Indigenous-led environmentalism: news framing of pipeline protest in the Harper and Trudeau eras

Burt, B. Quinn (2018) Indigenous-led environmentalism: news framing of pipeline protest in the Harper and Trudeau eras. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

In recent years, news media have widely covered pipeline activism within Canada. Social movements and news media have an intertwined relationship, in which activists benefit from increased public awareness on specific issues while news sources gain access to captivating content. Even though a wide range of peoples and organizations pursue protest efforts against resource extraction projects, academic work has generally distinguished between Indigenous and environmental movements. Similarly, news sources can misrepresent protest issues and make problematic generalizations by grouping individuals into broad categories or by creating divisions between peoples and movements. This study benefits from anti-colonial, framing, and political opportunity theories to understand how news sources cover Indigenous-led pipeline protest over time. I compare coverage across three news types (settler-mainstream, settler-independent, and Indigenous) during the Harper and Trudeau political eras. This study finds clear differences in focus and knowledge production between news types and explains how critical events, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, changed news understandings of resource extraction debates over time. Furthermore, it argues that news work on pipeline protest can benefit from providing more context, rather than generalizing specific issues as if they apply to all Indigenous peoples and communities.

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