Introduction

‘Frack Off, Gasholes!’ screams a T-shirt in block letters. It is worn by an attendee at the third public consultation of the Nova Scotia Independent Review Panel on Hydraulic Fracturing, held in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada on 21 July 2014. The 11-member Nova Scotia Independent Review Panel on Hydraulic Fracturing was commissioned by the New Democratic (socialist) provincial government in Nova Scotia in August 2013 after it put in place a two-year moratorium on fracking in 2012. The review panel submitted its report in August 2014, and in November a legislated ban was brought in by the Liberal government that succeeded the New Democrats.

Several of us who drove up from Antigonish, where St Francis Xavier University is located, are wearing T-shirts that we have just purchased in the lobby downstairs. Our shirts are less direct, more tongue-in-cheek. Mine says, ‘peas-full protest against fracking; protect local food from oil and gas drilling’. It has a drawing on it of peas on the march. With the exception of one vocal audience member, the room is full of anti-frackers – with T-shirts, buttons and signs opposing fracking on display. Still, even though we all oppose the process, people are in the room for different reasons. Some of these differences are clearly visible from the tone and approach of the T-shirts we wear, while others are less visible. For instance, there are several people in the room who would dispute that we are in Nova Scotia, instead insisting we are in Mi’kma’ki, the traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq First Nation – territory that was never ceded over the almost 300 years since the British and Mi’kmaq first signed a treaty. The Mi’kmaq are the main First Nation people in the Canadian Maritimes, with a traditional territory that encompasses all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, the majority of New Brunswick, the Gaspesie in Quebec and parts of Newfoundland, and in the US, the state of Maine.