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Reclamation of Alberta muskeg focus of UNBC professor's talk

Examining the ways that muskeg and its reclamation appear in Indigenous, government and scientific discourses is the focus of an online talk a University of Northern British Columbia anthropology professor will give this later this week. Dr.
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UNBC associate professor Tara Joly

Examining the ways that muskeg and its reclamation appear in Indigenous, government and scientific discourses is the focus of an online talk a University of Northern British Columbia anthropology professor will give this later this week.

Dr. Tara Joly will discuss the social and cultural context for the creation of these reclaimed landscapes in a presentation titled "Growing [With] Muskeg: Oil Sands Reclamation and Healing."

Oil sands companies in northern Alberta are required to remediate land they have disturbed but have been criticized for ‘desertifying’ a landscape that, before extraction, consisted largely of peat-like muskeg.

“Considering much of Canada’s subarctic is impacted by extractive industries and related marks of settler colonialism, I’m interested in how different people respond to and consider ways in which people can live with the damage,” Joly said.

“Can we attempt to heal disturbed landscapes, and how are different ways of knowing involved in the process? In reclamation discourse and practice, tensions often erupt between settler-colonial and Indigenous perspectives on land use and value.”

The talk is part of UNBC's ongoing Anthropology in Our Backyards series and will be held this Thursday, 1-2:30 p.m. To register go to https://bit.ly/anthropology-in-our-backyards.