Dates: April 8, 15 & 22, 1-2:30 PM ET
Cost: $60, maximum 50 participants (Zoom Meeting)
*All registrants will be provided with a link to the recording and presentation slides following each session. The recording will be available for 60 days.
Want to do more about disinformation? Get hands-on training in debunking disinformation, confronting lies about climate change and clean energy, and protecting yourself from the powerful interests spreading them. Building on the free hour-long session offered last December, Information Integrity specialist Philip Newell, communications co-chair of the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition, will provide three additional sessions for practitioners.
Session 1: The History of Climate Disinformation, and the Current Canadian Information Environment
Hear the story of industrial disinformation's history, meet the MadMen who taught Big Tobacco and Big Carbon how to deny the harms of air pollution, and find out what they're up to these days. Then, you'll learn to identify the network of disinfluencers still working hard to mislead Canadians and protect polluters from accountability. Finally, take a tour of some of the Canadian institutions fighting back, like the brand new Canadian Coalition on Information Integrity.
Session 2: Digital Debunkings, Inoculations and Fact-Checks, Oh My! Communications Products To Push Back on Bad Info
Go beyond the basics of the “fact sandwich” approach to practice scaling the fact-myth-fallacy format for fact checking, as well as exploring when “strategic silence” may be the more appropriate tactic, or when a more high-level inoculation a more appropriate prescription to a given information disorder. You’ll get hands-on practice in debunking disinformation that you face, and how you can make the most of disinformation’s dangers to promote your preferred policy solutions to climate change. Finally, you'll be warned about what not to fall for, an inoculation against the sales pitches and marketing-driven strategies consultants are all too often successful at selling to ENGOs, despite their repeated failures.
Session 3: Protecting Yourself And Your ENGO From Backlash: What You Can Do When They Come For You
When confronting disinformation, success is often punished by those who spread lies for profit. What can you do to protect yourself and your organization ahead of time? What can you do when your opposition attacks? What steps can you take afterwards to stay safe? Hear about past examples, talk through current challenges, and prepare for forthcoming attacks in this final session.
Our Presenter
Philip Newell is the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition's communications co-chair, and has been monitoring, debunking, and dismantling climate disinformation networks since 2011. With a background in global environmental policy and over a decade in climate communications, Philip has written over 2 million words on climate disinformation.
The DEFNP workshop series will offer tailored programming designed to match ENGOs on their decolonial (un)learning journeys. In Spring 2026 members of the ENGO sector will be able to choose one of three workshop tracks: Introduction to Decolonization in the ENGO Sector, Advanced Decolonial Theory and Application or For Indigenous Ears Only - A Space for Reflection and Action. Each series consists of four three-hour sessions.
Collectively, Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships fosters:
Awareness of settler colonialism and the ways it potentially harnesses civil society;
Understanding about how Canadian law such as the Indian Act and the Income Tax Act has suppressed Indigenous governance systems;
Awareness that Indigenous peoples have unique inherent political and legal systems, with which ENGOs may want to form partnerships;
A better understanding about how to navigate partnerships with Indigenous communities that promote decolonial environmentalism;
A stronger sense about how to identify and explain individual and organization social locations (i.e. positionalities) as part of ethical partnership development;
Promoting the resurgence of Indigenous self-determination in the Canadian ENGO sector.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
70 participants max.
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Settler Colonialism 101
Introduce ENGO representatives to the fact that colonization is a structure and not an event. Identifies key ways that colonialism moves through individuals and organizations.
Session 2: Positionality
ENGO representatives learn how to articulate their social location within a settler colonial state, and in relation to potential Indigenous partners.
Session 3: Inherent Indigenous Governance 101
Introduce the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues. Examples provided.
Session 4: Building Better Relations
ENGO representatives will road test ways they can implement previous workshop key points to re-imagine partnerships with Indigenous nations.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Diagnosing Settler Colonialism in the Enviro Sector
Participants will be asked to share ways in which they have diagnosed and traced power in social justice movements and/or in the ENGO sector. This workshop will make space for discomfort as part of promoting decolonization.
Session 2: Inherent Indigenous Governance
A mix of advanced and introductory theory, this workshop delves into legal and political pluralism, naming the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues.
Session 3: The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
ENGO participants are introduced to theories and examples describing the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the “Shadow State.” Purpose is to show how settler colonialism structures civil society.
Session 4: Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships
This workshop delves deep into how ENGOs can partner with Indigenous nations beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex while promoting deference to inherent Indigenous political leaders.
Cost: Free
The Indigenous only space will be collaborative in nature but critical in approach. This track is a space for Indigenous folks within the ENGO sector to come together to discuss their experiences and work, with an eye to taking a position on what the sector might need to do in order to promote decolonization. Participants will use the first session to define our goals for the remaining three meetings. Therefore, session topics named here are proposals only.
Session 1: Naming the Cannibal: Settler Colonialism in the ENGO Sector
Session 2: Proposed topic: Reflections on working in the ENGO Sector
Session 3: Proposed topic: Centering Indigenous Thought in the ENGO Sector
Session 4: Proposed topic: Visioning a Decolonial Environmental Sector
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