“Hello, how’s everyone doing tonight?” the first officer asked gamely, walking forward with his arms at his sides, palms facing forward. “Everyone good? Anything you guys need?”

“Cops!” she shouted as the first RCMP officer’s boot hit the snowy ground. “Someone get a camera.” More people scrambled from the fire to join Dennis as a second officer got out of the truck. Someone started filming the interaction with a cellphone. Now that a standoff between RCMP and Wet’suwet’en First Nation land defenders who oppose a pipeline has entered a fourth week, the mood behind police lines is understandably tense.

“No, like all the way out of our territory,” Merriman said, not laughing. The officers stopped approaching. After a few more words, they got back in their pickup truck and reversed slowly back down the road into the night.

“I can understand that,” the officer replied with a wry smile, as though his colleagues weren’t—at that moment—manning a roadblock limiting access to this very camp.

"All the way out of our territory," Cody Merriman told two RCMP officers.

During last year’s raid, police deployed tactical officers armed with assault and sniper rifles, at one point brandishing a chainsaw. The officers forced their way over barbed wire and a reinforced gate, amid the screams of land defenders, some of whom had chained themselves to the gate itself.

The company has agreements for access with all the First Nations band councils along the pipeline route, including those within the Wet’suwet’en Nation. But the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs say the band councils do not have jurisdiction over the traditional territory outside the reserve boundaries and should not have agreed to the project.

Last January, militarized RCMP raided a blockade set up by the Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation to prevent Coastal GasLink from building a natural gas pipeline through their traditional territory.

The watch camp where Dennis and Merriman are stationed was set up to monitor police movements along a roadway leading to more established Wet’suwet’en camps. The new roadblocks and checkpoints have become a sort of slow-moving chess game in a pipeline controversy that goes back nearly a decade.

Among them was Gidimt’en clan spokesperson Sleydo, a.k.a. Molly Wickham. Together she and Dennis became the faces of last year’s police violence. Wickham herself was arrested.

As the police left the watch camp Friday night, Dennis, Merriman, and the others returned to the fire and huddled around a cellphone, watching video from the aftermath of last year’s raid.

On December 20, the Guardian published an explosive report alleging that the RCMP officers at the raid had pre-authorization to use snipers and “lethal overwatch.” One RCMP commander reportedly said to “use as much violence as you want” against the Gidimt’en gate.

“I think we’re definitely more prepared this year, mentally, emotionally for what might happen,” she said. “It’s a good reminder of how much caution we have to take, and how much risk we are at in this position.”

“It’s a weird feeling,” Wickham said, of seeing the video. Last year “I was still in this traumatic bubble of trying to regain my footing and make sure all of our people were safe.”

Watching the year-old video in the flickering firelight, Wickham’s face is set hard. Dennis dashed tears from her eyes. Just over a year later, and it seems little has changed.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary Chief Na’Moks, also known as John Ridsdale, said Cullen’s work as the region’s member of parliament gives him more credibility than most politicians. “As you know, we have been wanting to meet with government decision-makers,” Na’Moks told VICE on Monday. “Nathan has lived on our territories. We trust him.”

On Monday, B.C. Premier John Horgan announced the appointment of former Skeena-Bulkely Valley MP Nathan Cullen as an official liaison between the provincial government and the hereditary chiefs.

In the wake of the bombshell story, the hereditary chiefs issued an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink, kicking the company off their land and blockading the road again. They demand meetings with the federal and provincial government decision-makers, triggering the current stalemate.

That demand means the prospect of a repeat of last year’s raid still hangs over the heads of everyone on the front line.

Na’Moks said while Cullen’s appointment is a positive step forward, ultimately he expects it will only delay the inevitable. The only acceptable outcome for the hereditary chiefs, he said, is for Coastal GasLink to peacefully withdraw from his people’s territory.

“In the end, this is what victory looks like,” he said. “You remove the RCMP checkpoint and the CGL workers, and this is it. We govern the territories, and they’re industry-free sovereign zones, with an access point controlled by Indigenous people.”

Since the checkpoint went up, Wickham and Merriman have been doing the lion’s share of logistical work, ferrying supplies through the police lines to the watch camp and making sure everyone is safe. Juggling that while also raising a family together has put a lot of stress on both of them.

The RCMP roadblock isn’t making things easier, Merriman said.

“It’s trapped people back here (at the watch camp) because they’ve threatened to briefly detain anyone who leaves,” Merriman said, adding that anyone who does leave and isn’t on the RCMP’s list of approved travellers will not be allowed back in.