Charles Taylor Book Award Winner 2017: Sarah Marie Wiebe, for Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley

Winner: Sarah Marie Wiebe (University of Victoria), for Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley (University of British Columbia Press, 2016)

Everyday Exposure is an interesting, surprising and outstanding text offering an exceptional interpretive analysis that takes the questions of environmental justice for the 850 Anishinabek people in the Aamjiwnaang Reserve, or Sarnia Reserve 45, in Canada's so-called Chemical Valley and makes it “home”. Wiebe’s deployment of theory, ethnographic and visual evidence and rich interpretive narrative uniquely define this “place-based” study of environmental justice and injustice. The result is a political study that amplifies the story of state withdrawal and is distinctly policy-focused; it enables Wiebe to build towards persuasive a conclusion about avenues for future “collaborative community research” and the “advancement of environmental reproductive justice”.

Selection Committee:

Lahra Smith, chair

Jutta Weldes

Daniel Kato