Gidimt'en Civil Suit
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 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 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.
Full civil suit can be found here.
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.