The Unist’ot’en People Maintain a “Soft Blockade” On the Morice River 30th May

The Unist’ot’en Peo­ple (a.k.a C’ilhts’ekhyu) of the Wet’suwet’en Nation main­tain a “Soft Block­ade” keep­ing pipeline work­ers and sub­con­trac­tors out of their ter­ri­to­ries. The block­ade is locat­ed 66km on the Morice West For­est Ser­vice Road south of the town of Hous­ton BC.

Hun­dreds of sup­port­ers, vol­un­teers, recre­ation­al­ists, and mush­room pick­ers have been able to cross into the guard­ed ter­ri­to­ry by show­ing respect to the ter­ri­to­ry own­ers and answer­ing some sim­ple ques­tions. The ques­tions were as fol­lows:

  1. Who are you?
  2. Where do you come from?
  3. How long to you plan to stay?
  4. Are you work­ing for gov­ern­ment or indus­try?
  5. What is your busi­ness here?
  6. How will your vis­it ben­e­fit the Unist’ot’en Peo­ple?

There were some peo­ple who have cho­sen not to answer any of the ques­tions and were not per­mit­ted into the lands. Some of the peo­ple reject­ed were out­right racist and bel­liger­ent; some peo­ple refused to rec­og­nize the author­i­ty of the ter­ri­to­ry own­ers; and some were sim­ply unable to truth­ful­ly answer any of the ques­tions until they could devel­op a rela­tion­ship with the Unist’ot’en.

The deci­sion to con­trol ter­ri­to­ry traf­fic came when work­ers for the pro­posed Apache/Chevron Frack­ing Gas Pipelines were caught in the ter­ri­to­ry last Novem­ber after being pre­vi­ous­ly warned for tres­pass­ing. The Unist’ot’en have been lead­ing a move­ment among the larg­er Wet’suwet’en pop­u­la­tion to stop ALL pro­posed Pipelines (includ­ing Frack­ing and Tar Sands) from cross­ing their ter­ri­to­ries.

In 2008, the Unist’ot’en along­side the oth­er four Clans of the Wet’suwet’en walked away from the BC Treaty Com­mis­sion nego­ti­a­tion process. They found that since the 1997 Supreme Court of Canada’s Del­ga­muukw v. Queeen Court deci­sion, gov­ern­ment and indus­try have only esca­lat­ed their activ­i­ties on their lands at an alarm­ing rate with­out mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion.

Fre­da Huson, the Spokes­woman for the Unist’ot’en states, “The plain­tiffs in the land­mark Del­ga­muukw Supreme Court of Cana­da case are the Hered­i­tary Chiefs and their mem­bers. Gov­ern­ment and Indus­try are break­ing their own laws when they choose to only con­sult with Indi­an Act band coun­cils. The pro­pa­gan­da writ­ers for the Pacif­ic Trails Pipeline like to say that they have 15 First Nation People’s sup­port, when in fact they have only been talk­ing to Indi­an Act com­mu­ni­ties. That has to stop. This strug­gle to pro­tect our lands is not about hold­ing out for finan­cial gain. It is about pro­tect­ing our lands from destruc­tive prac­tices from indus­try. Our actions will not only ben­e­fit our future gen­er­a­tions but everyone’s future gen­er­a­tions.”

The log­ging road lead­ing into the ter­ri­to­ry is man­aged by the CANFOR log­ging com­pa­ny and CANFOR is tak­ing the lead to begin a mean­ing­ful process of con­sul­ta­tion. The Unist’ot’en are wel­com­ing this new rela­tion­ship with CANFOR and are hope­ful that oth­er indus­try projects will choose to begin ask­ing per­mis­sion rather than imple­ment­ing projects with­out mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion.