Reimagining “public” outreach on environmental issues: interrogating the hegemonic foundations of public engagement/participation/relations

Public outreach is now ubiquitous in environmental decision-making processes. However, institutionally-led engagement often retains power in the hands of the elite to decide the agenda and process. This creates a disconnect between the goal of strengthening democratic processes and actual outcomes, perpetuating inequalities between colonizing elites and Indigenous peoples in addressing environmental crises. We argue that public outreach for better environmental outcomes has been ineffective because it embodies a democratic imaginary bound up in hegemonic western ontology, epistemology, and temporality. We present a different starting point for public participation by considering questions raised by Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies and temporalities in the quest for truly equitable outcomes. The article lays the foundation for reframing environmental communication as a process where meaning is co-created by diverse participants with different ways of knowing and being, different sources of knowledge, and different understandings of time.