Thread by @Adam_Stirling

So on the LNG pipeline story we’ve gone from a scenario where the army was secretly being deployed in tandem with cell phone jamming tech while special forces evicted indigenous nations who were never consulted to... something very, very different. In only two days.

It turned out there was no cell phone jammer, the army was never deployed, every indigenous council along the route was not only consulted but also *consented* by signing agreements, and the protesters are a small number of hereditary chiefs of the same nations who signed.

There’s a valuable lesson to be learned here in terms of narratives. Things seldom fit together as perfectly in real life as they do when various non-profits are sending out fundraising emails. I suspect many people are wishing they’d held back before jumping in with both feet.

Bit by bit, a clearer picture is emerging. We went from the false claim that the nations weren’t consulted at all to realizing that every single one of them along the route had signed agreements and it was hereditary chiefs who were objecting.

There’s still more complexity too.

People will realize within the next few days that it’s debatable how many chiefs there even are in these territories. The number will change depending on who you ask.

How is the government of Canada able to negotiate with a fluctuating number of traditional houses/clans/sub-clans/etc within an undefined territory where there are no mutually agreed borders, nor hierarchy of titles & responsibilities?

That’s a good question. We don’t know yet.

Colonial systems of governance/law developed like they did out of necessity to make it possible to coordinate the vast resources and numbers of people to construct things like pipelines that are 700km in length.

We don’t yet know how to reconcile that w/ traditional systems.

Some people are suggesting this situation is simple. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nobody can even reach consensus on what the power structures *are*, so those power structures can’t give consent as a cohesive group. I have no idea how to address that.