The Role of Emotions in Ontological Conflicts : A Case Study of the Territorial Conflict Between the State of British Columbia, Coastal GasLink, and the Wet’suwe’ten

Abstract: For almost two decades, Coastal GasLink, with the support of the State of British Columbia (B.C.), Canada, has sought to build a hydrofracking gas pipeline, which would cross a large part of Wet’suwet’en Nation’s territories. Faced with this, the different clans that make up the Nation, under the governance system of the Hereditary Chiefs, have expressed their disagreement, demonstrating that the environmental assessment and decision-making processes overlooked their deep relationship with the Yintakh (their territory). Drawing on a methodological approach that involved visual ethnography and combined content and narrative analysis, my research aims to analyze the role that emotions play in the territorial-ontological conflict between the State of B.C., Coastal GasLink, and the Wet’suwet’en. The combination of content and narrative analysis helped decipher and understand how people express everyday practices and construct and perform their identity amid the conflict. In facing COVID-19 pandemic limitations, visual ethnography provided an alternative to fieldwork. Using online available audiovisual material, through which I was able to keep a phenomenological approach, I used my senses (visual and auditory) to analyze body movements, tone of voice, and language. The theoretical approach to the conflict was from that of political ontology and emotional political ecologies (EmPEs). To answer my first research question: how is the conflict of interest an ontological conflict? I articulate a framework made up of Ingold’s phenomenology, Blaser’s ontological conflicts, and Escobar's studies of culture as a radical difference. To answer my second research question: what is the role that emotions play in the conflict? I build on the spiderweb, a metaphor developed by Ingold, to expand the scope of González-Hidalgo’s emotional political ecologies. I demonstrate that the processes of political inter-subjectivation sought at the Unist’ot’en Healing Center help understand, on the one hand, the worry, frustration, and stress of the Wet'suwet'ens facing the world-creating practices of Coastal GasLink and the State of B.C. On the other hand, the Healing Center reveals how the affections for the other-than-human and their relational world inform Wet’suwet’en resistance. Lastly, I unveil how Coastal GasLink and the Ministry of Aboriginal Rights and Reconciliation, through discourses and practices of inclusion and gender equality, seek to blur radical cultural differences, delegitimize the Wet’suwet’en pre-colonial governance system, and create affections for the Western-modern world.