Making noise through law: Indigenous legal mobilisation against a power plant in “French” Guiana

In so-called “French” Guiana, or Guyane, the Kali’na village of Atopo Wipi has fought for years against a hydrogen power plant being built on their land. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024 in Guyane and Western Europe, where I collaborated with various stakeholders to support Atopo Wipi’s resistance to the power plant, my research focuses on the legal dimensions of the Kali’na’s struggle to protect their land. Specifically, this article examines how the Kali’na navigated different normative frameworks, including international human rights standards and French law, to fight the project. Through this analysis, I show how the Kali’na conceptualised their use of law as a form of noise, disrupting the silencing of their voices and Indigenous soundscapes, as well as the settler sounds imposed on their territory by the power plant. Although the project will be completed, the Kali’na’s noisemaking illustrates the power of legal mobilisation beyond formal processes, building support and shifting the (legal) narrative from a purely environmental issue to one centred on Indigeneity. In addition, the Kali’na’s framing of their struggle as a form of sonic resistance demonstrates the politically powerful ways in which such Indigenous politics of sound can intersect with and support Indigenous Peoples’ engagements with the law.