Project Reconciliation

Project Reconciliation is an ambitious new initiative hoping to get us to see our dirty-oil conundrum in a fresh new way!

Take a gander at their web page.

"There's a pipeline to Reconciliation. We should take it."

Indeed!

Rather than equating pipelines with the transport of climate-killing bitumen, we need to equate them instead with the empowerment of our Indigenous population!

What could be more timely?

We've just wrapped the $54 million MMIWG Inquiry, and the $60 million Truth and Reconciliation Commission before that.

The public is ready for some "reconciliation."

Until now, we've been more inclined to see First Nations as pipeline protesters, not pipeline advocates.

Can this PR campaign re-frame the conversation?


If enough of the public can be duped into believing that more pipelines are something First Nations want, this audacious PR campaign just might work.

Putting the con into reconciliation

Everybody in Canada knows what you're talking about when you talk about reconciliation. In short, it's the process of making right the sordid history of indigenous - settler relations in this country, described by the most recent inquiry into the matter as a "genocide."

Looks to me like some very clever PR sharpies have latched onto the "reconciliation" trope with a view to turning it into a vehicle for pipeline promotion. Seems a little counter-intuitive at first glance, but I was reading about Project Reconciliation in the national newspaper today. Their plan is to put together the financing to allow First Nations to take an ownership position in the Trans Mountain Pipeline, the one that PM Fluffy already bought for the people of Canada.

The brain trust behind Project Reconciliation is hoping that by having First Nations ownership of the pipeline, they can squelch First Nations protest against it.

The classic divide and conquer strategy. Sounds like a con to me.