Zooming in on Contested Energy Spaces: The Study Area

This chapter gives an account of the geographical features of the contested energy spaces of the Canadian North, and their relationship to the wider Canadian federation. A selection of communities has been chosen to represent a variety of responses to the massive industrial developments in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Alberta. It also gives a brief summary of the Indigenous Metis history, and how certain features of these Indigenous communities could be said to be particularly adaptive and pragmatically oriented towards rupture and change.