Oil Sands Entanglements: Indigenous Media and Movements from the Front Lines of Canadian Industrial Development Patricia Longo A Thesis in the Department of Communication Studies Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Communication Studies) at Concordia University Montreal, Québec, Canada February 2018 ©Patricia Longo, 2018 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Patricia Longo Entitled: Oil Sands Entanglements: Indigenous Media and Movements from the Front Lines of Canadian Industrial Development and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMMUNICATION STUDIES) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: ___________________________________________________ Chair Dr. Monica E. Mulrennan ___________________________________________________ External Examiner Dr. Darin Barney ___________________________________________________ External to Program Dr. Daniel Salée ___________________________________________________ Examiner Dr. William J. Buxton ___________________________________________________ Examiner Dr. Peter C. van Wyck ___________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor Dr. Lorna Roth Approved by ___________________________________________________________________ Dr. Yasmin Jiwani Graduate Program Director March 23 2018 ___________________________________________________________ Dr. André Roy Faculty of Arts and Science ABSTRACT Oil Sands Entanglements: Indigenous Media and Movements from the Front Lines of Canadian Industrial Development Patricia Longo, PhD Concordia University, 2018 This thesis explores how First Nations and Métis peoples in northern Alberta and northern British Columbia create and negotiate media in connection to industrial bitumen development and oil pipeline proposals. It follows previous communication studies of Indigenous media making and media representations, and adds to the growing fields of the environmental humanities and petroculture studies. The term oil sands entanglements is offered as a conceptual framework for situating Indigenous and non-Indigenous engagements with oil and understanding how communities are affectively and economically tied to ongoing development. With a focus on media practice over content, this thesis is an alternative media study that undertakes media analysis, ethnographic study, interviews, social media mapping and archival research. It is organized into two parts: the 2014 Tar Sands Healing Walk and the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal. The thesis concludes by elaborating oil sands entanglements as multi-directional, located in many places, and imbued with settler-colonial and extractivist politics. It closes with a brief discussion of emergent Indigenous networks that take oil pipelines as a starting-point for advocating fossil fuel divestment and resisting further development. This effort, and other avenues toward disentanglement, demand further media study, particularly as processes of communication. They also exemplify the potentially activist ethic of oil sands entanglement: as a framework, it is not meant to merely survey or map out connections, but to account for what oil and oil sands do in communities, and how this can foster change. iii Acknowledgments I came to Concordia University in 2012 to study with Dr. Lorna Roth, and in the years since, I have greatly appreciated her guidance, tough questions, collaboration and friendship. I wish to extend my thanks to the members of the examining committee. I am also grateful to the organizers of the Tar Sands Healing Walk who allowed me to follow their final 2014 journey and later fielded my many questions. Additionally, I want to acknowledge Library and Archives Canada and the Provincial Archives of Alberta for making so many resources available to the public. Graduate studies are impossible without financial and community support. A Joseph- Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a Faculty of Arts and Science Graduate Fellowship provided by Concordia University, and a number of teaching and teaching assistant opportunities in the Department of Communication Studies allowed me to pursue a doctoral program. I have been very lucky to find community in Concordia’s communications department, especially in fellow cohort members Vanessa Meyer and Nic Watson, and in MA grads Alison Naturale and Jill Piebiak. My ideas have consistently been tested by members of the Association for Literature, Environment and Culture in Canada (ALECC) and I have been so inspired by members of the Minerva’s Owls Media Infrastructure Reading Group, especially Dr. Shirley Roburn, Rachel Webb Jekanowski and Prof. Elizabeth Miller. My thanks to Cara Rowlands, Gaby Joanette, Shannon Montgomery, LSE pals, and many journalist, post-media and non-media friends in Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa for providing much needed anchors. Finally, my deepest thanks to my family, including my parents, Dianne Audette and John Longo, my grandmother Patricia Audette, Sarah Harvey, and my brother Dr. Michael Audette- Longo, who did this all first. To Emily and Wesley: Ours are lives deeply entangled in oil. I wish for you both a just disentanglement. iv Contents List of Images .................................................................................................................. viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix Glossary .............................................................................................................................. x Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Oil sands entanglements .................................................................................... 7 1.1 ‘Our lives are entangled in this, and it’s a mess’ ...................................................... 9 1.2 Petroculture studies ................................................................................................. 12 1.3 Entanglement as an approach to further study ........................................................ 14 1.4 Organization of chapters ......................................................................................... 19 Chapter 2: The oil sands ................................................................................................... 21 2.1 The oil sands and Indigenous communities ............................................................ 24 2.2 Canada, the oil sands, and aspiring to be a superpower.......................................... 29 2.3 The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal ............................................... 32 Chapter 3: Indigenous media studies ................................................................................ 36 3.1 News coverage of First Nations and Métis peoples in connection to the oil sands 38 Part One: The Tar Sands Healing Walk ............................................................................ 40 Chapter 4: Setting the Scene ............................................................................................. 41 4.1 Cultural persistence, and thinking past protests ...................................................... 43 Chapter 5: Experiencing the tailings ponds ...................................................................... 52 5.1 What do we smell when we smell the tar sands? .................................................... 54 5.2 What we see when we look at the oil sands region................................................. 57 Chapter 6: Disentangling oil sands entanglements ........................................................... 61 6.1 Realizing the Tar Sands Healing Walk ................................................................... 64 v 6.2 Creating a safe space ............................................................................................... 68 Chapter 7: Media logics and covering an event that exceeds demand ............................. 73 7.1 Managing the message: ‘Stop the destruction, start the healing’ ............................ 76 7.2 Exceeding demand .................................................................................................. 78 7.3 Negotiating media ................................................................................................... 81 Chapter 8: Tracing a network of entanglement online...................................................... 87 8.1 Analyzing a social media meeting-place ................................................................ 89 8.2 Anchoring #healingwalk ......................................................................................... 93 8.3 Mediation practices ................................................................................................. 94 8.4 Interactions .............................................................................................................. 96 8.5 Looking out from #healingwalk.............................................................................. 99 Chapter 9: After the Tar Sands Healing Walk ................................................................ 101 Part