Constructing the cowboy and Indian alliance metanarrative (2019)

Over the past decade, scholars of advocacy, public relations and public interest communication have turned their attention to the strategic communication capabilities of social issues activists and advocates. Rhetorically developed cultural or heritage narratives help individuals make sense of their organization and create an audience for subsequent appeals. They can provide a larger metanarrative—a global or totalizing cultural story—that helps both the activist collective and its audience make better sense of the world. To better understand this phenomena of micro-mobilizations within environmental activism, the study has turned to a well-known political saga: The Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. In 2010, oil and gas executives earmarked lands across the Great Plains for one of North America’s largest petroleum pipelines. In response, activists from an organization called Bold Nebraska challenged this encroaching petroleum infrastructure. With an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, indigenous groups, ranchers, and farmers they assembled a pipeline opposition dubbed the “Cowboy and Indian Alliance.”