Local civil wars: Eartha Muirhead
This November, the RCMP have been violently removing Wet’suwet’en Indigenous land defenders from their territory, in order to allow Coastal GasLink’s (CGL) fracked gas pipeline to be buried beneath the raging Morice River. This week, two planes full of RCMP officers, armed with snipers, canine units, and other military-grade
equipment, raided and arrested more than a dozen people, including elders, Indigenous land defenders, journalists, and legal observers. While B.C. is in the midst of a climate emergency, the RCMP is raiding sovereign Indigenous territory to ram through a fossil fuel pipeline which will only worsen the climate crisis. In 2019 and 2020, RCMP have spent approximately 13 million dollars, and up until March 2021, 5.8 million dollars on colonial violence in Wedzin Kwa, also known as, the Morice River area.
The Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs are the proper title holders on their unceded territory, which the Supreme Court of Canada recognized in a landmark case. The Hereditary Chiefs have governance rights that precede the elected band councils enacted under the colonial Indian Act and all five Hereditary Chiefs have refused to give their consent to Coastal Gaslink. This isn’t the first time the RCMP has invaded Wet’suwet’en territory. Land defenders have controlled access to the Morice Forest Service Road to stop Coastal GasLink from drilling under Wedzin Kwa, after the Wet’suwet’en served Coastal GasLink with an eviction notice two years ago. This week, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs gave an eviction notice to Nathan Cullen, MLA, calling on him to step down because he is not demanding CGL’s immediate halt to all pipeline construction. Please visit the Gidimt’en Yintah Access Point website here: https://www.yintahaccess.com/take-action-1. If you are able to, please donate to the the Land Defenders legal fund: https://go.rallyup.com/wetsuwetenstrong/ Campaign/Details
And on Sunday, November 29, at Fairy Creek, two Indigenous wimmin were ambushed by RCMP officers and dragged away to a Duncan jail. There remains still a deafening silence from the BC Court of Appeals; but injunction or not, the cops are enforcing the rule of colonial law. Ancient Mother Trees and their children are being slaughtered while the corporate warlords continue their ecocidal crimes; all subsidized by colonial banks, colonial governments and social atrophy.
To learn more about the Fairy Creek blockade, please visit www.laststandforforests.com. To donate to Fairy Creek legal defense fund, go to
<LSFFdonate@protonmail.com> and put the word “legal” in the subject heading. “A possible life is one that wills the impossible.” Mahmoud Darwish
