Understanding indigenous strategic pragmatism: Métis engagement with extractive industry developments in the Canadian North

Although an understanding of the empowerment of indigenous communities facing extractive industrial developments is growing, most academic research still favours conventional conceptualizations of local indigenous communities as subject to circumstance and which are pushed even further to the fringes of their lands by external forces threatening to extinguish their traditional ways of life. However, this conventional understanding of industrial-indigenous relations falls short on explaining recent developments in the indigenous Metis communities of northern Alberta. Several of these indigenous communities have mobilized a variety of resources to increase their leverage and expand their rights in the midst of oil sand development. Rather than being subject to circumstance, we argue that indigenous communities often seize the moment through strategic and pragmatic engagement with their ever-changing environments. By analyzing the current mobilization of resources among three indigenous Métis communities in the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo, Alberta, we developed an empirically grounded framework for understanding indigenous strategic pragmatism and the output, outcomes and impact of indigenous engagement with extractive industry developments.