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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
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href="https://orinocotribune.com/ignoring-the-links-between-man-camps-and-violence-against-indigenous-women/">https://orinocotribune.com/ignoring-the-links-between-man-camps-and-violence-against-indigenous-women/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Ignoring the Links Between "Man Camps"
and Violence Against Indigenous Women</h1>
February 17, 2020</div>
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<p><strong>Canada’s National Inquiry on Missing and
Murdered Indigenous Women found “substantial evidence”
natural resource projects increase violence against
Indigenous women and children and two-spirit
individuals. Yet, British Columbia ignored this link.</strong></p>
<p>By Carol Linnitt – February 15, 2020</p>
<p>Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs are requesting a
judicial review of a decision made by the B.C.
Environmental Assessment Office to extend the
environmental certificate for the 670-kilometre Coastal
GasLink pipeline.</p>
<p>The request, filed Feb. 3, argues an extension should
not have been granted in light of more than 50 instances
of non-compliance with the conditions of Coastal GasLink
permits and in light of the findings of Canada’s
National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women.</p>
<p>The inquiry found there is “substantial evidence” that
natural resource projects increase violence against
Indigenous women and children and two-spirit
individuals.</p>
<p>A final report released from the National Inquiry
Committee in 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 neighboring
communities.”</p>
<p>“Increased crime levels, including drug- and
alcohol-related offences, sexual offences, and domestic
and ‘gang’ violence, have been linked to ‘boom town’ and
other resource development contexts. … There is an
urgent need to consider the safety of Indigenous women
consistently in all stages of project planning,” the
report states.</p>
<p>Concerns about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
and Girls are on visible display at the Unist’ot’en
camp, located along the intended route of the Coastal
GasLink pipeline, where for the past months red dresses
— symbols of the epidemic of violence against Indigenous
women and girls — hang on signposts or dangle in the air
from lines of suspended wire.</p>
<p>Karla Tait, psychologist and director of clinical
services at the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre, said the
idea came about when the Wet’suwet’en learned of a
proposed 400-person worker camp planned for just 13
kilometres from the healing centre.</p>
<p>“We put a call out for red dresses to be sent here,
inviting anyone to send red dresses in honor 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,” Tait, who is a Unist’ot’en
house member, told The Narwhal.</p>
<p><a
href="https://orinocotribune.com/canada-protests-go-mainstream-as-support-for-wetsuweten-pipeline-fight-widens/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RELATED
CONTENT: Canada: Protests go Mainstream as Support for
Wet’suwet’en Pipeline Fight Widens</a></p>
<p>The RCMP are currently enforcing a court injunction
against members of the Wet’suwet’en and supporters
occupying cultural camps in areas of Wet’suwet’en
traditional territory that prevent work along the
Coastal GasLink pipeline route. Wet’suwet’en hereditary
chiefs, representing all five clans of the Wet’suwet’en
nation, argue the pipeline was permitted without their
consent as legal custodians of the nation’s territory
under Wet’suwet’en law and as recognized by Canada’s
Supreme Court in a 1997 ruling known as the Delgamuukw
decision.</p>
<p>Chiefs issued an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink
workers in early January and after weeks of tense
waiting, RCMP began arresting individuals within a
designated exclusion zone, which extends from an RCMP
checkpoint to beyond the Unist’ot’en camp, on Feb. 6.</p>
<p>RCMP officers arrived at the Unist’ot’en camp, located
at the 66-kilometre mark along the Morice River Forest
Road, on Saturday morning following two days of arrests
while dismantling Wet’suwet’en camps along the pipeline
route.</p>
<p>Wet’suwet’en at the camp have refused to comply with an
RCMP request to surrender.</p>
<p>Unist’ot’en camp founder and spokesperson, Tsake’ze
Howilhkat, who also goes by Freda Huson, said the 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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>She recounted the experience of being on a search party
for Frances Brown, who went missing while mushroom
picking with her partner. The RCMP called off their
search after five days.</p>
<p>“I, with many others, was out there for 35 to 37 days,
every day from seven in the morning until seven at night
we searched,” Huson said. “We were popping Tylenol
because our bodies hurt so bad but we kept going out
every day searching and we didn’t find any clues.”</p>
<p>Huson said she is angry the RCMP will deploy enormous
resources to enforce an injunction against Indigenous
people defending their territory but not to investigate
the murder of Indigenous women or locate missing women
or their remains.</p>
<p>“Maybe some of them are out here, somewhere,” Huson
said of the area surrounding the Unist’ot’en camp.
“Because of lot of them went missing and they could have
easily went on these back roads. A lot of this territory
was hardly used, so they could have been brought out
here somewhere.”</p>
<p>There are 14 work camps planned to support the
construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Nine are
already in operation, with additional camps expected to
be built in 2020, according to a spokesperson with TC
Energy, formerly TransCanada, which owns the pipeline.</p>
<p><strong>Coastal GasLink permit extended without due
process: lawyer</strong><br>
Dinï ze’ Smogelgem, Hereditary Chief of the Laksamshu
(Fireweed and Owl) clan said the Wet’suwet’en’s
application for judicial review of Coastal GasLink
certificate extension also points out the connection
between the project and threats to women.</p>
<p>“My cousins are listed among the murdered and missing
women and girls,” he said in a statement announcing the
case. “B.C. must not be allowed to bend the rules to
facilitate operations that are a threat to the safety of
Wet’suwet’en women.”</p>
<p>Caily DiPuma, legal counsel for the Wet’suwet’en with
Woodward and Co., said the request for judicial review
is about questioning the integrity of the environmental
assessment process.</p>
<p>Coastal GasLink has not substantially started
construction within the five years of its environmental
certificate, granted in 2014, as is mandated in the
permit. The company requested the Environmental
Assessment Office grant a permit extension.</p>
<p>When considering a permit extension, the office is
required to consider new significant and adverse impacts
of the project and consider a proponent’s compliance in
the five years in which they’ve been operating, DiPuma
told The Narwhal.</p>
<p>“The EAO didn’t do either of those things properly,”
she said.</p>
<p>“We know there is a correlation between camps of
workers, what are called ‘man camps,’ and violence
against Indigenous girls and women and queer people,”
DiPuma said, adding that the Calls to Action from the
National Inquiry direct decision-makers “like the EAO to
undertake an assessment of gender-based harms for these
kinds of projects.” Similar calls to action are directed
at industry.</p>
<p><a
href="https://orinocotribune.com/wetsuweten-supporters-reconciliation-is-dead-and-we-will-shutdowncanada/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RELATED
CONTENT: Wet’suwet’en Supporters: “Reconciliation is
Dead and we Will #ShutDownCanada”</a></p>
<p>Despite this, the Environmental Assessment Office did
not properly conduct an assessment of risks to
Indigenous women from the Coastal GasLink project when
extending its permits, DiPuma said.</p>
<p>“The EAO said Coastal GasLink would be prepared to
consider doing so in the future. So, instead of creating
a legally binding requirement for them to consider these
harms, they took industry at its word that it would
voluntarily do so at some point in the future.”</p>
<p>Coastal GasLink has also been found out of compliance
with the conditions of its environmental certificate in
more than 50 instances, according to the Environmental
Assessment Office’s compliance program, including by
restricting access to traplines and failing to
adequately dispose of camp garbage.</p>
<p>Despite these many instances of non-compliance, the
Environmental Assessment Office decided the company’s
permit should be extended, DiPuma said.</p>
<p>“They haven’t explained to the public or my client why
that should be.”</p>
<p><strong>Red dresses sentinel as RCMP raid looms</strong><br>
The Unist’ot’en healing centre currently houses the
remaining Wet’suwet’en members and supporters facing
arrest by the RCMP.</p>
<p>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, is designed to provide services to
vulnerable individuals, including youth in trauma
treatment programs.</p>
<p>Tait said the red dresses hanging around the centre —
some of which bear the initials of women people in the
camp have lost — will act as a confrontation to the RCMP
officers performing arrests.</p>
<p>“It’s a chance for the RCMP to confront those women, in
a way, and be held to account on their failure to
protect their safety,” Tait said.</p>
<p>But, she added, it’s also an opportunity for these lost
and voiceless women to stand in solidarity with their
community and family.</p>
<p>“We have a line of red dresses across the bridge
because we think it’s a very powerful statement and it’s
an invitation to the spirits of those women to come and
stand and face the RCMP who are failing to seek justice
on their behalf, who failed to protect their safety by
being complicit in this epidemic that our communities
are facing.”</p>
<p>Tait, who faces imminent arrest herself, said she
believes women have a particular responsibility to
protect Wet’suwet’en territory.</p>
<p>“We are a matrilineal culture, so our women are our
strength. The women make the decisions about the land,
because we know our children depend on the land, they
inherit our territory after we’re gone and that’s all
through the mother’s line. So it really feels like it’s
a deep responsibility for us as women to make sure
there’s territory intact, there’s a safer future for our
children that are coming and that these lands will
remain here and remain a sanctuary for our people.”</p>
<p>The Wet’suwet’en application for a judicial review was
served to Kevin Jardine, associate deputy minister of
the environment and the executive director of the
Environmental Assessment Office, as well as Coastal
GasLink.</p>
<p>DiPuma said her office has yet to hear back from the
substantive parties.</p>
<p>“They’ve got some time to consider their position on
this. It’s up to them to determine if they reconsider
the permit or if they want to go to court.”</p>
<p><em>[Carol Linnitt is a journalist, editor, illustrator
and co-founder of The Narwhal. With files from Amber
Bracken.]</em></p>
<p><em>On February 13, Canada’s CN Rail and Via Rail were
forced to shut down huge sections of their railway
networks as blockades by Mohawk and other Indigenous
activists continued to cripple the country’s
transportation systems. The activists have said they
won’t end their demonstration until the RCMP leaves
the traditional territory of the Wet’suwet’en in
northern British Columbia where hereditary leaders had
been blocking road access to a construction site for
the Coastal GasLink pipeline, a key part of a
$40-billion LNG Canada liquefied natural gas export
project.</em></p>
<p><em>Featured image: Red dresses, signifying missing and
murdered Indigenous women, hang near Unist’ot’en camp
in the Wet’suwet’en First Nation territory in British
Columbia, Canada. , Amber Bracken / The Narwhal</em></p>
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