Wetʼsuwetʼen

I know hundreds of them.

What about the Wet'suwet'en? Has anybody asked the Wet'suwet'en what they think of this? Do they want special privileges in the EU? Because I imagine they do.

I think they could probably claim to be even more of a distinct nation than Quebec, you know, if they really want to have a fight about it.

But then again, this kind of obvious question just never seems to be asked, really, does it? Certainly not in Quebec.

Episode 38 is part three in a four-part series titled Disarming Bill C-5, Indigenous Defense of Land and Democracy.

In part three, we pick up with host Jessica Murray, introducing Eve Saint, Wet'suwet'en land defender, speaking on Indigenous-led voices organizing for a just future, rooted in the Eighth Fire Prophecy.

Eve Saint... is a Wet'suwet'en land offender, mother and daughter of Hereditary Chief Woos.

Eve was present at Giddenden Checkpoint in 2020 during the RCMP's militarized invasion of unceded Wet'suwet'en territory and has been resisting coastal gas link ever since.

In recent years, she's turned to financial pressure as a strategy, leading an international delegation of Indigenous land offenders to RBC's annual general meeting for three consecutive years, contributing to real policy shifts at the bank.

Eve is co-founder and lead coordinator of Eighth Fire Rising, a network of Indigenous land defenders opposing the wave of federal and provincial legislation, including Bill C-5 and 5 that threatens Indigenous rights and stewardship.

And it's really us.

It's up to us, the people that need to stand up and fight back.

And we've seen what's happened with highly contested pipelines in the past with coastal gasoline, which supplies LNG.

That led to a shutdown of Canada as people came out to support the Wet'suwet'en and other Indigenous nations who were fighting that project.

We forget that.

That was happening right before the pandemic lockdowns.

So Dale Culver was an Indigenous man.

35-year-old father of three, a member of the Wet'suwet'en and Gitxsan First Nations.

Police say he matched the description of someone casing cars, while families say he was simply biking home.

And he was

And somehow one day I really just got annoyed with the news here in Canada.

I live in Toronto and there was a week, I think back in 2022, when, you know, the RCMP who are the federal police force, they were, pretty much, you know, cutting off these indigenous land defenders, the Wet'suwet'en people who were fighting against, you know, further infractions on their territories.

And they were being met with, you know, getting carted off to jail and being charged.

And at the same time, we had this so-called freedom trucker convoy wreaking havoc across the country with zero impediment by said federal police.

Hi, my name is Yves Saint.

I'm Wet'suwet'en and I'm a Shkegwuk land offender and financial divestment campaigner for Giddemden Checkpoint.

And I am co-founder of Eighth Fire Rising and I am based in Toronto.

Hi, thanks for having us.

So Jennifer, let's take broader initiatives and just apply it to Berg.

Berg does sit on the Wet'suwet'en territory.

Talk about building in durable consent for what you're building up there.

Yeah, well, I would start by saying, you know, genuine, durable consent I don't think comes in one uniform, tidy package.

And by that, I mean, we have deliberately engaged with the hereditary chief governance structure, which is fundamentally important to knowledge that that reaches into structures like clans and houses and members that fall within those.

We've also similarly deliberately engaged with elected chief and council And those elected individuals come through the Indian Act and are, you know, kind of through an election cycle brought into their positions of leadership for communities.

Our goal is that through that engagement with both levels, we are, again, building trust, transparency, and quite frankly reaching the maximum number of Wet'suwet'en members and people to really understand who we are as a company and to understand what the Bird Cocker Project represents by way of a project and all of that in terms of its impacts and their interests and the benefits and the opportunities and the mitigations.

So we're really trying to canvas broadly.

She was also known to wear wigs of differing colors.

Tamara belongs to the First Nations tribe Moricetown Band of Wet'suwet'en, and this reservation is right off Highway 16.

Next, the case of Jean Virginia Sampar.

On October 14, 1971, 18-year-old Jean Virginia Sampar was reported missing after having spent the evening with her cousin Alvin.

Turning thousands of kilometers westward to another massive energy project, the Coastal GasLink Pipeline in BC, it's yet another case of indigenous opposition met with overwhelming force, political, legal, and ultimately physical.

Backed by band councils along the pipeline's 670-kilometer path, it was resisted by the hereditary chiefs of all five Wet'suwet'en clans.

Ultimately, CGL would get its way, thanks to a court injunction secured by its owner, Calgary-based TC Energy, an order executed on more than one occasion by a paramilitary arm of the BCRCMP known as the Community Industry Response Group, or CIRG for short.

That included a raid on Wet'suwet'en checkpoints in November 2021.

An assault I discussed days later with Indigenous rights lawyer Chris Statnick, beginning with a small yet spirited solidarity rally by members of long-standing Wet'suwet'en allies, the Gitxsan.

And joining me now from what is currently known as New Hazleton, British Columbia, Chris Statnick.

Chris, welcome to Media Indigena.

Yes, I'm here in Gitxsan Nation territory within the house territory of Spoke, who is the Gitxsan hereditary leader who holds title to this land.

We're still present.

I'm actually a member of Kletli Tene, but I have Wet'suwet'en French and Italian ancestry.

and I am a huge proponent of language and culture so I sit here as both a member of the local nation but also an indigenous settler with Wet'suwet'en ancestry as well as non-indigenous ancestry and so how I got into education was when I was going to school I thoroughly loved what I was learning but I wasn't connecting and I thought we need more indigenous people in the education system so I decided I'd be one of those people.

And as I got into education, it was really important to me to give back to the community that welcomed me in.

So I got to learn a lot and spend a lot of time with Claytley elders and knowledge holders with people on the river fishing and learning a little bit of the language and promoting that.