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s I tend to do quite often when reading and commentating on work set in the Midwest, I allow myself to engage in a bit of autoethnography, whenever I can. Finding resonance with the work being done in my homelands (construed broadly, of course) is one of the little joys that come in academia for me. Pipeline Populism, by Kai Bosworth (Virginia Commonweath University) represents yet another academic piece for me to ‘resonate’ with, although in a way that is empathetic in both positive and negative ways.

In this review, I will try my best to frame the ways in which the book’s contents resonate with me—not as an ego-stroking exercise, but rather as a Midwestern geographer who read the book, participated in an author-meets-comrades session at the 2023 AAG Annual Meeting on it, and came away from both experiences exclaiming, “Yes, someone gets it!” In what follows, I’ll highlight what exactly “it” is, as well as the ways that this book has proven to be helpful and even indispensable to my own geographical work in the Upper Midwest.  

The Fraught Nature of Populism

One key area in which I found resonance with Bosworth is in the beginning of the book, when they describe the often-fraught nature of populism. In a political climate where politicians and political movements portray themselves as ‘grassroots’, it can be very easy to fall prey to the seductive idea that populism can serve the needs of the whole in a way that results in a ‘win-win’ for everyone involved. Bosworth writes of the complex and shifting nature of populism and social movements related to anti-pipeline causes, particularly in South Dakota, where coalitions formed quickly, yet could dissolve as quickly as they appeared.

Many who have written about the potential for alliances across social/economic/racial lines cite Zoltán Grossman’s work Unlikely Alliances (2017) as an example of settler/Indigenous allyship, and proof that the oft-mentioned settler/Indigenous divide can be bridged in ways that further both Indigenous and settler goals. However, Bosworth takes a granular and localized view on the various motivations behind opposition—many settler farmers, for example, felt that the financial offers to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built across their lands was too low for example. Some cited potential environmental impacts to land and water, similarly to Indigenous nations such as the Standing Rock Tribe.

However, Bosworth is careful to note that this does not mean that settlers and Indigenous nations were suddenly locked into a mutually beneficial alliance. In fact, these similar aims are presented almost in parallel to each other—allies of convenience, rather than ideology. I found resonance here with Bosworth’s assertions that at the core of settler opposition, particularly among local landowners, were capitalist principles of private land ownership and in some cases, nationalist principles of wanting to secure their land/space from invasions from ‘outsiders’ (more on this later in this review). This reinforces Bosworth’s positioning as populism as something that can either be good or bad, or neither of these things, as it is driven by the desires and principles of the main stakeholders who are driving an individual movement.

Cruel Optimism and ‘Participatory’ Politics

Bosworth turns their focus to the ways in which ostensibly ‘public’ oversight processes, such as public meetings, hearings, and reviews became both powerful organizing spaces, as well as places that became bureaucratic morasses where the idea that the public could stop a potentially destructive process was dangled just out of reach of said public, similar to Aesop’s fable of the fox and the grapes. Bosworth uses Laurent Berlant’s idea of ‘cruel optimism’(2011) as a framing—the idea that the thing that we want the most often and work towards, can also be the thing that eats away at us, kills us, does harm to us.

In this case, processes such as these public meetings provide opportunities for local citizens, landowners, and tribal nations to make their voices heard, which many people did, from Bosworth’s analysis (and autoethnography of their experiences at these meetings). People having their say—a key part of democracy. Bosworth writes of the gestures of community care that were present at the meetings—things as big as attendees and organizers providing meals to people in attendance, to as small as statements of support and validation after one speaks—Bosworth speaks in particular of the experience of them speaking at one of the meetings, coming away feeling discouraged, yet still being supported by allies in attendance.

However, no matter how many meetings there were, no matter how many statements of opposition were expressed, construction of pipelines continued. In this moment lies, I argue as does Bosworth, the cruel optimism. In the United States (and in Canada, where I currently live), we are socialized to believe that we can make a difference by speaking up. By making our voice heard, we can affect change.

However, capitalist structures in concert with the state can generate ways of creating the illusion of open dialogue—Bosworth makes clear that the public meetings almost became a way to satiate public outrage without any meaningful action backing it up—the pipelines ended up being built anyways. To me, this raises the spectre of the often cited policies of consultation with Indigenous nations in both the United States and Canada when it comes to projects being carried out on Indigenous lands and territories—however, these processes often times become a way to make an end-run around Indigenous opposition and become rubber stamp processes in a way—the state and its capitalist allies saying “Well, you got to have your say—what more do you want?”

The Outsider as Settler Colonial “Bogeyman”

Bosworth spends some attention and time speaking on the ways in which anti-pipeline politics took on a nationalist-populist tone targeting Canadian energy interests and the threat of Chinese economic growth via the consumption of Canadian oil. To me, this is a very useful exercise in examining the inner contradictions of the settler colonial psyche. Rather than an allied settler colonial state, Canada was portrayed by many settler landowners as an invading power via pipeline (Bosworth writes that one landowner even conflated Canadians with the British, another long-time American patriotic ‘bogeyman’), seeking to poison American land and constrain American economic power. This was alongside almost-naked Sinophobia against China, the perceived beneficiary of oil being routed through the pipelines. Therefore, opposition against the pipeline took on a nationalist tone, a protection of American land, and American economic might.

This, to me is in fitting with the ideas presented by scholars such as Sai Englert (2020), who writes of the inherent connections between settler colonialism and capitalism; in particular, Englert cites that the centre of power in the settler colonial state comes from those who can exploit Indigenous land (and Indigenous labour) to extract the most capital. It also raises the cruel irony of people who benefit directly from the theft of Indigenous land complaining about the potential damaging or loss of that land by ‘outsiders’—it becomes easier to look outward, rather than look inward towards their own roles in potential environmental damage and degradation.

Recent media coverage, for example, has spoken of the deep effects that agriculture has on water resources in the Upper Midwest and its impacts on Indigenous environments (Rojanasakul & Searcey, 2023), but that is an ‘American’ phenomenon—to curtail that means curtailing the economic well-being of ‘hard-working’ American farmers—a pipeline funded by Canadian interests and whose products might possibly be used by Chinese consumers is much easier to critique.

Counter-Territorialization of Science and Space

In Chapter 4, Bosworth writes on the ways in which pro-pipeline advocates and anti-pipeline activists/environmentalists both worked to gain control of narratives surrounding environmental safety via technical means—that is, obtaining ‘hard’ data showing the effects of the pipeline on the environment, or the claimed lack of effects thereof. Data, expert testimony, reports, and everything in-between was mobilized by both sides in order to advance their claims, although as Bosworth notes, expert testimony was harder for anti-pipeline groups to access—a byproduct of the often-troublesome link between scientific ‘experts’ and industry.

In this, I am strongly reminded of the controversy surrounding the construction of Minnesota State Highway 55 through a site considered sacred to local Dakota communities in Minneapolis, in the late 1990s (Wainwright & Robertson, 2003). In that instance, the Minnesota Department of Transportation was able to mobilize mapping knowledge along with co-opted oral histories from Dakota elders/knowledge holders to advance their claims that the highway construction would not impact the sacred sites claimed by opponents. In this way, Morgenson and Wainwright claim that the state was able to territorialize the space in ways that met their needs, over the needs of local community members and Indigenous peoples.

Bosworth on one hand, presents a similar territorialization of discursive and physical space—pipeline operators and the state, armed with limitless money, are able to call upon the voices of respected experts to back their case. However, on the other hand, Bosworth shows the ways in which opponents of pipelines were able to call upon data and science to support their claims as well, backed by their own lived experiences of being on the land.

Although their efforts were ultimately in vain, Bosworth’s narrative shows the ways in which these groups are able to create a counter-territorialization of these discursive spaces, if not the physical spaces, as they hoped. On-going work being done in defense of lands and waters from the negative effects of pipelines in my own home territories (Minnesota) has been able to build upon this work by being able to rely on scientific analyses in order to present more effective resistance against pipeline construction and other extractive industries, such as mining.

Concluding Thoughts

At the beginning of this review, I spoke about the ‘it’ factor that this book possesses, and why this book has become indispensable to me in my own work done in the Upper Midwest, particularly in nearby Minnesota. I want to conclude this review by spending a few moments talking about why this is.

To me, the ‘it’ factor lies in the complexities of settler mindsets and motivations that Bosworth presents in the book. Too often, scholarship that focuses on the settler-side of settler colonial studies tends to place settlers and settler colonialism into a monolithic structure—moving together, acting together, with little attention paid to localized agency and struggles. In my own scholarship set in the same geographical region as Bosworth’s work, I’ve written (2018) about the ways in which settler colonialism is best understood as an assemblage of structures that can function in concert or move independently of one another—that their central goal is the elimination of Indigeneity, but that the paths that individual structures can take toward that goal can vary and can even conflict with one another.

Although Bosworth takes a different path in describing these structures and how they work, I feel this is a particularly relevant strength of the book, outlining the mundane and spectacular scales of how settler colonialism and populism can function together. For me, that makes this book a key work in understanding the complexities of environmental struggle—and for me, personally, a reminder that I should add a bit more Spinoza to my reading lists. Miigwech, Kai, for a thoughtful, provoking read that I plan to return to for years to come.

References:

Berlant, Lauren. "Cruel optimism." The affect theory reader (2010): 93-117.

Grossman, Zoltán. Unlikely alliances: Native nations and white communities join to defend rural lands. University of Washington Press, 2017.

Searcey, Dionne and Mira Rojanasakul, “Big Farms and Flawless Fries Are Gulping Water in the Land of 10,000 Lakes,” The New York Times, September 3, 2023, available here.

Smiles, Deondre. "“… to the Grave”—Autopsy, settler structures, and indigenous counter-conduct." Geoforum 91 (2018): 141-150.

Wainwright, Joel, and Morgan Robertson. "Territorialization, science and the colonial state: the case of Highway 55 in Minnesota." cultural geographies 10, no. 2 (2003): 196-217.

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Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe) is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. Smiles’ areas of interest include critical Indigenous geographies, human-environment interactions, and political ecology. Smiles is the principal investigator of the Geographic Indigenous Futures Collaboratory, one of Western Canada’s first explicltly Indigenous geographies-focused research labs.