Building shared history through resistance

Hey there,

Today I have a story about the power of love and connection in resistance.

“She’s completely pure and alive and beautiful,” Jen Wickham tells me from her house in the small town of Smithers in British Columbia, Canada. “I fell in love with her in 2012, when I went up to Unist’ot’en for the summer, and moved home shortly after.”

The ‘she’ Jen is talking about is a river. The Wedzin Kwa, or the ‘blue and green river’, runs right through Jen’s Wet’suwet’en homeland, which lies around 400 miles north of Vancouver. For generations, Wedzin Kwa has provided the Wet’suwet’en people with fresh water to drink and schools of salmon to eat. But the river, along with the surrounding land – the yintah, as Jen would call it – is far more than a resource to the Wet’suwet’en.

“When you live with the land and the things you consume come from the land, you become a part of the land,” Jen says. The yintah is where Jen expects to be reincarnated time and time again.

It is beautiful. Behind Jen’s house are spruce, pine and quaking aspens – the latter so called because at the slightest wind, the leaves ripple in such a way that it looks like the trees are shivering. Towering above the trees, the snow caps of mountains twinkle in the sun.

The value of the 22,000 square kilometres of Wet’suwet’en land isn’t just recognised by the five clans that live on it. Major industry and national government have long pursued pipeline, logging and mining projects to exploit the territory’s access to natural resources. 

These projects have been opposed by the clans of the Wet’suwet’en – including the construction of the Coastal GasLink (CGL) natural gas pipeline, which cut their territory in two. It was first proposed in the early 2010s and has been contested since. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been heavily involved in enforcing its completion.

The clans reject the national and British Columbian governments’ continued efforts to assert jurisdiction over their territory. As outlined in this story, the Wet’suwet’en hold title and rights to their territory and their Chiefs say they have not consented to the pipeline according to their laws and customs.

Standing as land defenders – activists who fight for land rights and defend the sovereignty of their territories – Jen, her sister Sleydo’ Molly Wickham., Howilhkat Freda Huson and others alongside them have come to the attention of international human rights organisations and media.

Michael Toledano is a Canadian journalist and filmmaker who started reporting from the territory in 2014. He and others have come back to the area again and again (in fact, Michael eventually moved to Smithers himself). Over the years, a deep bond of trust developed between the land defenders and returning journalists. The process of making a record of events, for posterity and protection, became deeply embedded in all of their lives. Even when a journalist wasn’t around, someone would grab a camera and film.

This has meant that many moments of great consequence have been captured. Cameras were there in 2011 as members of the Unist’ot’en clan picked through a huge corridor of felled trees being carved through the land to make way for construction – a discovery which led Howilhkat to quit her job and move into a cabin they built on the construction path.

A decade later, as an RCMP raid brought to an end a 55-day occupation of the land, led by Sleydo’, Michael was right there alongside her inside the tiny structure she was occupying, his lens capturing the teeth of the chainsaw coming through the door as armed RCMP officers forced entry and arrested everyone inside. The recordings of this arrest would be used as evidence of a legal proceeding against the RCMP, which Sleydo’ will tell us more about a little later.

Eventually, the notion of making a documentary came about. Much of the film would feature Sleydo’ and Howilhkat, so it followed on naturally from Wet’suwet’en law that their sisters (Jen and Brenda Michell, respectively) would be co-directors and producers alongside Michael.

“One of our strongest laws translates as ‘you don’t stir another clan’s soup,’” Jen told me. This meant that the different groups represented in the film needed to be properly consulted throughout – every time there was an edit, everyone would input. Wet’suwet’en work on the basis of consensus, so where there were differences of opinions these would have to be worked through.

Jen thinks that this slowed things down a bit, but as a Wet’suwet’en-made film about Wet’suwet’en sovereignty – there was no other way it could be made. The filmmakers didn’t see this as the vision of a select group of people; they saw it as a record of history, which needed to be right by everyone.

The resulting film, Yintah, is breathtaking. The majesty of the land, the fierce spirit of the Wet’suwet’en, their enduring bond to the land, as well as the folly and force of the powers they’re up against, are all woven into a compelling two-hour film. (Jen gives a lot of credit to editor Ryan Mullins.)

As viewers, we are allowed so close to Howilhkat and Sleydo’ (even seeing Sleydo’ go into labour with her third child).  Their personal stories open a window to a wider collective history. Howilhkat describes her grandfather’s cabin on the territory being burned down as colonial forces sought to remove him and other clans from the land. Sleydo’ talks through her discoveries about her grandparents being forced into Catholic residential schools, as well as how her mother endured the “60s Scoop”, when she was ripped from her parents and put into foster care of a white family (a fate many First Nation children of that generation were subjected to). 

“Enraging, inspiring, upsetting, beautiful,” says one online review, a view endorsed by a string of award wins. Screening first at film festivals and in selected venues, Yintah gained a wider audience through airing on Netflix and Canadian national television. Jen’s been pleased to see the film’s capacity to stir up strong feelings in audiences around the world who may have been completely disengaged in this issue.

“We would come out after the Q&A [of a screening] to a wall of these senior white ladies who are like, ‘We want to come to the yintah!’” says Jen. “It was great!”

But perhaps most important is what it means for other groups like the Wet’suwet’en. Jen and the team are taking the film around other Indigenous communities in North America and using it to spark conversations about how those on the frontline can uplift each other’s sovereignty.

“We’re having really raw conversations about the things that we're facing within our individual movements and how we can work together collectively which is so, so important,” says Jen.

“More than anything, we’re having a resurgence, and that can stand alone [from resistance],” she says. “You don’t have to be fighting against something to revitalise your laws and your practices. You can just do it. And we’re seeing it happen.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily identify as a land defender. It’s just natural as somebody who's from here. It’s a way of life that we occupy our territories and that we have a responsibility to uphold our laws on them.

I first met [Michael] Toledano [one of the co-directors and producers of Yintah] when they came out to do a story about us building the cabin, which was not in the path of the pipeline but in this area that was proposed for mining. And then they continued to come back to the territory. They felt that this was a really important story.

I love all of [the filmmakers]. They have dedicated years and years of their lives to our struggle and to documenting it. It’s really special to have relationships with those people and to have gone through so much together and come out the other side.

It was weird at first but I got used to the filming – and as I got to know Toledano and the others, it felt more natural. There was never a plan of, ‘Okay, when this happens, we’re going to get these shots’. Sometimes it would just be a random person holding the camera. It was really organic in that way.

It was really a safety measure also to have things recorded all of the time, because then there was less likely to be any violence that happened towards us. That was one of the biggest reasons why things were filmed. And then it turned out to be really helpful for the film.

~ In November 2021, after 55 days of Wet’suwet’en occupation of land the Coastal GasLink project intended to build on, the RCMP launched a raid on Coyote Camp, where Sleydo’ and others were stationed inside a small metal structure. With guns trained on those inside, RCMP officers shredded the door with a chainsaw, forced their way inside and removed Sleydo’ and those with her (including Michael, who continued filming throughout).~

It’s hard to explain what is happening in those moments. Because of the intensity of it, you’re in your body but not really in your head. But I think it’s critical the cameras were there. If they weren’t, it would have been a very scary place to be … 63 kilometers out on a dirt-logging road, surrounded by RCMP and Coastal GasLink security.

~ Sleydo' and the seven other people inside were arrested on suspicion of breaching a court order to allow pipeline workers access to the land. In July 2022, she and 19 other activists were formally charged, a move Amnesty International called “appalling”. Sleydo’ was one of three convicted, all of whom filed an abuse of process application against the RCMP. ~

Part of that [abuse of process] hearing was to listen to the mics that were on us on the day of the arrest. The police didn’t turn off the camera or my mic when they took them from us, so they were recording the whole time. They caught the police making racist and derogatory comments about Indigenous women and other Indigenous people. And that was enough to convince the judge that there was an abuse and misconduct by the RCMP.

~ The judge decided that the RCMP had breached the land defenders’ rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and described their conduct as “extremely serious” and “not a one-off occurrence.” He said that the multiple offensive and discriminatory comments were “potentially a sign of systemic attitudinal issue.” He agreed that, as Sleydo’ and others had insisted at the time, the RCMP should have had a warrant to enter the structures – but ruled that, nonetheless, the convictions against Sleydo’ and her compatriots would stand as well. ~

In terms of court, we go to sentencing in October… In terms of my life, we’re doing lots of cool projects on the yintah, building infrastructure and harvesting medicines and propagating plant medicines.

I want people to be inspired. I want people to feel like there is hope. Even though the pipeline was built and that was a really bad part of it, there are still so many beautiful things that happened and amazing wins.

My ask to others wouldn't be to just stand up for us but to stand up for what's happening in your area! Be aware. Really take action in a way that's collaborative and supportive of Indigenous struggles – and that takes on colonialism and all of the things that are destroying our planet. That’s my request of the people that ask, ‘What can we do?’. Because there’s so much that we can do in order to save our planet and all be humans together.”

That’s got me inspired – so what are we waiting for? Let’s get out and stand up for the things and people we care about!

Until next week,