Oxana Pimenova (University of Windsor)
In Canada, governments must consult Indigenous communities on resource projects. When an administrative agency believes in a project’s necessity, it has the institutional power to control the argument exchanges via imposing authority rules that define a reasoning capacity to argue for and against a project. For example, in defining evidence availability/relevance and allocating the burdens of proof in consultations, rules can make it easy for an agency not to engage with Indigenous arguers but rebut their arguments with an Argument Continuity. Argument Continuity is a set of arguments and counterarguments repeatedly produced and reproduced by the same dominant arguer through an adversarial reasoning process to dismiss unfavorable arguments without considering their merits. In a distorted reasoning context of Indigenous consultations, Argument Continuity traces the effects of institutional power by connecting argument, counterarguments, and reasoning practices by an agency to the resources/incentives given by authority rules, reconstructing the motivated criticism in the sequential development of reasoning goals, practices, and outcomes (with the help of the process-tracing method and the logic of increasing returns). The paper tests the sequence of Argument Continuity in two institutionally diverse contexts of Indigenous consultations over the Trans Mountain and Mackenzie Valley pipelines. The institutional analysis reveals how the rules of consultations constraining/advancing the reasoning capacity of Indigenous arguers to resist the project made it easier for the officials to employ motivated criticism in the Trans Mountain case and epistemic vigilance in the Mackenzie Valley case, responding to Indigenous concerns with or without Argument Continuities.