"If built, the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, first proposed in 2012 and approved in October 2018, would run approximately 670 kilometres across northern B.C., bringing fracked gas from Dawson Creek to the Port of Kitimat."
Ground zero in the global battle against climate chaos this week is in Wet’suwet’en territory, northern B.C. As pipeline companies try to push their way onto unceded Indigenous territories, the conflict could become the next Standing Rock-style showdown over Indigenous rights and fossil fuel infrastructure.
Since 2010, the Unist’ot’en clan, members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, have been reoccupying and re-establishing themselves on their ancestral lands in opposition to as many as six proposed pipeline projects.
The Unist’ot’en camp now houses a pit-house (a traditional dug-out dwelling), a permaculture garden, a solar-powered mini-grid and a healing lodge, where community members receive holistic and land-based treatment for substance abuse. The camp also defends the sacred headwaters of the Talbits Kwah (Gosnell Creek) and Wedzin Kwah (Morice River), spawning grounds for salmon.
If built, the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, first proposed in 2012 and approved in October 2018, would run approximately 670 kilometres across northern B.C., bringing fracked gas from Dawson Creek to the Port of Kitimat. It is part of a recently approved $40-billion fracked-gas project, called LNG Canada, the single-largest private-sector investment in Canadian history.
But the Unist’ot’en territory is in the pipeline’s path. Community members are committed to resisting pipelines through their unceded lands.
They have turned back TransCanada’s contractors by reviving their own traditions of “free, prior and informed consent,” where the community has established a protocol controlling who accesses their territory. As a result, no pipeline work has yet been done on their lands.
TransCanada, the company behind the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, recently served an injunction and civil lawsuit to the members of the Unist’ot’en camp. The injunction will be heard in Prince Rupert. If granted, it will allow the RCMP to arrest and remove everyone from the camp.
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If you haven’t been there you can’t appreciate how horrific removing and arresting people from the healing centre would be. The healing lodge in question is a three story building(!) with rooms for counselling and a dining hall, on poured concrete foundations! In addition to the pit house there is a dormitory that sleeps like a dozen of more people, and multiple cabins people live in FULL TIME. People, especially youth are accessing support and counselling here.
It’s not….. These aren’t a rag tag collection of tents? Its not a “camp” … this is like someone bulldozing your neighbourbood community centre or a detox facility and some adjacent homes without consent, sale or surrender of the occupants.
This is very actively in use land we are talking about.
Also… free prior and informed consent isn’t some “tradition” its article 10 of UNDRIP! It’s an internationally recognized RIGHT for all indigenous people.
If you care and are able, donate. It’s extra helpful if you’re American or Europe based, because the Canadian dollar is quite weak at the moment your money will go quite a bit further. I am a monthly donor and urge you to become one too if you can, anything helps. Legal fees are mounting.
https://unistoten.camp/support-us/donate/
Canada loves to fuck over indigenous people on their own land, it’s honestly horrifying
