Sami Stroud

In Churchill, Manitoba, a subarctic town where a proposed National Marine Conservation Area aims to protect the world’s largest summering beluga population, conservation and ecotourism are framed as acts of care. Yet, extending these practices through the NMCA may also further extend colonial control over beluga lives and Indigenous lands and waters. This dissertation examines the entanglement of care and violence in marine conservation through an interdisciplinary approach that reinterprets marine biology’s tools and methods to theorize forms of care with belugas. Through a combination of multispecies ethnography, collaboration with Indigenous partners, and cross-training in marine biology, this work reimagines marine conservation as a site where care and colonial power converge and more reciprocal futures might emerge.