Canadian groups pose as 'Indigenous champions' for support

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Canadian oil and gas companies have been heavily investing in campaigns to appear as defenders of Indigenous interests in response to evident protests against a controversial natural gas pipeline on First Nation land, a recent probe by Eco-Bot.Net and The Guardian has found.

One of the 21 advertisements that targeted British Columbia in 2021 read, “I’m being a steward to my land and I’m being a defender,” quoting a Coastal GasLink worker from Nak’azdli Whut’en’ First Nation.

While the ad that shows Indigenous support for the pipeline was shown on social media platforms of people in the Canadian province, 30 Wet’suwet’en Nation members and supporters were being violently forced out of their lands along the pipeline. Police broke into two cabins while holding an ax, a chainsaw, and a dog unit, with snipers aiming at the door.

“The thing I remember most is the dogs … barking and whining, pulling their leashes trying to get at you,” says Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, a member of the Gidimt’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en, who was arrested.

Wickham remembers a recording the police put out over their radios. He said, “They were playing a horror film audio. You know, where the little child sings, ‘I know where you are, I’m gonna get you, I’m coming for you.’”

Over the past two years, over C$122,000 (US$95,249) were spent by fossil fuel groups on over 400 Facebook and Instagram ads about different oil and gas projects all over the country. Last November, following actions and solidarity protests across Canada taken by Indigenous people on defending their land, the ads, which were shown some 21m times in total, went viral. 

Coastal GasLink is one of three multibillion-dollar pipelines facing opposition by Indigenous and environmental groups in Canada.  

Meta's role exposed

Eco-Bot.Net has conducted an analysis of the Facebook ads that were showing from January 2020 to the present and found that "Indigenous-washing" ads from a company behind the pipeline, TC Energy, have been flowing steadily.

The protests started when a hereditary chief was arrested after he tried to block the construction of the pipeline. Following the incident, TC Energy and some affiliated groups started to launch ads, for which they paid C$14,000 to Meta.

Eco-Bot.Net was launched and founded by disinformation researcher Bill Posters and Massive Attack’s Rob Del Naja, during the COP26 climate talks, with the aim to scrape databases of social media advertising paid for by the world’s most polluting companies.

The probe used Meta’s Ad Library, by searching keywords such as “Indigenous”, “First Nations”, “pipeline” or “oil”, to find Indigenous-washing actors in Canada. Afterward, disinformation researchers analyzed the ads run by the accounts of these groups in the last two years.

The analysis found that the ads use terms such as land “defender”, "reconciliation", and “eco-colonialism” to portray the oil and gas companies as supporting Indigenous groups.

“The very fact that they’re pushing [these ads] is like a drowning man getting caught in a swift river. A piece of straw goes by and he wants to grab it, hoping it’ll save him,” said the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Na’Moks, who opposes the pipeline.

Earlier this month, land defenders filed a submission to the UN Human Rights Council that details police raids in recent years, which have resulted in the arrest of 74 people.

In one of those raids, The Guardian exposed officers who were getting ready to use lethal force against land defenders. 

However, social media platforms' ads narrate the story differently, such as in the following ads:

“Meet Shirley & Alma, Wet’suwet’en members who see the opportunities Coastal GasLink is bringing to their community.” 

Another ad claims that land defenders are “disrupting potentially game-changing opportunities for Indigenous communities."

Facebook adverts claim broad support from the Wet’suwet’en by promoting the company’s agreements with the bands only, while the pipeline cuts across unceded Wet’suwet’en land under the jurisdiction of hereditary chiefs, according to a 1997 supreme court ruling.

The ads obviously portray oil and gas development as vital for the economic development and poverty alleviation of the Indigenous. 

“A strong oil and gas sector is key for Indigenous education and prosperity.”

In the meantime, the leaders in such communities consider building the pipeline as a threat to their land. 

“We as hereditary chiefs have to think thousands of years in the future,” said Chief Na'Moks, adding, “We protect our lands. That’s what we’re doing right now, peacefully. Yet they come at us with guns.”