Decolonising Canadian water governance: lessons from Indigenous case studies

This article has improved immensely since version 1. The author has clearly taken on board the critiques from the reviewers, and provided a much more cohesive and evidence-rich paper. The connection between the case studies and the critique of the OECD principles is much clearer, and the author has engaged more closely with the relevant literature.

One minor suggestion would be to move some of the text in the endnotes into the body of the paper where possible, as these now contain quite a lot of information and nuance.

I look forward to citing this paper in future work.

Overall

The primary challenge with this paper is that the federal government does not govern water. It provides the service of drinking water and sanitary sewer on reserve lands, but is almost entirely absent from the governance of water in Canada. The author either needs to reorient the focus of the paper to on-reserve water and wastewater provision, or involve the provincial and territorial governments in the discussion. In addition, the author refers interchangeably to infrastructure, governance and policy in the first paragraph. These are three distinct approaches or things that warrant different approaches in an academic paper. Clarity is needed.

Because the author does not engage meaningfully with the state (colonial) structures for water governance in Canada the too brief overview of OECD principles is without context or meaning. The reader has no sense of how parties/governments/communities in Canada could realize the principles is unclear.

Two-eyed seeing is one method Indigenous communities in Canada use to acknowledge both Indigenous and western ways of knowing. However, many Indigenous communities do not choose to use that approach and practice their own knowledge holding and communication pursuant to their legal and societal norms. Advocating for adoption of two-eyed seeing across Canada incorrectly imposes a pan-Indigenous (and thus colonial) approach without respecting the self-determination of each Indigenous community to define how they choose to use their knowledge in relation to state processes.

The case studies in part 2 are exceptionally out of date such that the analysis is inaccurate.

Definitions

The definition of Indigenous the author uses is a colonial definition. It is the definition provided in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 that recognizes and affirms aboriginal rights. If the author examined literature by Indigenous authors and scholars, the author would find different definitions of Indigenous that do not refer to state or colonial frameworks.

What does the author mean by the term decolonizing? The OECD is composed of largely colonized/colonial states that do not necessarily acknowledge Indigenous societies.

Existing Initiatives and Literature in Canada

There are several meaningful government-to-government water policy and governance processes underway in Canada right now to which the author does not refer. See, for example the Land and Water Boards in the northern territories to start and then look at the Nicola Chiefs and Koksilah watershed planning processes in British Columbia. (as an aside - what does the author mean by nation-to-nation? Are they referring to agreements between Indigenous nations and the federal government? Given that the federal government is largely absent from water governance, is it not more appropriate to have government-to-government agreements between Indigenous communities and provincial/territorial governments as it is at the province/territorial scale that water is managed?) How does consideration of these different approaches affect the analysis in this paper?

Many Indigenous communities are using two-eyed seeing-type approaches in their water and environmental governance in relation to state governments at present. See, for example, the Syilx Nation water declaration, the SNS community assessment of the Ajax mine proposal, and the Bras D'or Lakes Collaborative Environmental Planning Initiative. Aimee Craft is an Indigenous scholar who writes of Indigenous community processes relating to water governance and policy/law.

Many scholars are exploring decolonizing water governance in Canada that the author does not engage. See, for example, Merrell-Ann Phare, Susanne von der Porten, Rob de Loe, Deborah Curran, Oliver Brandes, and Nicole Wilson (to a greater extent than is cited in this article) to name a few.

How does the role of the First Nations Health Authority in BC or the Atlantic First Nations Water Authority in the maritime provinces, which are involved in assisting with drinking water on reserves and other elements of WaSH, affect the analysis in this paper?

Other Comments

Given the amount of funding and program commitment the federal government has put towards addressing the crisis of drinking water on reserves in the past 6 years, the references for the state of on-reserve drinking water are out of date.

The Simms article does not address WaSH. It is focused on watershed governance.

Overall, this is a very interesting paper, and definitely worthy of publication. It does require some amendment before publication, but these amendments are to make explicit some of the author’s contentions and assumptions, not because there is any error to be corrected. I really enjoyed reading this paper, and I look forward to seeing the final version in print.

If you’d like to strengthen your connection to the global experience, I suggest citing papers by Indigenous authors outside Canada as well, including Martuwarra RiverOfLife et al., (2021) Ruru (2018), Wilson et al (2021).

Page 2 – “I claim” – I suggest this should be “I argue” as this is what you are doing. You are demonstrating through the case studies that your argument is correct. Calling it a ‘claim’ suggests that you’re coming to this without evidence, which is the opposite of what you’re doing.

Page 4 – two opposing ideals compared using the metric of efficiency. This is a problem of non-commensurability , which happens when you try to make two very different things measurable by the same standard, or same metric. Have a look at Tribe (1974) for more on non-commensurability, I think you’d find this a useful concept.

Page 4 – in your critique of OECD, it might be useful to examine another article that has also considered these principles from an Indigenous perspective, see Taylor et al., (2019)

Page 5 – include a bit more on why you have selected Principles 2 and 4. Perhaps make the case that trust is a major issue between Indigenous Peoples and settler colonial governments, and then argue that these two principles require trust. I think you can also identify a set of assumptions that tend to underpin ‘competencies’ and ‘governance’ – these are usually interpreted solely through a whitefella/settler colonial lens, and often look very different (while being equally or more effective) in Indigenous legal and cultural frameworks. Settler colonial systems often consider Indigenous forms of governance to be inadequate in a formal sense, without considering (or understanding) the substantive outcomes.

Page 5 – add a reference to your statement about the harm of current water practices. Vörösmarty et al., (2010) is a good example.

Page 6 – I would suggest avoiding using an alphabetical list to describe your case studies. Use paragraphs and prose instead, unless you’re dot pointing. If you're short on words, you could see if you can identify key themes in each case study and convert this into a table.

Case studies –

1. Case Study 1 - include a brief factual statement about the actual problems. What are the water safety issues? What are the water quality issues? Are they causing health problems? Tell the story with just a bit more detail to really show the reader how egregious these problems are. You also need a bit more detail about why the Bills/Acts were rejected – which Treaty rights were being ignored?
2. Case Study 2 – can you flip the first point to say that there were various settler colonial policy and legal documents establishing governance arrangements for the Great Lakes, and that the Tribes considered these inadequate because… [insert a ref for declining health of Great Lakes]. This is a good news story, by the sounds of it, so give us a little more detail on what happened. How did the Chiefs get their Declaration taken seriously by the legislature? Is that sufficient? Have their Treaty rights been respected? How is this evidence of two-eyed seeing?
3. Case Study 3 – this is really strong and interesting, as well as having enough detail to really hook the reader in.

Page 11 – when capitalizing Oppressed and Oppressor, it would be useful to connect these terms to the specifics in your paper. If you can also reference literature that uses this terminology, that would help as well (not disputing your use of the term at all, just needing to hook it in to the literature).

Analysis of the OECD principles and case studies – This section really relies on an assumed knowledge of Treaty rights. Your paper needs to provide this information (possibly as part of the introduction, or as part of the case study section) to give your analysis the impact it needs. Your analysis is spot on, but you just need to more explicitly link it back to the Treaty content. This will enable to you to more effectively explain why these principles, of themselves, are not set up to support effective water governance in settler colonial contexts.

Page 11 – is Two-Eyed Seeing a research methodology, or a governance framework (or both?). In this instance, I think you’re using it in the governance context, because it provides a way to reform law and policy in a settler colonial context, and a way to make decisions fairly and equitably.

Conclusion – there is quite a bit of repeated summation in your paper, so if you’re pushed for word limits, try to cut back on some of the summaries in your intro and conclusion, and use these words to expand your case studies and include the Treaty rights.

Additional articles to consider for inclusion

Martuwarra RiverOfLife, Taylor, K. S., & Poelina, A. (2021). Living Waters, Law First: Nyikina and Mangala water governance in the Kimberley, Western Australia. Australasian Journal of Water Resources , 25 (1), 40–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2021.1880538

Ruru, J. (2018). Listening to Papatūānuku: A call to reform water law. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand , 48 (2–3), 215–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.2018.1442358

Taylor, K. S., Longboat, S., & Grafton, R. Q. (2019). Whose Rules? A Water Justice Critique of the OECD’s 12 Principles on Water Governance. Water , 11 , 809. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11040809

Tribe, L. H. (1974). Ways Not to Think About Plastic Trees: New Foundations for Environmental Law. Yale Law Journal , 83 , 1315–1346.

Vörösmarty, C. J., McIntyre, P. B., Gessner, M. O., Dudgeon, D., Prusevich, A., Green, P., Glidden, S., Bunn, S. E., Sullivan, C. A., Reidy-Liermann, C., & Davies, P. (2010). Global Threats to Human Water Security and River Biodiversity. Nature , 467 , 555–561.

Wilson, N. J., Montoya, T., Arseneault, R., & Curley, A. (2021). Governing water insecurity: Navigating indigenous water rights and regulatory politics in settler colonial states. Water International , 46 (6), 783–801. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2021.1928972