GIDIMT’EN—A radio’s crackle broke the night’s freezing stillness, echoing inside the shelter that was once a school bus.

“Radio check. Come in, over.”

Then a pause and a reply, “Roger, checking in, over,” as various positions around the Gidimt’en checkpoint camp stayed in contact through the darkness.

Two Wet’suwet’en land defenders, wrapped tight in sleeping bags on a foam mattress, spoke in whispers to each other as they discussed what would come with the dawn.

Police would arrive. They would be heavily armed.

“Whatever they say, don’t take a plea deal,” one defender murmured to the other as they drifted into sleep. Outside the bus, beyond the safety and warmth of the wood-stove, their colleagues continued preparations long into the night.

Tensions had been mounting for days, as the camp’s intelligence network fed back information about an RCMP buildup in the surrounding towns. Dozens of police trucks were reported — command vehicles and officers from tactical units, too. They’d all come to enforce a recently granted B.C. Supreme Court injunction to allow pipeline workers entrance through two Wet’suwet’en checkpoints.

The camps are part of an decade-long effort by Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders and members to protect unceded lands from pipeline construction. At the Gidimt’en checkpoint, they’d fortified a gate and blocked the only bridge entering their territory.

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Monday afternoon would unfold as a battle on Wet’suwet’en traditional territory in the remote mountains of Northern B.C. Militarized RCMP officers carrying assault weapons, backed up by sniper rifles and at one point hefting a chainsaw, stormed a barricade erected by members of the Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en people.

Coastal GasLink is seeking to build a pipeline that would carry fracked liquified natural gas to a terminal in Kitimat, B.C. But the conflict is about far more than a pipeline. The Wet’suwet’en people are on the front line of a national struggle to define what rights and sovereignty and consent really mean in a country founded on 300 years of colonial oppression.

The night before the police raid, the stars above the Gidimt’en checkpoint sparkled in the cold. Near midnight, a land defender stood at the locked gate, telling all who approached that they could not enter without protocol.

The land behind the gate is unceded Gidimt’ed territory, and the clan treats entry to their lands in much the same way as other nations treat border crossings. There are questions to be asked, positions and intentions stated, before they decide whether to allow someone to enter.

At the Gidimt’en checkpoint gate, camp matriarch Molly Wickham asked those questions with seriousness, considering every answer carefully. This is not a simple formality; for the Wet’suwet’en, the issue of consent goes to the very heart of their sovereignty.

Inside the camp, preparations for the coming raid continued into the small hours before daybreak. The temperature hovered near -20 C. Land defenders huddled close to fires or hunkered in a kitchen tent drinking coffee. Very few slept more than an hour or two that night.

Supporters in nearby Houston and Smithers, B.C. were keeping tabs on the RCMP. Word came in late Sunday night that police had requested a hotel breakfast at 5 a.m. Monday morning, an indication they could be preparing to move on the checkpoint at first light.

Shortly after 4 a.m. the snarl of chainsaws reverberated around the camp as land defenders began putting the final touches on their fortifications. Barbed wire was added to the gate. A log was felled, stripped and cantilevered out from the bridge and held in place by an old bus, creating a perch from which one young man would spend the day hanging in a hammock.

As the morning wore on, two more protesters huddled inside a metal-framed box and locked their arms across the checkpoint gate. Other land defenders locked themselves to the bus’ undercarriage, all of them putting their safety in the way of the expected RCMP advance.

Sitting around a fire near the bridge as the sky began to brighten, one land defender made the rounds handing out breathing masks and double-layers of rubber gloves.

“If mace starts flying and you get it on your hands, it’s really important that you not touch anything because you can contaminate it,” she said.

Kneeling atop the metal box behind the gate, Sabina Dennis pleaded with police to back down.

You don’t have to do this, she implored. We are doing this for your children, too, she said.

“Don’t you know that we love you?”

Concern was etched across Cpl. Benjamin Smith face as the RCMP Division Liaison co-ordinator made one last attempt to convince Wickham and the other land defenders to open the Gidimt’en checkpoint gate.

Despite hours of negotiation, including police allowing hereditary chiefs to provide supplies to the camp and hand-delivering the supplies himself, Wickham refused to yield to Cpl. Smith’s request.

According to her laws, she couldn’t. It wasn’t her call. Of course they would open the gate, she said, if police had the consent of the hereditary chiefs.

“You do not have that consent,” she repeated over and over, like a mantra.

Cpl. Smith sighed. OK, he said, but Wickham’s refusal meant he was turning operational control over to the phalanx of blue-clad officers waiting behind him. Some of the officers glanced at each other, mirroring the worry on Smith’s face.

At the head of the column were members of the federal force’s emergency response teams. Clad head-to-foot in camo green with AR-15 assault rifles slung across their chests, they stomped impatiently and kicked at the gate. On the flanks, snipers with high-calibre bolt-action weapons scanned the camp through binoculars.

The screaming began as soon as the officers started climbing. After threatening to cut through the gate with a chainsaw, tactical officers brought forward an extendable ladder and leaned it against the barricade. As their weight pressed the wooden gate inward, the two land defenders locked to the gate below began screaming in pain.

“Stop! You’re breaking their arms!” Molly Wickham cried.

“We’re coming over the top. You need to move back,” the officers’ commander shouted.

As the ranks of police pressed forward, the gate heaved back and forth. From where the police stood, they could not directly see the people locked to the gate below, but numerous protesters shouted at them to stop and showed them pictures of the people whose arms might shatter if the gate was forced open.

The first officer over the wall collided with a protester, and both crashed to the ground. The officer’s rifle swung wildly as he tackled the man, pressing his face into the frozen ground. Another officer in blue piled on as more flooded over the weakening barricade.

Some protesters simply stood their ground, linked arms and waited to be arrested. Others fought back, grappling with police.

Dennis and Wickham were singing. One woman held an eagle feather aloft, as more officers tumbled over the gate.

As the police solidified their initial breach, the advance slowed. The tactical officers began to pull back, ceding control to their less heavily armed colleagues in blue. The division liaison officers came forward again, and the remaining protesters were given a choice: either leave the bridge now or be arrested. By day’s end, 14 people would be in police custody.

As the arrests continued on the bridge, other land defenders initiated a tactical retreat.

Behind a bus blocking the bridge, land defenders set a barricade on fire, sending flames a dozen feet into the air. Even farther back, they felled a giant tree over the road, surrounded it with firewood and doused it in gasoline. Protesters waited until the last second to light it, as others raced to get across before access was cut.

A couple hundred metres behind, in the main camp, all was chaos. Earlier, as police prepared to breach the gate, the camp’s kitchen tent had caught fire. It was quickly extinguished without injury, but now people raced around it, grabbing what supplies they could and piling into trucks.

“Let’s, go, let’s go!” shouted one driver, counting down from five before stepping on the gas.

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A land defender on a snow machine was one of the last to flee the scene. In the fading light, he raced up the road toward the Unist’ot’en Healing Lodge, stopping occasionally to rev up his chainsaw and drop more trees across the road in a bid to slow the police advance.

Finally arriving at the Unist’ot’en camp as night fell, he climbed wearily over top of the barbed wire and went in search of dry clothes and a warm bed.

Behind the gate at the Unist’ot’en camp the next morning, Herby Jim said he didn’t blame the RCMP for Monday’s attack. A Wet’suwet’en man who came to Unist’ot’en territory not for politics but for healing, Jim lays the blame for the conflict squarely at Justin Trudeau’s feet.

“I think the cops are just doing their jobs as Justin Trudeau told them to,” Jim said. “He has responsibility for this, not the officers themselves.”

But not everyone at the Unist’ot’en camp shared Jim’s perspective. After Monday’s initial clash at the Gidimt’en checkpoint, the mood inside the camp was tense.

At a meeting after breakfast on Tuesday, camp members talked through their plans to stay safe if the police came in hard. The doors to the healing lodge itself would remain locked at all times, the windows all covered over with blankets or sheets of paper. If the police forced their way in, everyone was to gather in the dining area and sit down peacefully. There were ear plugs, equipped for fear of police flash grenades.

When police helicopters buzzed overhead, camp members were careful to remain indoors. After the madcap dash from Gidimt’en, many of those involved took steps to disguise their appearance, changing their clothes or facial hair lest they be identified.

Meanwhile, outside the police barricades 38 kilometres away, word of Monday’s clashes had spread around the world. Rallies in support of the Wet’suwet’en sprang up in towns across B.C., across Canada and as far away as Europe. In Ottawa, Trudeau was forced to delay and relocate a meeting with other Indigenous leaders because of protests.

As news of what happened reached Prince George, B.C. to the east, Jennifer Pighin was overcome with worry.

“It was heart wrenching and tear jerking,” she said Thursday.

For Pighin and her 12-year-old twins, spending time at the Unist’ot’en camp over the holidays was a welcome way to get out of the northern B.C. city where they live and reconnect with the Wet’suwet’en land of their heritage. The camaraderie at the camp was “wonderful,” she said, as they gained knowledge and exercised their right to be on their land.

So when the RCMP drove those arrested at the Gidimt’en checkpoint into Prince George, Pighin was waiting. She flashed her lights and honked her horn in support. She took the next day off work to go to court; and when the land defenders got out of jail, she helped co-ordinate hotel rooms and the Thursday morning breakfast they all shared.

Pighin, who’s been involved in the Unist’ot’en camp for years, said the group became more diverse after the B.C. Supreme Court injunction against it increased awareness. That diversity is clear in the group arrested on Monday. They include clan members defending their own traditional Wet’suwet’en territory, land defenders from First Nations across the country as well as allies from settler communities. Wherever they came from, now they’re all fighting the same legal battle — and it’s just getting started.

Back inside the conflict zone, a small group of Wet’suwet’en land defenders kept vigil around a small blaze set up a few metres from the RCMP checkpoint, tending it through Monday night.

Few civilians were being allowed through the police checkpoint, aside from Coastal GasLink employees and workers building support infrastructure.

Most of Tuesday, both inside and outside the lines, was spent in tense anticipation of another police raid. Late Tuesday evening, Wickham was finally able to call the camp herself. Camp members crowded around a cellphone connected to the tenuous satellite Wi-Fi and cheered when they heard her voice.

“I’m so proud of all of you and just know that we’re in the right,” Wickham said. “There is so much support out there for us.

“We are not leaving anyone behind. We are going to stay here (at the courthouse) until everyone that was arrested in released,” she said.

By Wednesday morning, more than a dozen people had gathered at the kilometre 27 road block.

A framed tent with an airtight stove had been set up nearby. Sandwiches and coffee were in constant production to fuel the vigil that had begun when the RCMP first set up its line at the edge of the “zone of exclusion.”

People had been coming and going, with smaller groups keeping the fire through the night, since Monday.

Cups full of steaming moose soup were passed around, and lumber from a hulking, snow-covered pile of donated 2x4s was periodically piled onto the fire to keep it high and ward off the cold.

Members of the RCMP Aboriginal Policing Service spoke quietly and respectfully with those gathered around the fire, who included both Wet’suwet’en nation members and supporters from other territories and settler communities.

Some of the supporters had heard the RCMP blockade would be lifted that day and had been waiting to be allowed up to the Unist’ot’en camp to see loved ones or bring them supplies. One man said he had driven his pickup from Vancouver Island with 700 pounds of food — from canned goods to bags of flour, yeast and salt — to buoy the Unist’ot’en larders.

Smudges were performed and prayers were said as those gathered — including police — respectfully removed their hats and cast their eyes to the fire.

Eventually, people began to sing and a guitar was passed around for anyone who had the inclination to play. A young boy sang “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,” a cappella to the joy of those huddled around the fire.

Behind the gate at the Unist’ot’en camp, word began to trickle in that a deal to end the standoff might be possible. One of the hereditary chiefs messaged the Unist’ot’en camp to say he was on his way up the logging road with “10 apple pies,” though no one knew exactly what that meant.

Around 3 p.m., the sound of vehicles on the road echoed over the mountains. Freda Huson and Brenda Michell, integral presences at the healing lodge for years, watched anxiously from the gate, not knowing what to expect.

Behind a massive snow plow, a convoy of vehicles approached. They parked at the top of the hill leading down to the Wedzin Kwa River. Slowly, people began filing down the road.

A hereditary chief was spotted through binoculars: Chief Madeek of the Gidimt’en clan. Behind him came other camp supporters, other chiefs, the RCMP liaison officers and a gaggle of journalists. The police approached the gates cautiously, but with a word from the chiefs, the gates were opened and everyone entered.

As night fell at the police roadblock, the small crowd swelled some, as supporters who had been following the Unist’ot’en negotiations arrived with news a conclusion seemed imminent. And sure enough, a caravan of vehicles soon began to arrive from behind the police line. Hereditary chiefs, including Chief Madeek and Chief Na’moks, climbed out of their trucks and embraced friends and family. They had spent nearly two hours in a tense, closed-door meeting at the Unist’ot’en camp with the RCMP but had finally reached a tentative deal to abide by the injunction in exchange for the protection of the Unist’ot’en Healing Lodge and an end to the RCMP roadblocks.

A meeting would be held the next morning at the Office of the Wet’suwet’en in Smithers. Some people decided they would begin the long drive out of the bush along the snowy logging road, while others dug in to keep the fire burning through the night.

As public debate continues about what happened on Monday, one thing is clear: One group violated the other’s laws. But depending on your perspective, either the protesters violated Canadian law by refusing to abide by a court injunction, or the police violated Wet’suwet’en law by invading their sovereign, unceded territory.

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In either case, while the physical battle may be over for now, the larger conflict is certainly not.

The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs still have legal avenues they could pursue. The Coastal GasLink project has future permits yet to be granted, and the National Energy Board is working to determine whether the whole project should actually fall under its jurisdiction. If that happens, the chiefs could fight to get standing as participants in that process.

Either way, as Chief Na’moks made clear after Thursday’s announcement, nothing about the detente means the chiefs are giving up their fight.

With files from Ainslie Cruickshank

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