This study develops a socio-spatial analytical model to examine the colonial engineering of river systems through the case of the St. Lawrence Seaway and its environmental and territorial impacts on the Kahnawà:ke Mohawk community. It argues that large-scale infrastructural waterway projects function not only as technological interventions but also as instruments of colonial governance that restructure Indigenous land relations, ecological systems, and legal-political sovereignty. Drawing on Indigenous critical theory, decolonial frameworks, and socio-legal scholarship, the paper synthesizes literature on land claims, environmental justice, and settler-state policy mechanisms to interrogate how hydrological modification becomes a mechanism of structural dispossession. The analysis situates the Seaway within broader patterns of treaty violation, claims adjudication, and administrative governance under Canadian Indigenous policy regimes, including the Specific Claims Tribunal framework (Specific Claims Tribunal Act, SC 2008, c22). Findings indicate that the St. Lawrence Seaway exemplifies infrastructural colonialism, producing long-term hydrological disruption, socio-economic marginalization, and governance asymmetry. The study contributes a conceptual model linking environmental engineering with legal-institutional processes of Indigenous marginalization, offering implications for environmental governance reform and Indigenous sovereignty restoration.
Colonial Engineering of River Systems and Structural Environmental Injustice: A Socio-Spatial Analysis Model of The St. Lawrence Seaway and Its Effects on Kahnawà: Ke Territory
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