How Colonialism Makes Its World: Infrastructure and First Nation Debt in Canada

Abstract

The default prevention and management policy (DPMP) is a federal policy that was ostensibly designed to address debt and default in First Nation communities in Canada. The policy works through various levels of external intervention into First Nation finances. According to research findings presented in this article, when First Nations are under the policy a new form of deficit is created rather than improved: Housing stock and water infrastructure becomes much worse off than for First Nations who have never been under the policy. This article puts infrastructure to work as method (Cowen Citation2020) to explore how intimate geographies of infrastructure and “infrastructure denial” (Curley Citation2021), such as housing and water systems on reserves, connect socioeconomic policy frameworks with theories of settler colonial dispossession.

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