[News] Gidimt'en Civil Suit - We will never abandon our territory where we have lived since time immemorial.

Wed Jul 13 16:54:49 EDT 2022

Gidimt'en Yintah Access 
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    Gidimt'en Civil Suit

Yintah Access — July 13, 2022

Every day and still today, the government, industry, and police are 
invading our yintah. Since February 2022 alone, the RCMP’s Community 
Industry Response Group (C-IRG), accompanied by Forsythe (Coastal 
GasLink’s private security contractor), have continually harassed, 
followed, surveilled, and intimidated Gidimt’en clan members. They have 
targeted us in our homesites, including at our Gidimt’en Checkpoint 
village site and the Tsel Kiy Kwa (Lamprey Creek) village site that are 
important sites of Wet’suwet’en cultural resurgence.

Since late February 2022, individual RCMP and C-IRG officers, many armed 
with semi-automatic weapons, have entered Gidimt’en territory hundreds 
of times, with near constant patrols at Gidimt’en Checkpoint and Tsel 
Kiy Kwa. RCMP and C-IRG officers attended our village sites 94 times in 
March, 97 times in April, and 78 times in May. This whole police 
campaign of intimidation affects our rights to hunt, trap, fish, gather, 
and conduct ceremonies on our Yintah. Many elders are so terrified and 
scared of this harassment that they no longer engage in some land-based 
activities, which further harms our intergenerational knowledge transfer.

*This is why we are suing the RCMP and C-IRG, Minister of Justice for 
B.C., Coastal Gaslink Pipeline LTD., and private security contractor 
Forsythe* *for loss and damages. *

We will not let the RCMP and C-IRG, B.C, Coastal Gaslink, and Forsythe 
go unchallenged in their attempts to clear the lands for this pipeline 
project and their capitalist, colonial extraction. We will never abandon 
our territory where we have lived since time immemorial.

We will not sit idly by while the RCMP and C-IRG enter our village sites 
multiples times a day, harass and intimidate our people and our guests, 
disrupt our cultural practices and ceremonies, shine high beams and 
spotlights into our residential buildings, awaken sleeping residents, 
illegally demand our identification, unlawfully and arbitrarily threaten 
and arrest us, seize and destroy our Gidimt’en property, commit assault 
and battery, and prohibit and block our movement on our own lands.

The police tactics used on Gidimt’en territory have had no lawful 
purpose or basis. They have been unreasonable and excessive, 
discriminatory on the basis of race, malicious and an abuse of police 
powers. They represent an effort to suppress lawful activity and the 
assertion of Indigenous rights and title. The very creation and mandate 
of C-IRG in this province is to protect corporate resource and energy 
sectors by quashing and criminalizing lawful Indigenous advocacy. A 
recent APTN investigation 
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describes C-IRG enforcement across the province as “Exclusion zones, 
psychological manipulation, siege tactics and arbitrary detention. Theft 
of property, pain compliance and withholding the necessities of life. 
Unorthodox methods, excessive force and broken bones.”

We also refuse to succumb to Forsythe and CGL’s private campaign to 
subject us to 24/7 surveillance, including continuously filming, 
following, and intimidating our people, our elders, and our children, 
and then sharing photo and video surveillance footage with the police.

In the colonial legal system, a lawsuit for loss or damages caused to 
another person or another person's property is known as a civil claim/./ 
In June 2022, Janet Wiliams and Lawrence Bazil on behalf of themselves, 
and Molly Wickham on behalf of herself as well as the Gidimt’en Clan of 
the Wet’suwet’en Nation filed a notice of claim in BC’s Supreme Court to 
start the civil legal action. In this lawsuit, we are holding the RCMP 
and C-IRG, Minister of Justice for B.C., Coastal Gaslink, and Forsythe 
accountable for invading our privacy, intimidation, intentional 
infliction of mental distress, malicious and wilful misconduct, assault 
and battery, false arrest, trespass, violations of the Charter, and more.**

We know that this legal system is not built for us. But because we are 
right and our ancestors are with us, we have won in their courts before. 
The authority of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary house and clan system was 
verified in the historic /Delgamuukw/ 
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and /Red Top/ court decisions. *RCMP and C-IRG, Coastal Gaslink, 
Forsythe, B.C., and* Canada know that their own actions are illegal. Our 
Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have maintained their use and occupancy 
of their lands and hereditary governance system despite generations of 
colonial policies and big industries that aim to remove us from this 
land, assimilate our people, annihilate our culture, and ban our 
governing system.

Under ‘Anuc niwh’it’en (Wet’suwet’en law) all Hereditary Chiefs of the 
five clans of the Wet’suwet’en have unanimously opposed all pipeline 
proposals and have not provided free, prior, and informed consent to 
Coastal Gaslink to drill on Wet’suwet’en lands. They are trying to drill 
under the Wedzin Kwa river, the sacred headwaters that feeds all of 
Wet’suwet’en territory and gives life to our nation. The pipeline, 
spanning 670 kilometers, will transport fracked gas to the proposed LNG 
Canada processing plant, which is the largest single private sector 
infrastructure project and one of the largest energy investments in 
Canadian history. In February 2019, Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs 
called for a stop work order on the pipeline, and, in January 2020, our 
Hereditary Chiefs issued an eviction notice to CGL.

When we rise up to defend the Yintah, we are criminalized. Civil 
injunctions are a colonial legal weapon that has become a mechanism for 
the militarization of our community, criminalization of our people, and 
for companies to carry out destructive extraction without Indigenous 
consent. In three large-scale police actions in January 2019, February 
2020, and November 2021, a total of 74 people have been arrested and 
detained, including legal observers and members of the media. Nearly $20 
million in public money was spent between 2019 and 2020 to surveil and 
police Wet’suwet’en land defenders and our many allies. Under the 
leadership of provincial NDP Attorney General David Eby, Crown 
prosecutors are now even proceeding with serious criminal contempt 
charges against 19 land defenders and our Indigenous kin, including 
Gidimt'en spokesperson Sleydo', Shaylynn Sampson, and Corey Jocko and 
Skyler Williams of 1492 Land Back Lane.

The ongoing criminalization of Wet’suwet’en people is not the way to 
reconciliation. We want an end to the illegal harassment and 
intimidation of Wet'suwet'en people and our homesites, and for all 
policing and private security contractors to be immediately removed from 
Gidimt'en Territory. Even the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial 
Discrimination has repeatedly told Canada to withdraw RCMP and security 
forces from Wet’suwet’en lands, and to refrain from forcibly evicting 
and using lethal force against Wet’suwet’en and other Indigenous peoples.

We live out our laws and cultural practices on our lands. Our medicines, 
our berries, our food, the animals, our water, our culture are all here 
since time immemorial. We will never allow our sovereignty to be 
violated. We are #WetsuwetenStrong.

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Balhats (feast hall) build at Tsel Kiy Kwa (Lamprey Creek). One of the 
village sites RCMP C-IRG continuously trespass and harass our members. 
See full press release for build here. 
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      Photo Credit: Brandi Morin

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