Excavating Toxic Colonial Violence and Resistance at the Dump: A Research Note On Sensory Method and Analysis

Abstract

This research note offers some conceptual and methodological insights for studying atmospheres in the context of colonialism’s slow
violence and wasting practices. By exploring how the senses shape our understandings and experiences of wasting practices, we examine the toxic effects of white settler colonialism, traces of which can be revealed when we attend to the convergence of two overlapping forms of slow violence: the degradation of Winnipeg’s land, and murdered and missing Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people (MMIWG2S+). While colonial systems exercise power through discarding and wasting (Liboiron, 2021), they may sometimes be threatened by the discarded things and people they produce (Liboiron and Lepawsky, 2022). Consequently, an emerging sensory criminology should attend not only to the ongoing damage of colonialism in Canada, but also to resistance initiatives that refuse to accept people being treated like waste. This research note argues that sensory methods and forms of analysis that draw centrally, and sometimes metaphorically, on the senses have the potential to uncover new, critical insights on seemingly untouchable issues of injustice for Indigenous peoples. To illustrate the utility of a criminology fully attuned to atmospheres of control and resistance, we offer some observations on taking a sensory approach in an ongoing study of colonial violence and pollution in Winnipeg.