The promised paradises of colonial capitalism and neoliberalism are set in a perpetually elusive future (Fitzpatrick 1992). This future is not a set destination, but an endless linear journey set to the thrum of ‘progress’ and ‘development’. This paper considers, in the context of recent cases relating to development in the Athabasca tar sands region, what the law of the Canadian settler state does when it is faced with interruptions and ruptures in its timescape. Drawing on Fitzpatrick’s seminal work, The Mythology of Modern Law, I argue that a conceptualisation of law’s behaviour in these contexts as functionally mythological highlights some of the elusive ways that settler law maintains a stranglehold over legal imaginaries of oil and gas developments: by distorting and flattening the pasts and presents of Indigenous societies that pre-dated (and continue to co-exist with) the settler state on ‘Canadian’ land, by mediating between the ‘origin’ of the settler state and the daily rhythms of colonial time through ‘Eternal Objects’ such as property and economic development, and by asserting a general ‘objectivity’ of law to evade any direct grappling with the stark possibilities of the ‘end of the world’ created by the climate crisis. I conclude, drawing on Indigenous scholarship and the work of de Goede and Randalls, that a meaningful response to the climate crisis requires re-enchanted attachments to life that necessitate a departure from the one-dimensional temporality of the mythologies of settler law.

殖民资本主义和新自由主义的承诺天堂被设定在一个永远难以捉摸的未来（Fitzpatrick 1992）。这个未来不是一个既定的目的地，而是一个以“进步”和“发展”为旋律的无尽线性旅程。本文在最近与阿萨巴斯卡焦油砂地区开发相关的案例的背景下，考虑了加拿大移民国在其时间范围内面临中断和破裂时的法律行为。借鉴菲茨帕特里克的开创性著作《现代法律神话》，我认为，将这些背景下的法律行为概念化为功能神话，突出了定居者法律对石油和天然气开发的法律想象的一些难以捉摸的方式：通过扭曲和扁平化原住民社会的过去和现在通过财产和经济发展等“永恒对象”在定居者国家的“起源”与殖民时代的日常节奏之间进行调解，从而使“加拿大”土地上的定居者国家过时（并继续共存），并且主张法律的普遍“客观性”，以避免直接应对气候危机造成的“世界末日”的严峻可能性。我得出结论，借鉴土著奖学金以及 de Goede 和 Randalls 的工作，