I've spent a lot of time in my life talking, and more recently I've started asking a lot more questions and spending a lot more time listening, and this week was no exception.
A big shout out to our Subject Matter Expert and human being extra ordinaires Russ Johnston and Adam Bailey for their openness to meeting with us and grazing the surface of what I can only describe as tricky, crunchy, layered questions about the pipeline expansion, about communication ethics, and about responsibility.
Here are a few thoughts from our Subject Matter Experts for us all to chew on:
On the pipeline expansion discourse:
"There are so many factors that go into the discussion and without concrete transparency across the board it's hard for communities to make educated decisions." - Russ Johnston (Sungilwanka)
"There is a lack of reporting from various perspectives and various lived experiences on this particular issue. This speaks to a larger problem within journalism in general and the mainstream media in general." - Adam Bailey
"Who is speaking for those members of the community? Is it the colonial band council that has been created by government, or is it those that have been traditional governance structures, that have existed since time immemorial?" - Russ Johnston (Sungilwanka)
"This world is filled with talented journalists who are no longer working in journalism and often, in turn, are working in communications shops, at organizations across the country where they do a really fantastic job coming up with communications in support of their own interest." - Adam Bailey
On responsibility:
"All of us as human beings are gifted with the sustenance from the land to be able to be who we are. The ability to drink a glass of water, to be able to eat food, to feel the sun, to do all of these things-these are gifts that the creator has given to us so that we can live in our language and be the best versions of ourselves. As a result of that we have a responsibility to speak for the water, the lands, all the things that allow us to be us. We all have a relationship to the land in some way shape or form. We are here because of it and we all have a responsibility to speak for it." - Russ Johnston (Sungilwanka)
"Everybody is a part of the environment and everybody therefore has the right to speak about it." - Adam Bailey
On communications ethics:
"How do we self-locate in this? We talk about mainstream media. We know what mainstream media is-we know where the funds for those things come from. So, what is our responsibility as individuals to filter through those things to critically think, to question, to wonder, to seek other forms of narrative." - Russ Johnston (Sungilwanka)
"Too often we see discourse facts and figures injected into the mainstream media that are blindly accepted from press releases from very specific perspectives." - Adam Bailey
"We as individuals need to be critically aware of who we are, what we're ingesting, what we are regurgitating and what our responsibilities are." - Russ Johnston (Sungilwanka)
"Mainstream media continues to repeat the talking points of mainstream industry,
and we're missing valuable voices and perspectives by not putting enough resources into researching the background numbers and building links with the communities that are actually out there trying to tell their story and are being overlooked." - Adam Bailey
These are a few of the many ingestible, considerate, thoughtful bites of our much longer conversation. Thank you so much to Russ and Adam, and to my incredible CoP members who are putting so much work into better understanding both the pipeline expansion issue in general, and into growing as a group and a support system for each other.
With HUGE gratitude - Morningstar