Colonial Extractions Race and Canadian Mining in Contemporary Africa

Through a series of interviews with senior personnel of businesses with mining operations in Africa, Butler identifies a continuation of the same colonialist mindset that saw resource ownership and racial dominance over Indigenous peoples in Canada as part of Canada's nation-building project. Financially, culturally, and psychologically, Canadians are invested in extracting resource-based wealth in the Global South, and - as Butler's analysis of Canada's influence over South Africa's first post-apartheid mining legislation shows - they look to legitimize that extraction through neoliberal legal frameworks and a powerful national myth of benevolence.
Complementing analyses of the industry through political economy or critical development studies, Colonial Extractions is a powerful and unsettling critique of the cultural dimension of Canada's mining industry overseas.