On January 7, the militarized Royal Canadian Mounted Police forcefully invaded a checkpoint formed by the Unis’tot’en clan on Wet’suwet’en traditional territory. This territory is unceded Indigenous land on the West Coast of Turtle Island. The Gidumt’en checkpoint is the entrance to the Unist’ot’en Camp that functions to prevent non-consensual entrance, such as the construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline on the territory. The 670 kilometre-long pipeline would go from the Dawson Creek area in northeastern B.C. to Kitimat, B.C. There, natural gas would be converted to liquid form for transport to Asia. According to the TransCanada website, this would aid the replacement of current coal-fired electricity.
Coastal GasLink, a TransCanada subsidiary, is building the 40-billion-dollar pipeline project. In November 2018, Coastal GasLink applied for an injunction to remove land protectors at the checkpoint camp that was set up to block the passage of pipeline workers getting ready to clear the land.
On December 14, a court injunction was granted to Coastal GasLink that ordered clearance of the checkpoint. The camp was created to block the bridge leading to the pipeline site, which allowed the company access to a road that went through Wet’suwet’en territory. The RCMP dismantled checkpoints along the route to the site and forcefully removed Indigenous land protectors from unceded territory, arresting 14 who were taken to Houston, B.C.
Coastal GasLink says they have a legal agreement with 20 First Nations groups including the Wet’suwet’en, but the hereditary chiefs of the five Wet’suwet’en clans are the only authorities that can consent to the pipeline, and they have not consented to development. The agreement that Coastal GasLink cites is with the elected leaders of the band councils, groups originally created by the federal government upon the establishment of reserves. The Wet’suwet’en land protectors are leading national protests against the pipeline.
Freda Huson, hereditary spokesperson for the Unist’ot’en, in an interview with The Canadian Press explained, “The land is not separate from us. The land sustains us. And if we don’t take care of her, she won’t be able to sustain us, and we as a generation of people will die,” emphasizing the connection that her community has with the land. The conflict and negotiations between Coastal Gaslink and the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s hereditary leaders is ongoing. Huson’s sentiment continues to be supported in Toronto, the rest of Canada, and internationally, through protests against the RCMP’s arrest of 14 protestors and by showing Canadian solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.
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