Members of the RCMP arrested seven individuals outside the Unist’ot’en healing centre Monday during the fifth day of enforcing a court-ordered injunction against members of the Wet’suwe’ten and their supporters blocking access to work sites for the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

The arrests were made at the 66-kilometre mark of the Morice River Forest Service Road at a bridge crossing a river along the 670-kilometre pipeline’s route.

Around 80 individuals have been arrested at Wet’suwet’en camps along the road and at solidarity actions taking place across the country.

Coastal GasLink was granted an injunction originally in December 2018 and the court order was renewed December 2019. Although the pipeline received approval from elected band members, hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en nation, representing five clans, have rejected the pipeline and asserted sovereignty over the nation’s traditional territory.

An RMCP helicopter takes off after Unist’ot’en spokesperson and founder, Freda Huson, refused to negotiate surrender with the police on Feb. 8. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A woman is arrested as police enforce the injunction at the Unist’ot’en camp on Monday Feb. 10. Coastal GasLink, a subsidiary of TC Energy (formerly TransCanada Corp.), is building a 670-kilometre pipeline to supply fracked gas to the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat. The $6.6 billion pipeline, which will start near Dawson Creek, will have a lifespan of 30 years, according to TC Energy. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Karla Tait, director of clinical services at the Unist’ot’en healing centre, makes an offering to the river on Feb. 8. Part of the pipeline travels through the traditional territory of the Wet’suwet’en nation in B.C.’s interior. Hereditary chiefs from all five of the nation’s clans are opposed to the project and, since 2009, they and their supporters have re-occupied land along the pipeline route. In a 1997 court ruling known as the Delgamuukw decision Supreme Court justices declared that nations like the Wet’suwet’en, who had never signed treaties, still hold unceded rights to their lands. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

An RCMP officer stands near the Morice River bridge, the only entrance point to the Unist’ot’en healing centre and sole access road to Coastal GasLink work sites. A barrier built across the bridge bears a sign saying “Reconciliation,” which was disassembled by workers in yellow vests. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A Nlaka’pamux supporter brushes snow off of a red dress, as she waits for police on Feb. 8. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Work camps for large resource projects like the Coastal GasLink pipeline bring an influx of transient workers. The final report for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women described the connection between transient workers and higher rates of sexual harassment and assault, women entering the sex trade and sexually transmitted diseases. More than 1,700 Indigenous women and girls have gone missing in Canada, according to the national inquiry. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Karla Tait, psychologist and Unist’ot’en house member, is arrested Feb. 10. Tait, who is the Unist’ot’en healing centre’s clinical services director, says the purpose of the centre is under threat from pipeline construction activities. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A supporter waits for police to enforce Coastal GasLink’s injunction on Saturday Feb. 8. The RCMP moved in to make arrests on Feb. 6 even though Coastal GasLink does not have authorization to proceed with construction in the area where the hereditary chiefs, other Wet’suwet’en members and their supporters were staying. The B.C. environment ministry confirmed on January 29 that one condition of Coastal GasLink’s environmental assessment certificate, issued in 2014, has not been met. Photo Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Camp supporters watch a video of the early morning arrests at supporter camp located at the 39-kilometre mark on the Morice River Service Forest Road on Feb 6. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A supporter waits for police to arrive at the Unist’ot’en camp on Feb. 6. At the centre of the dispute over pipeline construction is a $2 million Unist’ot’en healing centre, which has received $400,000 from B.C.’s First Nations Health Authority to run land-based trauma and addictions treatment programs. The healing centre is several hundred metres from a former, dead-end logging road along which hundreds of workers will travel to a nearby work camp. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Freda Huson, left, looks at pictures of the early morning arrests at a supporter camp at the 39-kilometre mark of the forest road, with her sister Brenda Michell, centre, and niece, Karla Tait on Feb. 6. As the RCMP removed journalists and photographers from the scene, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association issued a press release saying it had received disturbing information about reporters being “detained, threatened with arrest, and given instructions from RCMP about what they can photograph, including instructions not to photograph tactical gear.” Freedom of the press, the civil liberties association noted, is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Freda Huson puts charcoal on a supporter’s face in preparation for ceremony. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Coastal GasLink workers take down an installation of red dresses, hung to signify Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. “We put a call out for red dresses to be sent here, inviting anyone to send red dresses in honour of any missing and murdered Indigenous women in their lives and to help us raise awareness and visibility as Coastal GasLink workers were traveling into our territory and doing pre-construction work,” Karla Tait, who is a Unist’ot’en house member, told The Narwhal. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Unist’ot’en camp founder and spokesperson, Freda Huson, said the Unist’ot’en camp is located 66 kilometres from the infamous Highway of Tears, notorious for its connection to the disappearance and murder of Indigenous women in B.C., many of whom she knew personally.“Some of them are family, extended family, cousins and children. The latest one was our cousin’s daughter-in-law, left a one-year-old baby behind,” Huson told The Narwhal. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A legal observer watches heavy equipment approaches the Unist’ot’en camp. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

An RCMP helicopter circles a ceremonial fire while police enforce Coastal GasLink’s injunction. The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs called the raids “senseless violence.” UBCIC president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip said, “we are in absolute outrage and a state of painful anguish as we witness the Wet’suwet’en people having their title and rights brutally trampled on and their right to self-determination denied.” Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Pocholo Alen Conception, a Wet’suwet’en supporter from the Tagalog in the Philippines, is arrested Feb. 10. According to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, restricting the movement of Wet’suwet’en people through their own territories is a grave violation of Wet’suwet’en law and jurisdiction, and constitutionally protected Wet’suwet’en rights and title. “We remain concerned about the overbroad scope and discretionary power of the RCMP’s activities in Wet’suwet’en territories, with the impact of criminalizing and impeding the movement of Wet’suwet’en people, invited guests of the Wet’suwet’en, and media,” the association said in a news release. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Supporters walk past red dresses as they wait for police on Feb. 8. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Brenda Michell and her daughter Karla Tait sing and drum outside the Unist’ot’en healing centre Feb 6. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Supporters stand along a sign built across the Morice River bridge Feb. 8. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

— With files from Sarah Cox and Carol Linnitt.

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Coastal GasLink cannot legally proceed with pipeline construction activities in the area around the Unist’ot’en healing centre, where Wet’suwet’en nation matriarchs and their supporters were arrested on Monday for defying a court-ordered injunction, the B.C. environment ministry has confirmed.

But the company is permitted to use a bridge leading to the healing centre to bring in heavy equipment for clearing the pipeline right-of-way further west along the Morice River Forest Service Road, the ministry said in an email in response to questions from The Narwhal. 

The timber frame Morice River bridge, which provides the only road access to the $2 million healing centre, has been both a physical barrier to pipeline construction and a symbol of resistance against the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink project, which will supply fracked gas from B.C.’s northeast to LNG Canada’s new export terminal in Kitimat.

For the past several months, red dresses — symbols of the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls — have dangled in the air from lines of suspended wire across the bridge. 

Workers in safety vests removed the red dresses Monday morning, along with a tall wooden barricade and a white sign that said “Reconciliation,” as they moved in to arrest matriarchs and others, who drummed and sang in ceremony near the Morice River (Wedzin Kwah).

Members of the RCMP enforce Coastal GasLink’s injunction. Workers can be seen cutting down a makeshift gate positioned along the Morice River Forest Service Road. The workers also removed red dresses, symbols of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Girls from the bridge and Unist’ot’en camp. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The arrests of seven people at the healing centre brought to about 80 the number of arrests of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, nation members and their supporters, who have blocked access to the Vancouver Port, bridges and railway lines in Ontario and B.C. as part of escalating actions across the country.

In an email in response to questions from The Narwhal, the environment ministry said Coastal GasLink is also permitted to use the Morice River bridge to bring in equipment and workers for development of a 400-person workforce accommodation camp, to transport four-season accommodation trailers destined for the same area and for access to build an “all-weather travel lane.”

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have requested a judicial review of a decision by the B.C. environmental assessment office to grant an extension of the environmental certificate for the 670-kilometre pipeline, citing more than 50 instances of non-compliance with permits and in light of the findings of Canada’s National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

A final report released from the national inquiry committee last June found “work camps, or ‘man camps,’ associated with the resource extraction industry are implicated in higher rates of violence against Indigenous women at the camps and in the neighbouring communities.”

The healing centre sits in an area known as the Morice River technical boundary area, the subject of a disputed report filed last November by Coastal GasLink as a condition of its provincial environmental assessment certificate.

Coastal GasLink pipeline still lacks key environmental authorization in contested Wet’suwet’en territory

The report, which details the pipeline’s potential effects on the technical boundary area, fails to include any mention of the healing centre, which received a $400,000 grant from the B.C. First Nations Health Authority to run land-based trauma and addictions treatment programs.

The centre relies on the surrounding wilderness area and incorporates hunting, trapping and other traditional practices into healing programs that help reconnect Indigenous people to the land — programs that psychologist Karla Tait, the centre’s clinical services director, says will not be able to provide their intended benefits if pipeline construction activities proceed and the road leading to the centre is frequented by Coastal GasLink workers.

Freda Huson stands in ceremony while police enforce Coastal GasLink’s injunction. An RCMP helicopter can be seen overhead. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Following a Dec. 31 injunction extension granted by B.C. Supreme Court, which ordered that no one could come within 10 metres of any person or vehicle related to the Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory, the RCMP restricted everyone, including journalists, from coming within 27 kilometres of Gidimt’en camp — one of three camps set up along the Morice River Forest Service Road by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their supporters.

The RCMP force has not released a definition of its exclusion zone on Wet’suwet’en territory. Nor has it released a map outlining the area included in the zone.

Gavin Smith, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, pointed to legal questions surrounding the exclusion zone.

“The injunction order itself doesn’t create an exclusion zone,” Smith told The Narwhal. “That’s the RCMP using their enforcement powers to create that exclusion zone.”

On Monday, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs amended a complaint they had filed to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, asking the commission to initiate a public-interest investigation into the RCMP’s expanded exclusion zone on the Morice West Forest Service Road, which runs past the healing centre.

B.C. failed to consider links between ‘man camps,’ violence against Indigenous women, Wet’suwet’en argue

The Morice West Forest Service Road begins at kilometre 44 of the forest service road, where the Gidimt’en camp was cleared by RCMP officers on Feb. 7 and four people were arrested. Two people refused to leave the Gidimt’en camp and remain in a cabin there, according to a report from The Tyee.

“There is absolutely no legal precedent nor established legal authority for such an overbroad policing power associated with the enforcement of an injunction,” Harsha Walia, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said in a statement. 

“The RCMP have given themselves the power to clear more than 60 kilometres of roadway [belonging to] all people: a power which is not granted to them under the enforcement order. This a clear exercise of overbroad policing power, with the impact of unlawfully criminalizing Indigenous people on their lands and perpetuating the colonial doctrine of terra nullius.”

Terra nullius is the doctrine that land was not occupied when colonial powers arrived, thus justifying occupation.

A police officer carries a drum after RCMP arrested Wet’suwet’en matriarchs. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The two organizations told the RCMP commission that there is absolutely “no legal precedent nor established legal authority for such an overbroad policing power associated with the enforcement of an injunction.” 

“The implementation and enforcement of the RCMP exclusion zone in Wet’suwet’en territory is unlawful.”

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said the police exclusion zone denies Wet’suwet’en people access to their own territories and “smacks of outright racism and the colonial-era pass system sanctioned by the so-called rule of law.” 

Smith said police action has to be for a recognized legal purpose and has to be compliant with the Canadian constitution and other legal responsibilities. 

“As we’ve seen with the B.C. civil liberties complaint, it’s an open question as to whether that exclusion zone is overreaching,” he said.

“The Supreme Court has been quite clear that if you don’t actually have a statute that is saying ‘here’s the law you’re enforcing, the criminal code,’ or you don’t actually have a court order that’s explicitly saying that you can create an exclusion zone — which the Coastal GasLink injunction does not — then there’s only really a narrow pocket of the law that police can rely on to interfere with individual liberty, because they have to do so in a way that’s for a lawful purpose and doesn’t unduly interfere with individuals’ rights.” 

B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office must accept the Morice River technical boundary report before Coastal GasLink receives authorization to proceed with construction in that area. 

Last week, the environment ministry told The Narwhal the environmental assessment office is in the process of reviewing the report, a process that includes consultation with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs. 

If the office deems the report unsatisfactory, Coastal GasLink must go back to the drawing board and re-submit the report, a process that could take up to several months.

Even though the company cannot proceed with construction activities inside the technical boundary area, including around the Unist’ot’en healing centre, it is “currently able to access and proceed with non-construction activities” within the technical boundary area and to proceed with construction activities in all areas outside the boundary, the ministry said. 

Smith said the environmental assessment office has a suite of tools at its disposal if Coastal GasLink breaches the conditions of its environmental assessment certificate and commences construction activities in the Morice River technical boundary area. Those tools include the ability to issue a stop work order, he said.

“I would hope and expect that there’s a lot of clear monitoring that’s going on about what’s being done with that equipment and where it’s going,” Smith said.

“Obviously everyone has an interest in ensuring CGL is not stepping beyond the bounds of its environmental assessment approval.”

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The RCMP is standing down on threats to arrest journalists who are reporting on a police raid in Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest B.C. that began in the early predawn hours on Thursday. The raid has continued into Friday afternoon as police advance down a forest road occupied by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, Wet’suwet’en members and their supporters in opposition to the Coastal Gaslink pipeline. 

Journalists reported being threatened for photographing police in tactical gear, and some were physically removed from the site. But on Thursday evening the RCMP wavered in the face of outrage to infringement on press freedom in an email to Ethan Cox, editor of Ricochet Media. Photojournalist Amber Bracken is also on scene for The Narwhal at Unist’ot’en camp where police are expected to make arrests late Friday or Saturday.

Earlier that afternoon, Cox tweeted an email he received from an RCMP spokesperson that stated Ricochet journalist Jerome Turner was “subject to all the same restrictions as anyone else within the zone,” and would have to choose to leave or “be subject to arrest.”

By Thursday evening, the same spokesperson, Chris Manseau, amended the RCMP’s position and said journalists “can rest assured that the RCMP will make every reasonable effort to allow media personnel to get as close as possible to the enforcement area, while ensuring no interference with police operations.”

JUST IN: RCMP have reversed course after a huge outcry over press freedom. Will not detain or remove embedded journalists. “For media personnel ahead of the advancing police line, they can continue to observe and report, but without interfering with police enforcement.” #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/Yy6M9I3TQG

— Ricochet (@ricochet_en) February 7, 2020

The pivot came after Cox referenced last year’s court decision in the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal, which overturned civil charges against journalist Justin Brake for disobeying an injunction as he reported on the Indigenous-led occupation of the Muskrat Falls hydro dam in October 2016. The court found the terms of the injunction did not apply to a journalist who is doing their job reporting events, not participating in the occupation.

The court referenced the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and concluded that the media plays a key role in reconciliation. Judge Derek Green agreed with APTN (which acted as an intervener) that Indigenous Peoples have been “historically under-represented” in Canadian media.

“That makes freedom of the press to cover stories involving Indigenous land issues even more vital,” said Green.

The RCMP’s about-face is a win for journalists. But, Brake told The Narwhal, it’s a bitter win in light of the ongoing raid.

“Indigenous people are still being removed by police from their unceded lands.”

“We may be already seeing some tangible results on the ground in terms of justice for reporters [and] for everyone in this country who has the constitutionally protected right to a free press,” he said about the RCMP changing its mind and allowing reporters to do their jobs.

“At the same time, I don’t want to celebrate what’s happening. Indigenous people are still being removed by police from their unceded lands.”

The Wet’suwet’en’s hereditary leaders are opposed to the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline, which is under construction to move fracked gas from B.C.’s northeast to LNG Canada’s export facility in Kitimat, B.C. The RCMP are dismantling Wet’suwet’en camps as they enforce an injunction first granted to Coastal Gaslink in December 2018 and then extended in December 2019.

RCMP told press on Wednesday they would use minimal force. The next morning, before light, armed officers arrived and made 6 arrests at kilometre 39 of Morice West Forest Service Road. 

By publication time on Friday afternoon, the Gidimt’en Checkpoint at kilometre 44 tweeted they had been surrounded by RCMP and that two people had been arrested.

Location of camps in Wet’suwet’en territory. The RCMP exclusion zone extends from the RCMP checkpoint west, past the Unist’ot’en camp. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

‘When we don’t show up, bad things happen’

Brake pointed to a long history of journalists not showing up to cover Indigenous land disputes.

“When we don’t show up, bad things can happen,” he said. He referenced the Ipperwash crisis that took place in 1995 when people from Stoney Point First Nation occupied a provincial park to assert their claim to land expropriated during the Second World War. Ontario Provincial Police moved in on the occupation and killed an unarmed man named Dudley George.

“The [Ipperwash] Inquiry found that had a journalist been present, things may have gone differently or … we may have had documentation of what happened,” he said.

Karyn Pugliese, president of The Canadian Association of Journalists and former news director at APTN, also pointed to Ipperwash as an example of the worst outcome when journalists aren’t present. She referenced a report written by Ryerson University professor John Miller. 

” … if the media would have been present that night, lives might have been saved.”

Miller looked at news coverage and saw there was little interest in the conflict from national media until the shooting happened. The night George was shot, there were no journalists present. 

Before George died, there had been 68 news stories about Ipperwash. In the month after he died, Miller counted 275 news stories.

“Back in the day, at Oka in 1990, media were front and centre. The Globe and Mail was behind the lines embedded with the protesters,” Pugliese said. 

“When Ipperwash happened, John Miller looked at the media coverage, he was convinced if the media would have been present that night, lives might have been saved,” she added.

A Gitxan supporter works to start a truck at a Wet’suwet’en re-occupation camp on Jan. 13, 2020. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The book Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers (and other studies) found that the media has participated in discrimination and disenfranchisement of Indigenous Peoples by perpetuating stereotypes and neglecting to report on key issues.

Similarly, Brake said people have to consider the RCMP’s historical role in dispossessing Indigenous Peoples from their lands.

“It’s an ongoing part of the history, whether individual RCMP officers or commanders or governments see it that way or not,” he said.

He said he believes officers face a lot of pressure to enforce injunctions, but added “I don’t think all of the officers involved feel that they’re doing the right thing.”

As the raid descended upon Gidimt’en Friday morning, Brake predicts national movements of solidarity. Friday morning, supporters of Wet’suwet’en were marching through the streets in Ottawa, Indigenous youth occupied the steps of the B.C. legislature and Idle No More announced a solidarity event in Vancouver.

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In the wake of troubling reports of police threatening to arrest journalists for photographing police in tactical gear on Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest B.C. on Thursday, the president of The Canadian Association of Journalists told The Narwhal the RCMP has no right to step in between journalists and the public’s right to know.

“Reporters need to be there to witness police actions, especially against Indigenous people,” Karyn Pugliese said. 

The Wet’suwet’en’s hereditary leaders are opposed to the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline, which is under construction to move fracked gas from B.C.’s northeast to LNG Canada’s export facility in Kitimat, B.C.

“The RCMP need to realize we are not a police state. They don’t get to control editorial,” Pugliese said.

“The public has a right to know what’s going on so they can make good democratic choices. There’s no role for police to decide they’re going to step in between journalists and the public’s right to know.”

Pugliese said she confirmed reports that journalists were told by the RCMP not to photograph or film officers in tactical gear carrying assault rifles or arrests — or they’d be at risk of arrest themselves. Police also detained journalists in a van and removed them from the site. 

I just got out from #Gidimten clan territory on #Wetsuweten yintah, where RCMP conducted an aggressive, pre-dawn raid. Six land defenders arrested: pic.twitter.com/JkKempHUGM

— Jesse Winter (@jwints) February 6, 2020

Amber Bracken, a freelance photographer for The Narwhal, now finds herself in the challenging position of risking arrest simply by documenting unfolding events behind what are now police lines. Bracken has been on the ground in Wet’suwet’en territory since Jan. 12. Last January, Bracken photographed the RCMP raid on Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their supporters for The New York Times. 

“In my experience, I’ve dealt with police many, many, many times, and they generally control the areas you can photograph, but to have them say you can only photograph this thing, not that thing, that’s bizarre,” Bracken told The Narwhal.

“My concern is that they’d use that in the moment to basically take me under arrest and then I can’t do my job,” Bracken said. “You can sort it out in court later, but that’s too late.” 

Bracken is at the Unist’ot’en camp at the 66-kilometre mark of the Morice West Forest Service Road, which had not been raided by police as of 5 p.m. on Thursday. 

Online media outlet Ricochet received a response from the RCMP Thursday afternoon indicating the outlet’s reporter, located at the 44-kilometre mark, would be subject to arrest. 

After not responding to calls and emails all day, just got this from RCMP informing us that they plan to arrest Ricochet journalist @GitxsanJt for doing his job and reporting on police activity in the injunction zone. Does the @jjhorgan government respect press freedom? #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/TItRWlwW5L

— Ricochet (@ricochet_en) February 6, 2020

The CAJ has verified numerous reports that the #RCMP have threatened to arrest #cdnmedia journalists at #Wetsuweten Territory for taking photos. We remind @BCRCMPMedia that Canada is not a police state. Police do not have the right to control what is published. pic.twitter.com/V2hVK2PLhA

— Canadian Association of Journalists (@caj) February 7, 2020

The RCMP had not responded to a request for comment from The Narwhal by press time. 

RCMP made the arrests to enforce a court-ordered injunction extension granted Jan. 31 that prohibits anyone from restricting access to Coastal GasLink workers and contractors. The hereditary chiefs, along with other Wet’suwet’en members and their supporters, had set up checkpoints along an access road, saying they do not want the pipeline on their traditional territory.

The arrests were carried out even though Coastal GasLink is missing a key authorization and it could be up to several months before the company can proceed with construction in the disputed area.

In March 2019, the Newfoundland Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of journalist Justin Brake, who was threatened with arrest when reporting on an Indigenous-led occupation at the Muskrat Falls hydro dam in October 2016.

The court decision reaffirmed that special considerations apply to journalists covering a protest even when an injunction order has been issued. Those considerations include if the person is engaged in good faith journalistic coverage, is not actively assisting the protesters, is not interfering with law enforcement and if the matters being reported on are of public interest.

Location of camps in Wet’suwet’en territory. The RCMP exclusion zone extends from the RCMP checkpoint west, past the Unist’ot’en camp. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Justice Derek Green noted the importance of the media in advancing reconciliation and understanding of Indigenous Peoples and issues, stating that “particular consideration should be given to protests involving Aboriginal issues.”

Pugliese noted both the Charter and the courts grant journalists a legitimate right to be on the scene. 

“RCMP must not use an injunction to shield itself from public scrutiny,” she said.

In January 2019, an injunction ordered that no one could come within 10 metres of any person or vehicle related to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project on Wet’suwet’en territory. The RCMP used that court order to restrict access to everyone, including journalists, from coming within 27 kilometres of the Gidimt’en camp while police moved in on demonstrators. 

In December, The Guardian reported that internal documents showed RCMP commanders instructed officers to “use as much violence toward the gate as you want” and stated that “lethal overwatch is req’d” ahead of the operation. 

“What they’re doing is protecting themselves and doing a PR job and keeping the public from knowing what’s going on,” Pugliese said. 

Trees block the road in Wet’suwet’en territory near the Gidimt’en camp, after hereditary chiefs served an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink workers on Sunday, January 5, 2020. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) also expressed alarm at the RCMP exclusion zone prohibiting journalists from entering and monitoring police activity. 

“The BCCLA strongly urges the RCMP to refrain from instituting exclusion zones that prohibit the public, invited guests of the Wet’suwet’en and media from accessing the area,” the association’s executive director Harsha Walia said in an open letter. 

“Freedom of the press is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Police-enforced media exclusion zones violate the Charter by seriously impeding freedom of expression,” the letter read. 

“As the Supreme Court of Canada has held, ‘Strong constitutional safeguards against state intrusion are a necessary precondition for the press to perform its essential democratic role effectively.’ ”

Update Feb. 6, 2020, at 7:15 p.m. PST. This article previously stated journalist Justin Brake was arrested while covering land occupation near the Muskrat Falls dam project. It has been corrected to indicate he was faced with the threat of arrest if he did not vacate the location.

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Construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline could be delayed for months because the company is missing a key authorization from B.C.’s environmental assessment office, according to a consultant for Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.

The delay offers a chance to de-escalate the stand-off between the RCMP and hereditary chiefs and their supporters, as tensions rise in anticipation of imminent arrests to enforce a court injunction, Jason Slade told The Narwhal.

“If the EAO [Environmental Assessment Office] follows the law, they won’t have authorization to proceed from the EAO for many months,” said Slade, an environmental consultant for the Unist’ot’en clan, one of five clans in the Wet’suwet’en Nation.

“There’s no need for the police to go in and arrest everyone. The EAO authorization to proceed in this area doesn’t exist.”

At the centre of the dispute over pipeline construction in Wet’suwet’en traditional territory is the $2 million Unist’ot’en healing centre, which has received $400,000 from B.C.’s First Nations Health Authority to run land-based trauma and addictions treatment programs. 

Fundraising for the centre began about a decade ago and the first phase of construction commenced in 2015 with a recreational area and industrial kitchen. Counselling and office space was built in 2016, the same year the centre held its first annual youth art camp.

“There’s no need for the police to go in and arrest everyone. The EAO authorization to proceed in this area doesn’t exist.”

The healing centre is several hundred metres from a former, dead-end logging road and within one kilometre of the pipeline route, said Slade, who has been an environmental consultant for the clan for the past eight years.

“There’s not normally a lot of traffic on that road. Right now, every day there are dozens and dozens of trucks and machinery and personnel and security and police going up and down that road. This is something that happened all of a sudden … without consideration of the healing centre,” he said.

The healing centre at Unist’ot’en camp in Wet’suwet’en territory near Houston, B.C. on Jan. 15, 2020. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

“The main building is where clients sleep and get fed. But there are cabins on the territory, trails, sweat lodges, gardens, a pit house, hunting sites, fishing sites … [the pipeline] is affecting the landscape in a huge way all around the healing centre.” 

The $6.6 billion pipeline will transport fracked gas to the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, where it will be cooled to below 160 degrees Celsius, compressed and turned into liquid for export to Asia and other foreign markets  — an energy-intensive process that will make the project one of Canada’s biggest greenhouse gas-emitters.

A Gitxsan supporter makes supper at the healing centre. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Coastal GasLink report omits to mention healing centre

The B.C. environment ministry confirmed that one condition of Coastal GasLink’s environmental assessment certificate, issued in 2014, has not yet been met. 

Coastal GasLink, a wholly owned subsidiary of TC Energy (formerly TransCanada Corp.), was required to submit a report about the pipeline’s potential effects on an area known as the “Morice River Technical Boundary” — an area that includes the healing centre. The environmental assessment office must deem that report satisfactory in order for pipeline construction to proceed in that area. 

The technical boundary is the same area from which Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, representing all five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, recently evicted Coastal GasLink contractors.

Coastal GasLink submitted a report to the environmental assessment office in November but the hereditary chiefs say the report neglects to mention the healing centre, which they describe in a news release as “the most significant economic, social and health related institution within the study boundary.” 

The assessment office will review the Coastal GasLink report over the next several weeks, according to the B.C. environment ministry. The review process will include consultation with the Wet’suwet’en, the ministry said in an email to The Narwhal.

“This process is part of our work to ensure industry — in this case CGL — is meeting the requirements of their environmental approval. EAO requirements will need to be met for CGL to proceed with construction,” the ministry confirmed.

Trees are reflected in a bus window at a camp near Houston, B.C. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Gavin Smith, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, said pipeline construction could be delayed for three or more months in the Morice River area if the environmental assessment office does not accept the Coastal GasLink report.

“If they do not approve the report, effectively Coastal GasLink has to go back to the drawing board and that clock would reset.” Coastal GasLink would then have to submit a new report 90 days before planned construction in the Morice River area, Smith said.  

In early January, the RCMP set up a checkpoint to restrict access to a section of the Morice River forest service road where Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their supporters have remained despite the January 31 extension of a B.C. Supreme Court injunction to allow pipeline construction in the area.

‘It’s not a protest camp’

Psychologist Karla Tait, director of clinical services for the Unist’ot’en healing centre, said the pipeline has already caused significant disruptions for culture-based health and wellness programming at the Indigenous-owned and operated centre.

Potentially vulnerable individuals, including youth and men and women in recovery who are partaking in trauma treatment programs, are affected by the project, said Tait, an Unist’ot’en house member, in an interview. 

She said disruptions and safety concerns will heighten if a 400-person work camp for the project is built as planned.

“There’s a bit of that safety and security concern for us and for these clients as a steady stream of unknown workers, itinerant workers, travel to the work site past our territorial boundary and past our healing centre structures … ”

“It’s a constant stream of traffic on what used to be a calm and unoccupied road.”

A newly cut and logged Coastal GasLink access road near Houston, in October 2019. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Land-based programs at the centre focus on revitalizing Wet’suwet’en cultural practices and include visits to cultural sites, Tait said. 

One such site, the historic Kweese War Trail, was partially cleared by Coastal GasLink contractors despite repeated requests from hereditary chiefs to move the pipeline right of way in order to protect the trail, which branches out to ancestral sites spread throughout the nation’s traditional territory. 

Tait said drilling and blasting along mountainsides has caused major noise disturbances and traffic that has driven away the moose population, which she said the Wet’suwet’en were carefully stewarding to become healthy enough to sustain a selective hunt.  

“This past year we weren’t able to hunt at all with the presence of the CGL workers and with the disruption their activities were causing on the territory.” 

Hereditary chiefs and other people remaining at the centre are now “in a holding pattern” while they wait to see if RCMP make arrests, said Tait, who declined to share the number of people at the centre due to security concerns. 

Tait said the healing centre has been a long-term vision for the Unist’ot’en and was a motivating factor in her decision to complete a PhD in clinical psychology.

Freda Huson (right) and Karla Tait, who is the director of clinical programming at the healing centre, drum outside at Unist’ot’en camp on Jan. 20, 2020. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A Dene supporter plays with a puppy at the healing centre. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

“It’s really hard to hear this place characterized as a protest camp. Our existence as Indigenous people, as Wet’suwet’en, is not only in relation to colonizers or to Canada or B.C. We’ve existed for millennia and we deserve the right to exist for millennia more,” Tait said.

“It’s not a protest camp. This is us preserving our way of life and our land and water for future generations. We deserve a right to be healthy and strong in that future.”

The Morice River — known as Wedzin Kwa — is a “pristine” water source from which the healing centre gets its water and where water ceremonies are conducted, Tait said.  She said Coastal GasLink has informed Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs that the company will truck in drinking water if the pipeline pollutes the river, which feeds two major salmon bearing rivers.

Wedzin Kwah, known as the Morice River, near the Unist’ot’en camp and healing centre. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

RCMP can still legally enforce injunction: lawyer

Two weeks ago, B.C. Premier John Horgan told the media there is “nothing to negotiate” with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs because all permits are in place for Coastal GasLink to build the 670-kilometre pipeline from the Dawson Creek area to Kitimat. 

But on Jan. 27 the government backpedalled, appointing former MP Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley) as a liaison between the province and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs. 

Cullen is tasked with acting as an intermediary “by providing fact-finding, facilitation and analysis to support a peaceful resolution” to the dispute. 

According to a B.C. government press release, Cullen will work with the Wet’suwet’en, RCMP, Coastal GasLink, the B.C. public service and other parties, to de-escalate the conflict surrounding the injunction.

In an email to The Narwhal, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission confirmed all “primary pipeline permits” have been issued. 

The commission said it continues to review permit applications it receives from Coastal GasLink for roads, ancillary sites, archeology, water authorizations “and amendments to approved permits.” 

To date, 211 permit authorizations have been granted, while 17 new applications are in process, the commission said.

‘They are erasing our history’: Indigenous sites buried under Coastal GasLink pipeline infrastructure

A fact sheet about the Coastal GasLink pipeline, posted on the Oil and Gas Commission’s website, said approximately 400 authorizations are needed for the project.

The commission said the list of permits on its website is not current because it is in the process of updating to a new website, and that additional permit information will be uploaded as part of the refresh.

Slade said Coastal GasLink will have to consult with the healing centre’s owners, staff, clients and board of directors and may also have to speak with the First Nations Health Authority. The company will now have to conduct a study on the pipeline’s potential effects on the Unist’ot’en healing centre, which uses the entire landscape and requires unfettered access to the land, he said.

“The healing centre clients can’t be followed around by RCMP and CGL contractors. They’re out there hunting, fishing, trapping, on trails, in sweat lodges.”

Smith said the RCMP can still legally enforce the injunction.

Dogs walk across the bridge outside of the Unist’ot’en camp. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

“From a practical perspective the lack of the ability to begin construction in the area gives a strong reason to avoid any armed enforcement of that injunction to allow time for discussion and further recourse to the courts if parties decide to take that route,” he said.

“The environmental assessment office is no doubt aware that there are a lot of people watching this issue very closely and so they are going to presumably be taking a very careful look at the report that Coastal GasLink is required to file.” 

Slade said the pipeline and related “industrial incursions” on the land are in direct conflict with the centre.

“This is not like a minor conflict. This is exactly what the environmental assessment process is supposed to mitigate … This is an institution run by a community that has section 35 rights and is a required consultation partner in the project.”

Smoke and steam rise from a campfire at a Wet’suwet’en camp. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Section 35 of the Canadian constitution recognizes and affirms Aboriginal and treaty rights. 

Even if consultations on the report begin right away and are concluded rapidly, a 90-day comment period on the outcome is still required, Slade said. 

“You’re talking about delays running on [for] many, many months, which gives time for the Wet’suwet’en court cases to be heard,” he said. 

“They haven’t had their day in court.” 

The Wet’suwet’en are exploring options for court action to challenge construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their territory, including a constitutional challenge. 

In a request backed by B.C.’s human rights commissioner Kasari Govender, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has called for an immediate suspension of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en lands and territories until “free, prior and informed consent” is obtained from Indigenous peoples.

Calls to TC Energy’s offices in Vancouver and Calgary were not returned.

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According to Wet’suwet’en oral history, the Kweese War Trail is lined with the buried bodies of warriors who lost their lives avenging the murder of Chief Kweese’s wife and son.

The trail — a place where Wet’suwet’en youth can literally walk in the footsteps of their ancestors — branches out to important ancestral sites spread throughout the traditional territory of the nation’s five clans. 

But now a 100-metre portion of the trail, a critical piece of history for the Wet’suwet’en and the origin of some of their clan crests, and another potential archaeological site lie buried under work camps and clearcuts for the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline, proposed to move fracked gas from B.C.’s northeast to Kitimat to feed LNG Canada’s $18 billion liquified natural gas (LNG) export facility and the province’s promise of a LNG export boom.

On Jan. 4 the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en issued an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink owned by TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), saying the company “bulldozed through our territories, destroyed our archaeological sites and occupied our land with industrial man-camps.” The eviction notice comes one year after the RCMP enforced a court injunction, forcibly removing and arresting Wet’suwet’en blockaders at a checkpoint designed to prevent the company from accessing work sites. That injunction was extended on Dec. 31, 2019, triggering the Wet’suwet’en eviction notice and raising the spectre of renewed tensions.

Although the B.C. government recently celebrated becoming the first jurisdiction in Canada to enshrine the rights of Indigenous people in its law, the Wet’suwet’en’s fight against the pipeline raises questions about Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination — in instances when permits have already been granted. 

‘It’s lost’

Mike Ridsdale, an environmental assessment coordinator for the Office of the Wet’suwet’en and a descendant of the first people to walk the trail, spent years carefully documenting important cultural sites along the historic path. 

Tying up bright pink and blue ribbons, he marked trees bearing the telltale signs of cultural modification — folds of bark healed after strips were peeled away, harvested for household uses, kindling and markers for routes and trails.

In 2014, Ridsdale led provincial government and industry representatives along the trail, pointing out ribbons denoting a “Cultural Heritage Resource” or a “Culturally Modified Tree.”

Mike Ridsdale, environmental assessment coordinator for the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, near Telkwa, B.C. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Ridsdale, holding a form of culturally modified tree, near Telkwa. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Ridsdale hoped the markers would play a role in the trail’s protection, as advocated by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs. But by the time he returned to the spot last August, the trees with pink and blue ribbons lay piled in the dirt along 100 metres of the Kweese War Trail that had been cleared for a section of pipeline.

“They are erasing our history,” Ridsdale tells The Narwhal, his silver hair peeking out from beneath his ball cap. “They’re erasing that part of our history that we know in this generation that may not be taught to the next generation.”

“Then it’s lost.”

Ridsdale in a stand of trees he flagged as culturally modified. Ridsdale tells The Narwhal he is worried Wet’suwet’en history is being lost with logged CMTs. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Culturally modified trees are considered important historic evidence of human occupation of the landscape. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Ridsdale re-flags a culturally modified tree. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A felled culturally modified tree near Telkwa. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Historically modified trees are more than just a direct linkage to his ancestors, Ridsdale says. They are also critical to the Wet’suwet’en nation’s unresolved legal claim to its traditional territory.

For the Wet’suwet’en, it’s a conundrum: they need archaeological evidence to prove the legal boundaries of their Aboriginal title, yet they have no legal status to defend their cultural heritage from destruction.

“The thing is that I’m living this whole process [and] the process is broken,” Ridsdale says.

A newly cut and logged Coastal GasLink access road near Houston, B.C. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

‘Where else in Canada can you put a road over what could be a gravesite?’

Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, a postdoctoral fellow in archaeology at the University of British Columbia, investigated the impact of the Coastal GasLink pipeline for the Wet’suwet’en and identified nine areas where construction permits lacked necessary archaeological impact assessments, which are used to determine if archaeological sites exist.

Armstrong sent a report to both B.C.’s Archaeology Branch, which manages archaeological resources protected under the Heritage Conservation Act, and Coastal GasLink. But she says they never responded.

Fieldwork conducted from 2013 to 2015 found the Coastal GasLink pipeline corridor rich in archaeological sites. A report submitted to provincial regulators in early 2016 found 85 archaeological sites, 65 of which are lithic, meaning they relate to stone or the presence of stone tools. An additional 14 sites were found to contain culturally modified trees and seven sites were considered cultural depressions — evidence of previous human occupation.

According to Armstrong, the trail itself is an archaeological site, potentially even a burial site — and is a key linkage point to other parts of Wet’suwet’en heritage.

“If you follow a trail, it will lead you to every single site on a landscape,” she says.

But the impacted area of the trail didn’t qualify for further archaeological investigations, according to a Coastal GasLink report and a portion of the trail was cleared.

“The site was just destroyed,” says Armstrong.

Coastal GasLink says it logged the area by hand, rather than bulldozing, and covered the trail with timber to avoid ground disturbance. 

But some portions have been covered over by an access road, and if the trees aren’t replaced, Armstrong and others fear the trail will “brush over” and become unidentifiable. Ridsdale voiced concern that potential burial sites could be lost forever. 

“Where else in Canada can you put a road over what could be a gravesite?” he says. 

The archaeology branch eventually issued permits for an archaeological impact assessment — which allows for archaeological investigation like digging and boring into trees — for the impacted portion of the trail but only after clearing and construction had already taken place. 

It was a decision that Armstrong had never seen before. 

“So is it legal?” she asks aloud. “Sure.” 

“Is it just? No.”

A map of the Coastal GasLink pipeline route and location of camp 9A. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Artifacts discovered at camp 9A

Beginning in Jan. 2019 a Wet’suwet’en heritage site was bulldozed to make way for camp 9A, a Coastal GasLink work camp and staging area designed to house 450 workers that is now the subject of the hereditary chiefs’ eviction notice.

Wet’suwet’en elders knew the site had been a seasonal fishing village, so on Feb. 13, 2019, sent a small party to examine the site. The group says they discovered six projectile points on the upturned ground and gathered two as proof. They thought physical evidence in the form of these lithic stone tools would deter continued destruction of the site. 

It didn’t.

Under B.C.’s Heritage Conservation Act, protected heritage sites can legally be destroyed as long as the provincial government issues a permit. Companies can apply for a permit to destroy, damage and/or move protected heritage objects and sites.

Coastal GasLink’s work camp 9A is designed to hold 450 workers. There are 14 such camps located along the length of the pipeline’s corridor. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

An RCMP outpost located along the service road that leads to the Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en camps. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Coastal GasLink machinery on a mountain road in Wet’suwet’en territory. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

The first step for industry is to hire archaeologists to file desktop reports that predict the potential for archaeological sites within the proposed project area. According to Coastal GasLink’s desktop report, the area where camp 9A stands was designated as having low potential for archeology sites. The report stated further ground investigations weren’t required but cautioned that “in the event that archaeological, historical or palaeontological resources are discovered, all work should be suspended immediately.”

The company also performed a preliminary assessment of the Kweese War Trail and did not identify any protected artifacts or trees. In July Coastal GasLink self-reported missing several archaeology impact assessment permits for multiple areas along the pipeline route adjacent to the trail. 

Yet a 2007 report by Crossroads Cultural Resource Management, which utilized Wet’suwet’en traditional knowledge, found high potential for archeological sites in the entire area around both camp 9A and the Kweese War Trail.

Stone tools that members of the Wet’suwet’en reported finding at camp 9A. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Ridsdale walks in the forest near Telkwa, where his mother lived as a child before being removed to attend residential school at the age of seven. At one time, all the trees in the area would have been coniferous. Logging for fuel and construction material during the time of settlement in the area led to spruce and pine being replaced by alders and poplars. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Rick Budhwa, applied anthropologist and archaeologist and principal of Crossroads Cultural Resource Management, says these kinds of reports are interpretive, and different archeologists use different criteria, resulting in different declarations of potential. The legislation in the Heritage Act offers the most protection for sites considered unique, like petroglyphs, compared to trails and culturally modified trees, he says.

Budhwa adds that companies found breaking rules designed to protect heritage sites can be fined up to $1 million, but he is unaware of these fines ever being issued in B.C.

Areas identified as “high” or “medium” potential require an archaeological impact assessment. Although the area of camp 9A and the impacted section of the Kweese War Trail were both deemed low priority in Coastal GasLink’s desktop report, nearby areas were found to have higher potential. 

Yet archaeologists hired by Coastal GasLink couldn’t proceed past Wet’suwet’en checkpoints to complete the required fieldwork in these areas. 

The B.C. government issued construction permits anyway.

Coastal GasLink workers near Houston on Oct. 13, 2019. Amber Bracken

A red dress hanging from a road sign signifies Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women. The dress hangs along an access road being used by Coastal GasLink. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Workers monitor a section of narrow access road on Oct. 11, 2019. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

In an emailed statement to The Narwhal, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission said it is “not uncommon” to grant permits before all necessary assessments are complete, because they can technically still be conducted prior to construction. The assessments in this instance could not be completed before the permits were issued “due to Unist’ot’en activities impacting the ability to conduct work,” the commission’s email stated.

In an email to The Narwhal, the archaeology branch said the trail has never been identified in any archeology assessments for the Coastal GasLink project submitted by the company.

But reports submitted by Coastal GasLink appear to ignore the findings of Crossroads Cultural Resource Management.

“I struggle to see how this wasn’t consulted. I struggle to see why it wasn’t consulted because it is a publicly available resource,” Budhwa says.

Budhwa says there are pressures on archaeologists working for industry, as compared to those who are conducting research, that can impact how potential archaeological sites are assessed.

“When you have a bulldozer behind you ready to impact land, you’re working on a strict timeline. You can’t be concerned with the finer scales of archeology,” he says. 

A newly cut and logged Coastal GasLink access road on Oct. 13, 2019. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

After the incident, the Oil and Gas Commission released a bulletin stating the stone tools were likely not found in their original location.

Archaeology depends on layers of soil to date artifacts and to make extrapolations about the circumstances in which they were left, says archaeologist Chelsey Armstrong, who is a postdoctoral fellow with the Smithsonian Institution. “If it’s mixed up in soil that’s been disturbed, you’ve lost all that context. And so of course it’s not from its original location. They bulldozed it.”

Armstrong helped draft an open letter to the archaeology branch, calling for a complete archaeological impact assessment. More than 60 professionals signed the letter, but the government never responded.

Instead, the site was given “legacy” status meaning it was no longer protected because it had already been destroyed. Questions have since been raised about the legitimacy of the archaeological finds, but Budhwa says in a disturbed context it is impossible to know for sure.

“At this stage, there is no way of knowing how and when those artifacts got to their place. Regardless, it’s still considered an archaeological site,” he says. “In my opinion, what is more important than the found artifacts is that proper process is followed to manage for those artifacts and any additional archaeological sites.”

Last June, Coastal GasLink was reportedly three months behind schedule because of the Wet’suwet’en blockades.

“Delayed access has had an economic impact that is very difficult to estimate or quantify,” Coastal GasLink company spokesperson Suzanne Wilton said in an emailed statement.

Coastal GasLink disputes that any cultural values have been impacted on the trail, Wilton said, adding the company is back on track for the 2023 projected completion date.

Camp 9A where six lithic tools were reportedly found. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Questioning government commitment to UNDRIP

In November, B.C. became the first Canadian province to pass legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP), which says Indigenous peoples must give their “free, prior and informed consent” prior to resource development in their territories.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs have opposed the Coastal GasLink pipeline and others, including Chevron’s Pacific Trails and the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines, for years, Ridsdale points out.

Since 2010, hereditary chiefs and their supporters have maintained camps and checkpoints along a remote forest service road that provides access to the Coastal GasLink pipeline route, in order to assert jurisdiction and prevent clearing work permitted by the province but opposed under the Wet’suwet’en’s own customary law. 

The checkpoints, a display of occupation on their traditional territory, began at the Unist’ot’en camp at the 66-kilometre mark on the forestry road. They then expanded to the Gidimt’en camp, 44 kilometres up the road, to Likhts’amisyu clan territory near Parrott Lakes, about 35 kilometres south of Houston and, most recently, to a new support camp 39 kilometres up the road.

Last January, in a violent clash, the RCMP removed the checkpoint gates and arrested 14 people under a court-ordered temporary injunction. Until then, the Wet’suwet’en had successfully prevented pipeline contractors and archaeologists employed by the company from accessing the site.

Indigenous rights, as defined by UNDRIP, were seriously infringed, when Wet’suwet’en members were arrested and removed from their territory, Ridsdale says. He is hopeful the new law will better protect heritage sites, but doubts change will come soon enough for the Wet’suwet’en.

A view of forest in Wet’suwet’en territory. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Though exact boundaries remain undefined, more than 22,000 square kilometres of Wet’suwet’en lands have never been ceded through treaty, as affirmed by the landmark 1997 Delgamuukw case. The case confirmed Aboriginal title exists in B.C. as a right to the land itself — not just the right to engage in traditional practices such as hunting and fishing — and said the government must consult with, and possibly compensate, First Nations when their rights are affected by decisions on Crown land. In the Delgamuukw title case, hereditary chiefs were recognized as the rightful representatives of the Wet’suwet’en and managers of territorial lands.

Coastal GasLink — like many companies doing business in the traditional territory of First Nations — signed agreements with band councils, elected in a process set out in Canada’s much criticized Indian Act to govern communities on reserves.

Ridsdale, who took part in an Environmental Assessment Office working group for the project, says relations with the company weren’t always so tense. Coastal GasLink funded the Wet’suwet’en office to engage in consultation efforts and shared data from preliminary studies, he says.

Through the working group, the Wet’suwet’en convinced the company to relocate a short section of pipeline. But Coastal GasLink rejected the nation’s proposal to reroute the pipeline to spare the trail.

The logged pipeline right-of-way near Houston, B.C., on Oct. 13, 2019. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Bloated, huge, complicated

The Coastal GasLink pipeline regulatory review took six years and was supported by more than 7,000 pages of documentation. Archaeology requirements were just one component.

The process “is bloated, it’s huge, it’s complicated,” Budhwa says. 

Consultation with First Nations for pipeline and other projects is required by law. Yet what constitutes adequate consultation is undefined, and the regulatory process makes it very difficult for First Nations to meaningfully voice their concerns, according to Budwha.

Responding to reviews for projects like the Coastal GasLink pipeline can be a significant burden for First Nations.

Wet’suwet’en member George Lenser walks through nation’s territory to check on construction. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

A logged pipeline right-of-way near Houston. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Lenser rides through his territory in October to monitor construction and clearing work for the pipeline. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

“You pile on a whole bunch of paperwork and reviews for projects and you put a strict timeline on it for them to respond to. And if they don’t respond within that timeline, the ship sails,” says Budhwa.

In an emailed statement, Coastal GasLink said it provides “opportunities for interested Indigenous groups to participate directly in heritage resource studies.” 

‘Built for oil and gas’

Between January 2019 and Oct. 31, 2019, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission conducted 56 inspections of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The commission issued one warning letter and one order to stop work in an area where the company self-reported missing archaeological impact assessments.

An Office of the Wet’suwet’en request to Doug Donaldson, B.C.’s Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, to halt clearing work at the cultural sites was deferred to the Oil and Gas Commission, which did not issue a stop work order. 

An Aug. 2019 report published by the Canadian Centre For Policy Alternatives found the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission was established as a “one-stop” shop to streamline the industrial resource projects. 

“From a very early state the OGC bore the hallmarks of a ‘captured’ agency,” the report states, and has led to a troubling “regulatory breakdown” when it comes to the protection of the environment and Indigenous rights. 

It’s a view shared by supporters of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.

“The whole system is built for oil and gas. It’s not built for Indigenous people and it’s definitely not built to protect these cultural resources,” says Anne Spice, a Tlingit woman who is a long time Unist’ot’en camp supporter and a PhD candidate in anthropology.

“It seems like the whole structure is set up to approve projects and to make sure that the projects are done quickly.”

Tlingit woman and PhD candidate in anthropology Anne Spice at the Gidimt’en checkpoint, near Houston, B.C., on Oct. 11, 2019. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

‘Easier to say sorry’

Ridsdale is more worried than ever about preserving Wet’suwet’en cultural history. 

“This one project is killing our history. It’s taking away the history that we want to teach our children,” he says, standing on the outskirts of a former village site near what is now Telkwa.

Ridsdale has changed out of his “town-shoes” into heavy-duty rubber boots to give a tour of culturally modified trees. He begins by talking about how his people used the area but the story abruptly turns very personal.

His mother lived at Telkwa when, at the age of seven, she was taken to Lejac Residential School, more than 200 kilometres away. As a native Wet’suwet’en speaker, she was whipped for not knowing English, or not learning it fast enough.

Art decorates the window at the Unist’ot’en healing centre near Houston. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Ridsdale in the forest near Telkwa where his mother lived as a child. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

In the middle of winter, she escaped with her two sisters, then aged five and nine, wearing only the dresses and shoes provided by the residential school. They survived by following the train tracks and with traditional knowledge imparted from their families. When they finally made it home, an Indian agent was waiting to take them back to residential school.

Ridsdale, like many Wet’suwet’en, is not fluent in his own language. His mother did not live to hear the apologies of church and government. 

Ridsdale worries it will be the same with his people’s cultural history — that everything will be gone by the time the apologies come. As with residential schools, “it’s easier to say sorry than to ask for permission,” he says.

“Give us our land back,” he says. “Let us work with you, with our governance system, with our laws. Let us work together.”

With files from Carol Linnitt.

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The arrest last week of 14 pipeline protesters raises serious issues about the role of courts and police in disputes over Indigenous land.

The protesters were participating in a blockade of an access road to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project near Houston, B.C. In December, Coastal obtained an interim injunction from the B.C. Supreme Court ordering the protesters to remove the blockades.

When the protesters refused and negotiations failed, the RCMP moved in and made the arrests for alleged violation of the injunction.

The access road and this section of the pipeline are on land that the Wet’suwet’en Nation claim as part of their traditional territory. After a decade in court, the Wet’suwet’en won a significant victory in 1997 in the Delgamuukw case. While not deciding the substantive issues, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Indigenous nations that can prove they were in exclusive possession of land at the time of Crown assertion of sovereignty have constitutionally protected Aboriginal title.

The Supreme Court applied the Delgamuukw decision in 2014 in the Tsilhqot’in Nation case. The court ruled that the Tsilhqot’in have Aboriginal title to the portion of their traditional territory in the Interior of B.C. where they had proven exclusive occupation.

Significantly, the trial judge and B.C. Court of Appeal decided that this title is vested in the Tsilhqot’in Nation as a whole, not in the bands that exercise powers delegated to them by the federal Indian Act. This ruling was accepted by the Supreme Court.

This means that decisions regarding the Tsilhqot’in’s Aboriginal title land need to be made by their traditional government that exercises inherent jurisdiction, not by individual band councils because they do not have authority to make decisions for the nation.

In the context of the current protests, the Wet’suwet’en have a claim to the land in question by virtue of the Delgamuukw and Tsilhqot’in decisions.

In opposition, the province claims the same land as Crown land. A dispute over title to land is a civil — not a criminal — matter. If not settled by agreement, the courts end up resolving these disputes. In this case, no such resolution has taken place.

Instead, the province has acted as though this were Crown land and has authorized use of it for a pipeline project that the traditional Wet’suwet’en government opposes.

Based on Tsilhqot’in Nation, decisions on land use outside of reserves have to be made by traditional governments, not band councils. So the fact that Wet’suwet’en band councils may have approved the project is irrelevant.

Courts can issue interim injunctions in land disputes, authorizing one side to act as though it owns the land until the matter is finally resolved. Courts grant these injunctions mainly on the basis of balance of convenience — which party will suffer the most if the injunction is or is not granted.

Pipelines are short-term development projects whose environmental consequences make them highly controversial. The Wet’suwet’en, on the other hand, have been governing their territory in environmentally respectful and sustainable ways for thousands of years. So how can the balance of convenience favour a resource exploitation company in these circumstances?

Projects like this on Indigenous territories should not take place without the free, prior, informed consent of the people concerned, as required by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada has endorsed and the Trudeau government has promised to implement.

Nor should the police be placed in the awkward position, which many of them likely find uncomfortable, of having to arrest peaceful protesters involved in a civil, not criminal, matter.

The Supreme Court has said repeatedly that Indigenous claims need to be settled by respectful negotiations leading to reconciliation. The court injunction and recent arrests do just the opposite.

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As police enforce a court injunction against two Indigenous camps standing in the way of a proposed B.C. pipeline, the authors of a new report say their research indicates the RCMP’s action against Wet’suwet’en land defenders will be neither fair, nor objective.

Jeffrey Monaghan of Carleton University and Miles Howe of Queen’s University outline in a new report published in the Canadian Journal of Sociology how RCMP assess individual activists according to political beliefs, personality traits, and even their ability to use social media.

The report says government and RCMP documents uncovered through access to information requests indicate the police are not assessing Indigenous protests in Canada based on factors of criminality but are more concerned about the protestors’ ability to gain public support.

It also shows the government’s risk assessments of Indigenous protests, court injunctions initiated by private corporations against Indigenous people, and RCMP policing tactics all favour corporate interests and private property rights over Indigenous rights and title.

This includes the current resistance by land defenders and hereditary chiefs to the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline slated to run through unceded Wet’suwet’en territory.

Intelligence compiled on Indigenous activists

Checklists developed by RCMP Director of Research and Analysis Dr. Eli Sopow as part of the National Intelligence Coordination Centre’s 2014-2015 Project SITKA reveal “it’s not criminality the RCMP are focused on, it’s the ability of that group to create and craft a counter narrative to the one that suggests whatever the police do is across the board legitimate,” Howe told APTN News in a phone interview.

Howe, a former journalist with the Halifax Media Co-op, covered the Mi’kmaq resistance to fracking in New Brunswick in 2013 and was arrested during a military-style raid of land defenders near Elsipogtog.

He wrote a book detailing the anti-fracking movement and the RCMP’s response to Indigenous people asserting their Indigenous and treaty rights.

Howe, a 2018 Vanier scholar and PhD candidate in Queen’s department of cultural studies, is delving deeper into the state’s policing and surveillance of Indigenous protests and movements.

His collaboration with Monaghan, an assistant professor of criminology, builds on a body of work developed by Monaghan and Andrew Crosby, a coordinator with the Ontario Public Interest Group at Carleton University.

Monaghan and Crosby used access to information laws to uncover thousands of pages of documents from the RCMP, CSIS and government agencies. They detailed their findings in the 2018 book “Policing Indigenous Movements.”

They paint a picture of how government departments, police, intelligence agencies and private sector interests work together to compile intelligence on activists — including Indigenous land defenders — and rate them according to the risk they pose to “critical infrastructure” such as pipelines, and to Canada’s “national interest.”

The authors write that the efforts represent a “new dynamic of policing” that aims to “suppress efforts [by Indigenous people] that challenge colonial control of land and resources.”

They say the RCMP are “not merely [part of] an objective or neutral policing entity but an active supporter of extractive capitalism and settler colonialism.”

RCMP efforts to control the public narrative

Their findings counter a common narrative communicated by the RCMP when responding to Indigenous land defence actions — that the federal police respect people’s right to protest and only act in the interests of public safety.

As part of their research Monaghan and Crosby uncovered previously classified documents on the Unist’ot’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, some of whose members have built dwellings, a healing centre, and have blocked industry access on their unceded lands for almost a decade.

The bunkhouse at the Unist’ot’en camp. Photo: Unist’ot’en camp / Facebook

Unist’ot’en ‘ideological and physical focal point of Aboriginal resistance’: government report

The researchers shared some of those documents with APTN, including a Government Operations Centre (GOC) report that labelled one of the Unist’ot’en leaders an “aboriginal extremist” and assessed the group based in part on the level of public support they had at the time, in 2015.

The document anticipated that TransCanada, the company overseeing the project — which would carry fracked natural gas from Dawson Creek, B.C. through Wet’suwet’en territory to tidewater at Kitimat — might apply for an injunction in April of that year.

That didn’t happen, but the document reveals that the government, based on information provided by the RCMP, considered the Unist’ot’en the “ideological and physical focal point of Aboriginal resistance to resource extraction projects” and acknowledged that arresting Unist’ot’en members had potential to trigger protests in other regions of Canada.

Monaghan said the document included revealing language, including reference to the pipeline as “critical infrastructure” and “risk to the national interest resulting from a blockade or protest against the proposed TransCanada Coastal Gaslink liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline” (which at the time they determined was “medium-low”).

He said the intelligence-gathering and GOC risk assessment are “not to govern some kind of national security threat or stop crime,” but are instead “about getting this project through, making sure that the enforcement of [an eventual] injunction happens, and that it happens with a low media cost, a low negative public opinion.”

Crosby said the public should anticipate police raids of the Unist’ot’en camp, or of the recently erected Gidimt’en check point along the same access road near Smithers, B.C., will be accompanied by an effort to control the public narrative around the events.

“We can be sure that whatever happens, [authorities are] going to want to ensure that it’s their spin, their version of what happens,” he said.

He said Indigenous sovereignty and the principle of free, prior and informed consent “have become obstacles to Canada’s ambitions to produce and export [fossil fuels].”

On Nov. 26 Coastal GasLink applied to the B.C. Supreme Court for injunctive relief, arguing that if further prevented by the Unist’ot’en from doing necessary work the LNG project could suffer “irreparable harm.”

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Church approved the injunction application in mid-December.

Days later members of the Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation set up an access point in their own territory, about 20 kilometres down the same road as the Unist’ot’en camp.

The court injunction was then amended to include that blockade.

On Monday, January 7, RCMP conducted an armed raid of the Gidimt’en checkpoint, arresting 14 individuals. Another raid on the Unist’ot’en check point is expected to take place.

RCMP pass the Gidimt’en checkpoint on January 7, 2019. Photo: Michael Toledano

The Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en, with the support of their hereditary chiefs, maintain that the band council system — created under Canada’s Indian Act — only has jurisdiction over reserve lands, not the 22,000 square kilometres of unceded Wet’suwet’en territory.

They have repeatedly referred to the 1997 Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) Delgamuukw decision, which acknowledges their traditional governance system and the names of hereditary leaders who now oppose the LNG pipeline.

The Unist’ot’en began constructing their camp in 2010 and in recent years have brought a healing centre to fruition, where they use traditional medicines and land-based practices to heal members of their Nation from addiction and other health issues rooted in the traumas of residential schools and colonization.

Carmen (1 of the 14 arrested, in the #Gidimten raid by police), had her restrictions lifted, and looks forward to going back out to the #Yintah We stand with #Unistoten #WetsuwentenStrong pic.twitter.com/oMPExVZQoP

— Gidimt’en Checkpoint (@gidimt) January 14, 2019

While band leadership has said their communities need the money and short-term jobs the project will create, traditional leaders say Wet’suwet’en laws place a duty on their people to protect the land, water and wildlife for future generations.

RCMP worked to ‘surprise and overwhelm the Wet’suwet’en poeple’

But none of this — from the Supreme Court of Canada’s acknowledgement of Wet’suwet’en territory and traditional governance systems in the Delgamuukw decision, to the question of who makes decisions on behalf of the wider Wet’suwet’en Nation — are factored into the police and government intelligence that is informing the RCMP in their approach to dealing with the Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en.

The 2015 Government Operation’s Centre document describes the unnamed “aboriginal extremist” leading the Unist’ot’en as an individual “who rejects the authority of the Crown over his perception of what constitutes traditional territories.”

Sabina Dennis from the Dakelh Cariboo Clan at the Gidimt’en checkpoint, January 7, 2019. Photo: Michael Toledano

In early January, responding to a request for information about police presence in the area, an RCMP spokesperson told APTN she understood there were “less than a dozen officers in the Smithers’ area,” and that they were “continuing to monitor the situation.”

Cpl. Madonna Saunderson said the injunction and accompanying police enforcement order from the court “recognize the RCMP’s discretion to decide how and when to enforce the injunction…within a reasonable time.”

“The primary concerns of the police are public safety, police officer safety, and preservation of the right to peaceful, lawful and safe protest, within the terms set by the Supreme Court in the injunction,” she said.

“We are very hopeful that there will not be violence or disorder as we enforce the court order; however, the safety of the public and our officers is paramount when policing demonstrations, particularly due to the remote area in which the bridge is located.”

Members of the Gidimt’en clan offered a different account.

They said a meeting with members of the RCMP Aboriginal Police Liaison Unit prior to the RCMP’s enforcement of the injuction  indicated to them that “specially trained tactical forces will be deployed to forcibly remove Wet’suwet’en people from sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory,” according to a post on the Gidimt’en clan Facebook page.

“Police refused to provide any details of their operation… including the number of officers moving in, the method of forcible removal, or the timing of deployment,” the Facebook post reads.

“By rejecting the requests for information… the RCMP indicated that they intend to surprise and overwhelm the Wet’suwet’en people who are protecting their territories on the ground,” the post added.

“The RCMP’s ultimatum, to allow TransCanada access to unceded Wet’suwet’en territory or face police invasion, is an act of war.”

Hereditary Chief Na’Moks said he believes the RCMP’s coordination of action was timed with personal grievances within the Unist’ot’en clan’s membership, including the recent illness and death of one leader’s mother.

“They’re well aware of what’s going on; this is part of their strategy,” he said, adding the RCMP indicated it would deploy officers from outside the region.

“Mounties stated it would not be local officers that would move in,” he said. “They would bring in outside RCMP.”

“Personally, I believe — and so do the other chiefs — [that] they don’t want to have local police targeted or identified.”

Over the weekend, prior to the RCMP action, images and rumours circulated on social media that RCMP officers had begun to arrive in the region.

Responding to those reports the Gidimt’en posted the following message on their Facebook page: “We are not protesters. We are Wet’suwet’en. We are lawfully and peacefully living on our lands as we have since time immemorial. We call for all that can join us to do so immediately, on our homelands or where you stand. These lands will always be Wet’suwet’en.”

The day before the RCMP raid, one of the people managing the Gidimt’en Facebook page said there were currently women and elders at the camp, and that visitors have been bringing their children. They did not confirm the number of individuals at the camp.

A spokesperson for the Unist’ot’en camp and access point said as a policy they do not disclose the number of people at their location at at given time.

Howe called the RCMP’s statement to APTN “classic” and said they’re following the same pattern discussed in his, Monaghan’s and Crosby’s research.

“They’ve cast the notion that there’s a rational group, and that rational group can protest in a manner defined by the law.”

“There’s a law on the books now and we have to enforce it,” he continued, referencing the injunction and paraphrasing the RCMP’s perceived logic. “And we hope that nothing happens to anybody, but if it does it’s because we’re there to protect public safety.”

Howe says the statement is part of the police’s effort to construct a narrative that depoliticizes Indigenous peoples’ defence of their lands and rights, while justifying the RCMP’s potential removal of Indigenous people from their territory.

“So you’ve removed any reference at all to the very fact that all they’re doing is simply enforcing the desires of a resource extractive company, which is to get that pipeline built,” he said.

With files from Kathleen Martens.

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