Reconciliation and Environmental Communication: An Evocation of Oil Pipelines, Water Protection, and Indigenous Knowledge to Serve Canada on the Fluid World Stage

Geo Takach used Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funds to explore Indigenous Ways of Knowing in the communication of developing natural resources sustainably.

This research explores junctions of Canada’s environmental stewardship and Indigenous Ways of Knowing in seeking to help our nation thrive in a networked, globalized political, economic and cultural landscape. This synthesis of existing research knowledge seeks to: (i) identify strengths of, and gaps in, the nexus of recent research in the fields of environmental communication, place-identity and place branding, and Indigenous Ways of Knowing; (ii) assist in developing future research agendas; and (iii) advance understandings of research involving arts-based synthesis, analysis and production of research.
This knowledge synthesis project includes, as its backdrop, a case study rooted in the ongoing conflict over oil pipelines and the protection of Canada’s coastal waters in British Columbia (BC), accented by Canadians’ identified need to reconcile with Indigenous peoples. This conflict is epitomized in the federal government’s recent, conditional approval of the proposed major expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline to carry bitumen from Alberta to Burnaby port for export to Pacific-Rim markets. Based on an assessment of current work in the foregoing fields and a systematic literature review regarding the case study, this work aims to identify how the Academy and our public, private, and non-profit sectors can bridge Indigenous and Western ways of knowing and communicating on ecological concerns, and apply best practices suggested by scholarly literature and popular media to help Canada position itself as a leader in developing natural resources sustainably. Knowledge mobilization will include presenting the research in an arts-based format (a script for a reading in the round, or round-robin reading, to be shared at diverse community events, conferences and a dedicated website), submitting it as a scholarly and/or popular-media article, and presenting it to SSHRC in Ottawa.