Moral challenges of mining Indigenous land for the green transition

Abstract

Philosopher Kyle Whyte details what he refers to as crisis epistemology, whereby a state of crisis justifies otherwise ethically and politically unjustifiable action. This article examines how climate change is deployed as a justification to disregard Indigenous political sovereignty in the case of the Sámi (the Indigenous people who reside across four nation-state borders of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola peninsula, Russia) land of Kiruna, Sweden, including their battles with the Swedish mining company Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag. In this article, I argue that the Kiruna case exemplifies the use of crisis epistemology due to climate change as the justification for Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag’s continued mining expansion on Indigenous land which is prohibited under the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous peoples and the 1751 Strömstad Treaty. I explore epistemologies of coordination in the Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag Kiruna mining example toward an Indigenous environmental justice which mitigates global warming and engages Indigenous sovereignty.