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The pipeline, which would run from Dawson Creek in the northeast to Kitimat in the west, has been in the works since 2012.

Some of the pipeline will be built on unceded traditional Wet’suwet’en First Nation lands over which, because of a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1997, no Aboriginal title has been determined.

Coastal GasLink has negotiated agreements with all of the elected bands along the 670-kilometre proposed route, for whom the project promises real jobs and money for people who live without the opportunity, not to mention creature comforts, their non-Aboriginal cousins in southern Canada take for granted.

Last summer, Coastal GasLink also awarded about $620 million in conditional contracts to northern Indigenous businesses, with another $400 million anticipated.

But the Wet’suwet’en First Nation is made up of five clans, with 13 different houses.

And though the elected representatives of the bands most directly affected by the planned pipeline are on board, the hereditary chiefs — or most of them, anyway — who have jurisdiction over clan territories are not.

The first is, ‘who speaks for Indigenous people?’ The other is, ‘how will we close the gap between our low standard of living and that of most non-Indigenous Canadians?’

According to the company, what Coastal GasLink really needs access to is just a bridge. As a spokesman said in a statement issued after the judge’s decision, “The camp established next to the bridge will remain as it is… We see no reason why the camp cannot continue with its activities. We simply need to use the public bridge to access our pipeline right of way.”