Water, Stories, and Ceremony: Exploring Indigenous Sovereignty and Governance Through Water

Abstract

This article focuses on Indigenous communities in Canadian prairies, especially Manitoba, where water insecurity and hydro development impact many Indigenous communities’ traditional and long-standing relationships with water. In this article, hydro development refers not only to physical and artificial features of land, such as dams and diversions, but also serves as a broader analytical frame to understand how colonialism prioritizes industrial capital at the expense of Indigenous communities’ sovereignty, cultural ways of being, and relational responsibilities to water and land.