Within the context of resource extraction, cultural encounters have been historically performed in the way of more or less antagonistic social interactions, ranging from outright domination to more empowerment-oriented relations. Throughout the last decades, the building of pipelines in particular has linked together countries, cultures, identities, ultimately challenging, reorganizing and renegotiating them.
Starting from these premises, the following paper intends to show how Canadian Mackenzie Valley represents a unique contact zone for the development of cultural encounters, where different actors sometimes clash, but eventually “grapple with each other”. In order to do so, I look into the specific case of Mackenzie Valley Pipeline and its advancement from the early 70s to more recent times, to suggest that within this challenging setting - where indigenous peoples are constantly confronted with often competing interests and positions - the practice of public hearings can be approached as a form of organized cultural encounter, whose “implied purposes” are to deal with more or less substantial cultural differences and to provide a wider cultural understanding of each different position.
Through the testimonies presented during the negotiations of the Mackenzie Gas Project, I explore the main features of the institutionalized practice of community hearings to suggest that this system has produced two main results, leading to the creation of: a) an essential forum for confrontation and articulation of cultural diversities and divergent perspectives on energy development and indigenous issues; b) a unique social space that has contributed to trigger phenomenon of identity
transformation and new ways of structuring relations among the several pipeline stakeholders.