Pro-development voices being silenced
FIRST NATIONS Drowned out by environmental activists
EDMONTON • First Nations leaders who are pro-resource development say they are being drowned out by environmental activists who have co-opted a protest movement started by anti-pipeline hereditary chiefs. They’re also raising questions about who speaks for the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.
“We feel like we’ve been hijacked by the protesters who have their own agenda on this,” said Theresa Tait Day, whose hereditary name is Wi’haliy’te. “They’ve used our people to advance their agenda.”
Tait Day, president of a group called the Wet’suwet’en Matrilineal Coalition who was stripped of her title of hereditary chief after supporting the Coastal GasLink project, testified at a parliamentary committee in Ottawa on Tuesday. According to a statement released by Tait Day, only a limited number of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs oppose the pipeline and the broader community wants it to proceed, including most of the elected chiefs.
“I think that it’s very ironic that environmentalists are interfering in our business since they actually killed our way of life by stopping the fur trade,” said Dan George, a Wet’suwet’en elected band chief for Burns Lake. “I think it’s started out as a Wet’suwet’en issue and it will be fixed as a Wet’suwet’en issue.”
Tait Day said she believes there’s a feedback system between the protesters and the hereditary chiefs. “They feel like they’re being listened to by the protesters when the protesters have their own agenda and the hereditary (chiefs) have used those protesters to prop themselves up,” she said.
Tait Day, who identifies herself as a hereditary sub-chief in the House Beside the Fire in the Small Frog Clan, told the committee that the protesters are compromising her community’s well-being.
“The protest organizers are conveniently hiding beneath our blanket as Indigenous people, while forcing their policy goals at our expense,” Tait Day said in a statement.
The degree to which this is true is a matter of debate, and those who oppose pipeline construction have also raised the question of who is qualified to speak on behalf of the Wet’suwet’en people.
After Tait Day spoke on Tuesday, the Twitter account for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, one of the protest sites for those opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline, attempted to discredit Tait Day. “The Wet’suwet’en Matriarch’s (sic) Coalition is not endorsed by the Wet’suwet’en and is not associated with our traditional governing structure that predates colonization,” the account said.
According to Tait Day’s statement, the coalition was “asked in 2015 by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and the community at large to develop and facilitate a decision-making process for major projects like LNG Canada and Coastal GasLink.”
Since the protests began, Indigenous groups have blasted Extinction Rebellion, an environmental group that uses civil disobedience.
Chief Russ Chipps and two councillors from Beecher Bay First Nation wrote a letter to Extinction Rebellion Vancouver Island. Protesters from that outfit had, on Feb. 18, passed through Indigenous lands and gone to protest at the home of B.C. Premier John Horgan. Horgan was not at home, but his wife was.
“We find it disturbing that you would ignore our rights and titles,” Chipps and the councillors wrote. “You’ve come into our territory without permission, putting yourselves above our traditional protocols and have insulted our community and terrorized a private citizen in our neighbouring community.”
The K’ómoks First Nation on Vancouver Island disavowed an Extinction Rebellion blockade of Highway 19 on Feb. 10, saying the nation was not involved.