The Arctic: last frontier for energy and mineral exploitation?

Tightly connected to ideas of manhood, adventure, and survival of the fittest, the Arctic has historically been imagined as the last frontier to conquer. In the last decades, the Arctic has caught new interest as a resource frontier for energy and minerals. Imaginaries of undiscovered reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals to satisfy increased global demand and consumption of electronic gadgets and electric vehicles, and renewable or ‘green’ energy such as wind and hydropower compete with, and simultaneously complement, romantic notions of the Arctic as a place of untouched nature and vanishing yet still preserved traditional indigenous lifestyles. Consequently, the Arctic is imagined as an unexplored, empty, and undeveloped frontier. In this imagined frontier space, indigenous peoples become one with nature, doomed to disappear and a hindrance for modern society. Multinational companies can therefore take what they desire, often with the blessing of the nation-state on which territory the resources are located. Indigenous peoples who have occupied these lands since before the existence of these nation-states are yet again exoticized, displaced, or see their land appropriated for industrial purposes. This chapter focuses on the impacts of such expansions and expropriations in two different parts of the indigenous Arctic: Sápmi and Northern Canada.