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Avatar ad targets Alberta’s oil sands

Oil producers take issue with comparison to film

Alberta oil producers are taking issue with an ad published in Variety magazine that compares the province’s oil sands development to environmental havoc wreaked by humans in Avatar, James Cameron’s Oscar-nominated film. With the headline “Canada’s Avatar Sands,” the full-page ad, which appeared in trade publication Variety, is signed by 50 non-governmental organizations, environmental groups and some First Nations groups, and shows an oil sands mine. The ad came out just as Hollywood prepares for the Academy Awards on Sunday, the Edmonton Journal notes. Unlike in the movie, where people plunder planet Pandora to obtain mineral wealth, devastating local communities, “Aboriginal people are the oil and gas industry’s neighbours, employees, contractors and stakeholders,” Janet Annesley, vice-president of communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said in a news release. But Eriel Deranger of the Rainforest Action Network, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, said, “The Canadian Petroleum Producers probably feel like they are benefiting First Nations people because they are offering them jobs—but what good is a job if it involves killing your own community?”

Edmonton Journal

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