But despite Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ousting in October, which may mark the end of a nearly decade-long era of oil and gas expansion in Canada, supporters of the camp have little faith that the solution to their struggles lies within the electoral system.

While power has shifted in the Canadian government, some in the industry have updated their strategies, as well. After engaging with First Nations and citing the potential impact of pipelines on water flows into the Wedzin Kwah (the First Nation name for the Morice River), TransCanada recently announced a rerouting of its Coastal GasLink proposal, moving 34 miles of the path 3 miles north — avoiding the permanent structures erected by the Unist’ot’en along the Wedzin Kwah, but still cutting through the clan’s territory. Chevron has remained intent on its route for the Pacific Trail Pipeline.

As for the Northern Gateway, newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may have killed the pipeline with a recent decision to ban oil tankers on British Columbia’s north coast, although the company remains committed to its construction. The Unist’ot’en are quick to celebrate incremental victories. Shell’s recent suspension of its Arctic drilling operation and President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline mark not only success for their allies, but for the Earth itself.

But Mel Bazil, a man of Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en heritage and a longtime supporter of the Unist’ot’en, believes the situation remains urgent: Indigenous peoples have already begun to face the harsh realities of climate change around the world. “[The land] needs healing,” says Bazil. “We can’t depend on it in completion right now — there’s so much of it that’s in pain. Part of that healing is leaving it alone, allowing it to regenerate — the Earth can take care of herself. But we have to step in front of new companies looking to destroy it further.”

Despite resistance from hereditary leaders, industry officials say they established their projects with significant First Nations support. Chevron officials say all 16 governmental bands along the proposed path have joined its First Nations Limited Partnership and that the project will bring economic benefits to those communities — $137.4 million in contracts awarded to First Nations businesses, or 85 percent of the contracts. TransCanada claims its project would have similar benefits, saying its updated route is a direct result of consultation with Aboriginal groups.

But Huson is not looking for short-term benefits. She believes the elected chief system has been co-opted by the Canadian government, often working against their traditional law for the negligible short-term benefit for the clans on reserve.

The Unist’ot’en’s fight is for more than preserving land; the clan is taking a stand for traditional ways and against an industry that has contributed so much to climate change.

It is early evening at the camp. A young man from the Sucker Creek Cree First Nation named Nipawi Mahihkan Misit Kakinoosit (“Standing Wolf Paw”) bellows for the volunteers to gather for the pre-dinner prayer circle. His voice reaches everyone easily with little more to cut through than the drizzle of a sunshower and the wind through the trees. A small group of volunteers walks out to join from the kitchen, where they have been playing music and working to prepare dinner: salmon pasta, fried bear fat, deer tripe, celery, and roasted carrots.

Nothing goes to waste. Julia Michaelis, a longtime volunteer at the camp, says the meals maintain morale, marking the one time each day the entire group can talk and enjoy each other’s company. “There’s a lot of hard work,” she says. “There’s a lot of physical labor. People are cold. People are missing their families. We worry about what’s going to happen with the confrontation. And so it’s this one time where everybody sits down together for half an hour or an hour and enjoys something together.”

Many indigenous volunteers commit to the frontlines like this. Other volunteers have come from around the world, many who have spent their lives embedded in the same fevered Western culture the clan defends itself against. Huson attributes virtually all of the camp’s volunteer support to the work of activist Zoe Blunt, who in 2012 bought a 48-passenger bus, filled it with volunteer and supplies, and traveled to the Unist’ot’en Camp. The annual Unist’ot’en Action Camp includes a week of building structures, workshops on decolonization, and a bridging of the divide between indigenous and non-indigenous cultures.

For those who come from privileged backgrounds, the camp strips away those attitudes — a prerequisite for any successful act of solidarity.

“We live in the truth,” says Toghestiy. “It encourages people to walk away from a mindset that they may have been raised in, that they may be working for, that they may be empowering. It forces them to question that, and once they begin to question that, they start to re-establish a set of moral values within themselves that will change them and begin changing people around them.”

In nearby Houston, B.C., workers in reflective uniforms compare the lengths of their truck beds over breakfast at a local diner. The town’s major industries — logging, mining, and tourism based heavily on steelhead fishing — represented the most acute threat to the unceded Unist’ot’en territory prior to the recent threat of pipelines.

While many of the Unist’ot’en’s greatest obstacles are products of a parochial Western economic system that relies heavily on the type of work done by the clan’s closest Canadian neighbors, camp leaders are forgiving of individuals within the mainstream culture. Those who work with energy companies, as well as those representing their reservations in governmental bands, often make decisions driven by financial need. But Huson is quick to point out that any personal ill will toward them is misguided.

For First Nations, pipeline deals often mean immediate relief for their communities, where unemployment is widespread and more than 25 percent of children live below the poverty line. For Canadians working in the oil industry it’s much the same — earning a living through the mainstream economy is the only option available to provide for their families.

“People make decisions depending on where they’re at and depending on the information they have,” Huson says. “If they don’t have all the information, they’re going to make bad decisions. It’s not their character making them, so you don’t need to bash their character. You just have to question them. ‘How did you arrive at the decision? Do you know all the information? Do you know all of the facts?’ I just tell people, ‘Educate yourselves.’”

As word of the Unist’ot’en occupation has spread, education has become a cornerstone of the camp’s mission. And the cultural drive behind their stand, supporter Mel Bazil says, has created a shockwave among those waking up to the realities of climate change. “It’s a reciprocal culture; it never really ended,” he says. “To share that knowledge outwardly to other grassroots folks — migrants and grassroots settlers, as well as other indigenous nations — it’s been very, very powerful to see our people come together. Not just in the face of devastation and destruction, but to survive and to understand each other.”

Few places on Earth remain as pristine as the Unist’ot’en ancestral lands. Deer, grouse, and the occasional moose or black bear are still hunted and trapped. Berries are gathered. Plants used for medicines still blanket the land. Salmon still make their seasonal runs past the territory with a regularity no longer seen in areas where waterways have been polluted or disturbed. The water from the fast-flowing Wedzin Kwah, which the clan calls its lifeblood, can be drunk straight from the river. In the words of one volunteer, the sound of the river “is very calming and very beautiful. It’s like a thousand whispers. You can just feel so much power, but it’s also very, very gentle.”

First Nations whose territories lie in other Canadian provinces find their ancestral lands restricted by treaties and offering them fewer opportunities to instruct their children on the cultural practices of hunting, trapping, fishing, or gathering berries and medicines outside their impoverished, government-sanctioned reserves. Chief Toghestiy remembers learning traditional ways of survival as a boy. His grandparents took him out onto his clan’s territory and taught him how to hunt, fish, and trap. He would often return with enough trout to feed his entire family. They journeyed to the outer reaches of the mountains and pointed out the boundary lines; his grandparents explained it would someday be his responsibility to protect everything within those boundaries.

For those who may have skipped a generation in learning this responsibility, the Unist’ot’en’s stand acts as a lesson. “There’s a lot of people that come out here with children, and they’re fearless,” Toghestiy says. “They want their children to see: This is people occupying their lands. This is people protecting their territory.”

Living by traditional methods was largely absent for the parents and grandparents of today’s First Nations youth. Niiga Payon Nooke Bineeshe Wook, an Aamjiwnaang man, grapples with whether he will even register his young child with a Canadian birth certificate or within his own Nation’s system. He comes to the Unist’ot’en camp from southwestern Ontario’s Chemical Valley, an area filled with more than 60 chemical plants that have engulfed several First Nations territories. The international border drawn along the St. Clair River is all that divides his land from several more in neighboring Michigan. The First Nations in this area, the most highly polluted in Canada, have endured a string of bizarre health consequences, from a ratio of two females born for every one male to staggering rates of lung cancer and miscarriages.

While at the Unist’ot’en camp, he experienced his first successful grouse hunt — a skill he had put off learning but one that ultimately will aid him in supporting his family. Toghestiy, passing along the lessons of his grandparents, accompanied him.