Editor,
Having read Stewart Muir’s two-part, pro-pipeline “Guest View” and inspected the Resource Works Society website which he directs, I was initially overwhelmed — how to respond to so much propaganda and misinformation disguised as a professional analysis. The Resource Works Society declaration “bringing people together for a respectful, fact-based dialogue on responsible resource development in B.C.” contrasts starkly with the latest footage of Coastal GasLink machinery far exceeding the legal limits of their temporary injunction, chewing up Gitdumden territory.
Mr. Muir’s intemperate and disrespectful comments don’t fit with the alleged company declaration either. His attempt to suggest a similarity between some elected band council/hereditary chiefs “divide and conquer” friction and the division between Church and State in post-medieval, western European Christianity is a clever, if bizarre, propaganda attempt but does him no credit as a trained historian.
But really, what is Mr.Muir going on about? Why is he having a tantrum in print? My opinion is that as an old white man he’s irate that his unexamined privilege has been buffeted. His promotion of a golden future based on optimum profit “responsible resource extraction,” in a context where global warming is never actually mentioned, just isn’t working right now. Apparently it was a shock to discover how many people locally, nationally and internationally have no time left for the siren song on short-term economic gain over the more sophisticated long-term view. To have to deal with the reality of how many people at least as “knowledge-empowered” as executive director Muir can mobilize on short notice to stand with Unis’to’ten camp and to “crowd fund” accordingly, commit to “reconciliation” meaning what it says, understand that “water is life” and that Mr. Muir is incorrect when he implies that fracking is “innocuous.”
Mr. Muir is extremely annoyed because such a surprising number of more mature, more responsible adults are opposed to the concept of corporate greed and rapine as usual while we’re looking down the ski-slope to climate catastrophe. And his resentment, loyally defending the dinosaur industries which still seemed so lucrative, has betrayed him into some factually-challenged, petulant snarkiness .
Sincerely,
Alicen Keamarden
Smithers