When the canadian (I refuse to capitalize that word out of protest) government began using the word “reconciliation” I was one of the naive canadians who felt optimistic. I fell under the impression that things around here might actually change.
But then the government hired planeloads of RCMP to congregate in the Bulkley Valley and storm the Unist’ot’en Healing Center with sniper rifles and attack dogs. This was in February 2020. I couldn’t focus on anything else at the time, watching footage of militarized officers descend on matriarchs dressed in regalia singing and holding ceremony on their lands.
In autumn of this year, land defenders built a camp directly in the right of way where Coastal GasLink plans to lay a fracked gas pipeline that some say is unapproved. A tiny house was donated to the camp, a kitchen was built, along with outhouses and firewood storage, and supporters slept in wall tents with wood stoves.
Their media team put out content daily, gaining momentum and hoping the government would open up a conversation in the name of “reconciliation.”
Instead, militarized RCMP were again brought onto unceded Wet’suwet’en territory to remove Wet’suwet’en peoples by force from their own lands.
In November I watched these raids happen in person. With a truckload of supplies I was trying to deliver to Coyote Camp, I got denied by RCMP, who had set up a blockade on the Morice River Forest Service Road. They claimed heavy road work was going on and I wouldn’t be able to drive to Coyote. Turned around, I parked at “Km 27,” where a tiny cabin sits, and watched huge industry trucks pass by and the cops remove the barricade so they could easily drive through.
So much for the road being closed.
The next morning, around 7 am, a dark parade of police vehicles rolled past the cabin. I counted more than 30 RCMP trucks and paddy wagons along with the usual enormous semis hauling loads of pipe, fuel, and “potable water” deep into the territory.
Hours later, pieces of Coyote Camp started passing my cabin on the backs of tow trucks, followed by paddy wagons full of land defenders yelling war cries out the windows. Over the following days, dump trucks full of what was Coyote Camp (land defenders’ personal items included) dumped everything in a snowy, muddy heap just off the main forest service road.
Some of those people were shuffled between jails for five days and were then released without their jackets or shoes. All of them have been banned from returning to Wet’suwet’en territory until after their court date because they’ve been told they “violated an injunction” that was never read to them during the arrests.
Rather than engage in conversation around this situation, our government has, unfortunately, remained silent.
I’ve given up hope that this government will ever become something I am proud of, and instead am now giving my ears and energy to the people taking matters into their own hands.