Fears grow in search for protester
Indigenous person missing for seven weeks in Vancouver Island woods
B.C. Family and friends of an Indigenous protester missing for seven weeks in the woods near a logging blockade on Vancouver Island lashed out Saturday at a logging company’s security for hampering their increasingly frantic search.
Bear Henry, a two-spirited 37year-old who has been protesting old-growth logging at Fairy Creek, since March 2021, went missing on Nov. 27. Henry’s family and friends fear the worst.
“Bear’s last text said someone was banging on the side of their van and that they were scared,” says Bear’s Aunt Rose Henry, who is known by friends as Grandma Losah.
Their van, spray-painted with phrases like “Land Back” and “Fairy Creek forever” was a target for angry loggers, says Grandma Losah. Bear, she said, had received previous threats.
Saturday marked the first day RCMP formally allowed protesters to search logging roads where they believe Bear was travelling when they disappeared.
But on Saturday afternoon, Bear’s search team was still denied entry by security officers contracted by Teal-Jones, the timber company that has logging rights on the land protesters consider “unceded” and is at the heart of the Fairy Creek old-growth demonstrations.
Other protesters say they have been threatened by loggers. Erin Panjer, who was walking in area behind the blockade, said she had an unnerving encounter with an individual wielding an axe in the middle of a remote logging road. Two other protesters said they had experienced similar harassment.
“There is a lot of hatred from individuals on behalf of the logging industry,” says Angela Davidson a 37year-old Indigenous member of the movement.
Grandma Losah says Bear was travelling on the maze of roads from Cowichan Lake to Fairy Creek and planned to take a break at the top of the mountain, but they never arrived.
“You think you could say that when a loved one goes away on a trip, they’ll come back and then you’ll be able to see them again,” says Bear’s mother, Eileen Henry. “It’s been heartbreaking.”
The search for Bear has been fraught with mistrust between Bear’s family and the RCMP. Family members say they did not report their disappearance until Dec. 11 due to distrust of police.
“We did not think the RCMP would co-operate with us,” says Grandma Losah. “They see us as land defenders. They don’t care about our human side.”
The RCMP have made two helicopter searches for Bear over the past five weeks, according to Cpl. David Motley of the Lake Cowichan RCMP.
But Bear’s family feel police should be doing more.
Terry Bieman, a search and rescue operator based on Salt Spring Island, who is supporting the search, questions how much effort police put into searches for missing Indigenous people.
“If a young white girl is gone missing, you know, you’re going to find them, they’re going to be found.”
Sgt. Chris Manseau, an RCMP media relations officer, denies that racism is at play. “We have a missing person. What ethnicity they are, who they’re affiliated with, or how they identify themselves is none of our concern.”
Teal-Jones denies that it has restricted access to search and rescue personnel, spokesperson Shawn Hall wrote in an email.
The search group on Saturday retraced Bear’s planned journey from Victoria to Cowichan Lake, over mountain roads and then to Fairy Creek. But once at the Fairy Creek blockade, the team was prevented by security from taking search vehicles into the logging territory, despite permission from the RCMP detachment via satellite phone.
The Fairy Creek protest camp is being scaled down this week due to heavy snow which protesters hope will slow down logging in the area. “Mother Nature is helping us protect the trees now,” says Charlotte Jones, a Haida mother of a teenager who has been living at the camp since May 2021. Jones hopes the temporary reduction of protesters will encourage a more thorough search for Bear.
Grandma Losah was hopeful for “better communications” with the RCMP after conciliatory conversations with Motley cleared the way for the protesters’ search Saturday.
“My ancestors won’t let me give up” said Grandma Losah. “No pandemic, locked gates, no climate change is going to stop me from finding my Bear.”