, fighting pipelines. The next section highlights the ways that pipeline activists have been surveilled, policed, criminalized, repressed, and intimidated by the state and fossil fuel corporations. We finish this bibliography by considering pipeline resistance specific to Canada and the United States as well as by offering resources for activists and allies. There are some important notes regarding this bibliography. First, Indigeneity, decolonization, and pipeline resistance are all deeply intertwined. While we have Indigeneity and decolonization separated out as a key theme of pipeline resistance, this theme is deeply embedded throughout the literature and is thus represented throughout this bibliography. While we have not separated out climate justice or environmental justice as key themes with their own sections, they similarly are threaded throughout. Second, pipelines always start and end somewhere. Anti-pipeline movements are thus not separate from anti-extraction movements or resistance to oil and gas refining and export facilities, but we nonetheless tried to keep our focus narrow. Third, our bibliography is limited by our focus on English-language sources and our prioritization of peer-reviewed sources, though we have endeavored to incorporate studies from around the globe and to include other types of resources (such as children’s books, podcasts, and reports from civil society organizations) to demonstrate the breadth of activity and analysis around pipeline resistance.

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