MORICE WEST FOREST SERVICE ROAD, B.C.—After Monday’s chaotic retreat from the Gitimt’en checkpoint, the mood Tuesday at the Unist’ot’en camp healing lodge was subdued and tense. Windows were covered with blankets.

On the bridge nearby, a gate was topped with barbed wire and monitored by a security camera as Unist’ot’en clan members awaited the inevitable return of police. The RCMP are enforcing an injunction authorizing them to clear the way for construction of a natural-gas pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory.

Around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, spotters along the logging road reported police were on the move again, as a helicopter took off from an RCMP checkpoint and police were conferring with what looked like contractors with trucks.

“I love waking up to the sound of a helicopter,” said one of the Wet’suwet’en land defenders, clutching a mug of hot coffee. Another rushed out to film the aircraft.

Exhausted after Monday’s events, people spent the night sleeping on mats laid out over the floors of the three-storey building.

By the end of the previous day’s clash at the Gitimt’en checkpoint, police had arrested 14 people, while some others fled down the Morice West logging road to the Unist’ot’en camp, about 65 kilometres outside the town of Houston. One of the last people to leave the Gitimt’en checkpoint did so on a snowmachine, felling trees in a bid to stop the police advance.

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The Gitimt’en blockade was the latest act of defiance in a Wet’suwet’en grassroots uprising against the First Nation’s elected band council leadership and its decision to ink a $13-million agreement to support a pipeline. The pipeline project by TransCanada subsidiary Coastal GasLink will bring natural gas through the area to the proposed LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, B.C.

While the band council signed the deal on behalf of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, all five of the clans that make up the nation are opposed to the decision. The clan chiefs, who inherit their positions but are still considered integral leaders of their communities, say the First Nation’s band council only has jurisdiction over the reserve, not their entire traditional territories.

Each Wet’suwet’en clan is made up of a number of houses, also headed by hereditary chiefs. These house chiefs also unanimously supported a decision to block Coastal GasLink from entering their territories.

Speaking in the library of the Office of the Wet’suwet’en in Smithers, B.C., Chief Na’moks donned his traditional red and black regalia ahead of a rally in the town in support of the Wet’suwet’en land defenders.

Chief Na’moks, a Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief also known as John Ridsdale, spoke fiercely of the connection between the land and Wet’suwet’en culture, saying both history and the future are at the heart of the current conflict between the Wet’suwet’en dissenters and Coastal GasLink.

“It’s our land, it’s our people, it’s our air, it’s our water, it’s our future, it’s our past, it’s everything,” he said. “No money can buy this … We lose this, we lose our culture.”

Moments earlier, Chief Na’moks had left a meeting with the RCMP in the boardroom next door, telling them he had other work to do and could not spend time speaking with representatives of a police force that had just the day previous disrespected his people.

“If I’m emotional, it’s because of what they did to our people yesterday,” he said.

“You don’t go and hurt our people and come in here the next day and say ‘I’m sorry’ … You bring out machine guns on our people? Force our people to run? Put our people through trauma? And then next morning ask to meet with us? And they want to shake our hands? No. You don’t do that.”

At the rally itself, Chief Na’moks addressed a crowd of more than 100 people, thanking them for their support and drawing their attention to the ongoing efforts of land defenders.

Other hereditary chiefs and regular Wet’suwet’en nation members spoke to the crowd, including 72-year-old Carmen Nikal, who was arrested the day previous when police broke through the Gitimt’en checkpoint.

Nikal, who was adopted into the Wet’suwet’en nation more than 40 years ago when she married a Wet’suwet’en man, was released from the Houston RCMP detachment the same night as her arrest, along with one other person.

The remainder of the 14 people arrested — whom the RCMP have yet to name — were at that moment in Prince George, appearing before the court to hear their charges, according to Nikal.

Nikal said she felt no fear facing dozens of armed police, positioning herself at a bottleneck along the bridge to ensure officers would have to make their way through her to get farther into the camp. Many of her allies had already been arrested at that point, she said, and she simply did what she felt was right.

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Nikal said she had been charged with civil contempt and was released with a promise to appear before the court on Jan. 14. She had been told she was not prohibited from contacting other individuals who had been involved in the police confrontation, many of whom are friends and family members.

She was, however, banned for the time being from approaching the logging road that leads to the Unist’ot’en and Gitimt’en checkpoints.

She had been bringing her grandchildren to Wet’suwet’en territory for years to teach them about the land where their ancestors had lived and played, she said. And she intended to do so for as long as she lived.

She called her act of civil disobedience a small sacrifice when viewed through the lens of the injustices Indigenous people face daily.

“When I look at what I’ve given up — a few hours to drive (to camp), a few more to drive to Prince George, a record — that is small stuff. Small stuff,” she said.

“When I look at all the Indigenous people who have ... from birth put up with injustice, it’s a lifetime for them. I could walk away any time because I’ve got white skin.”

Mike Ridsdale, a Wet’suwet’en nation member of the Tsayu Clan and environmental assessment co-ordinator for the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, said not only are government and industry ignoring the legitimate environmental concerns of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and people, but in doing so they were bringing shame to the chiefs they sought to work with.

“That shame isn’t just shaming (a chief) in front of the government but it’s shaming him in front of his other members of his house group and his clan, and that’s a disrespect that isn’t tolerated by the hereditary leaders,” he said.

And the chiefs, he said, have a long memory.

“Eventually, government’s going to come around like they have in the past and say, ‘We apologize,’” he said. “But that takes years. And years later the destruction of the land’s already done.”

Back in 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. Hereditary chiefs were expected to gather there later Tuesday to speak to the group and acknowledge the support of people gathering at nearly 60 rallies around the world, one as far away as Italy.

Few civilians are being allowed to go through the police checkpoint aside from Coastal GasLink employees and workers building support infrastructure for those employees.

Fourteen people were arrested during that conflict according to RCMP, including Molly Wickham of the Gitimt’en clan. The RCMP would not confirm the identities of any of those arrested, nor did they give any indication when they would be transferred or when bail hearings would begin.

“As per the injunction issued by the B.C. Supreme Court, anyone who violates the terms of the injunction will be brought before the justice, in Prince George, who issued the injunction,” RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Madonna Saunderson said in an email. But Wickham’s family confirmed Tuesday she had been transferred to Prince George.

As RCMP approached the Gitimt’en barricade on Monday, multiple reporters and protesters at the camp reported that communications signals had been disrupted for several hours. As data service is low in that area, the only communications for most people in the area was a Wi-Fi signal set up via satellite by the Wet’suwet’en.

RCMP in Houston blamed a problem with “one of the satellites” and denied deliberately cutting communications, as they could only reach their own officers via radio. Rogers, Bell and the CRTC have all denied knowledge of disruptions in the area.

With files from Cherise Seucharan

Correction — Jan. 8, 2019: A map included with this story has been altered from a previous version that reversed the positions of the Unist’ot’en and Gitimt’en camps. A portion of this story has been updated to reflect safety and legal concerns, as this is a developing story.

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