WALKING A FAMILIAR PATH
Site C protester remembers her ancestors’ beliefs.
On Aug. 4, 1911, Dene Tsaa Chief Makannacha was the reluctant final signatory to Treaty 8, which covers an area larger than France.
The Dene Tsaa (also known as the Prophet River First Nation) had a traditional territory estimated at 25,000 square kilometres. Under the treaty, it was given a reserve of just under 3.8 square kilometres.
Chief Makannacha was reluctant because, even though the treaty affirms the “right to pursue their usual vocations of hunting, trapping and fishing throughout the tract surrendered,” it’s a conditional guarantee.
It’s subject to “such regulations as may from time to time be made by the Government of the country,” and “saving and excepting such tracts as may be required or taken up from time to time for settlement, mining, lumbering, trading or other purposes.”
That time may have come. BC Hydro, the provincial Crown corporation, has already started work on an $8.8-billion, hydroelectric dam in the Peace River Valley, even though Treaty 8 First Nations are still in court battling against it.
In December, a protest camp was set up at the historic site of the Rocky Mountain Fort by a group called Treaty 8 Stewards of the Land, and one of the people described as its “emerging leader and warrior” is Chief Makannacha’s great-greatgranddaughter.
Her name is Helen Knott. She’s a 28-year-old social worker, mother and one of the 260 registered members of the Prophet River band.
“It’s almost funny,” she said, when I asked her about being a leader and warrior.
“I’m a really happy person and being in this place and having to be like this is not easy. It’s not exciting. But it is necessary.”
Knott grew up feeling powerless, but that changed when she began to reclaim her culture and tradition.
It’s a process that’s continuing at the protest camp where, during the day and at night around the campfire, elders share the stories of their elders and teach the rituals they learned.
“Now,” Knott says, “I come from a place of resistance, strength and belief that we are able to make change.”
On Monday, Knott returned to the camp where she spent most of last week in the -25 C cold with a rotating roster of people who are staying despite BC Hydro’s eviction notice posted Dec. 31 and in spite of last week’s arrest of three landowners and environmentalists protesting on the other side of the river.
It is a grassroots movement. Still, Knott’s Facebook page is a hub with messages posted about donations of prepared meals and other supplies, photos and videos from the snowy site.
One video shows heavy equipment in the background with BC Hydro workers in fluorescent vests and hard hats lined up listening to Doig River elder Beatrice Harding at her request.
Harding, whose grandfather signed the treaty, first welcomed them to her people’s territory.
“We will be here in the future because this is our home,” she said. “If my grandfather knew that this land would be flooded 116 years later, he would not have signed the treaty at that time.”
She listed the gravesites along the Peace River before Knott thanked the workers for being respectful and then asked them to leave so that they could continue collecting traditional plants for medicine that’s being investigated as a cancer drug. The workers didn’t agree. But one said: “We ask politely ... stay 100 metres away from the machinery.
“We will be more than happy to help you collect the medicine ... Maybe you can teach me.” That’s how complicated this is. Knott called out the workers by name. They are neighbours, maybe even friends. But they’re there because they need the work in a region where unemployment — at 7.6 per cent — is higher than both the provincial and national averages.
They’re there because BC Hydro says the province needs the additional electrical generating capacity to serve 450,000 homes.
“We’re not there for conflict,” Knott said over the phone late last week when she was back in Fort St. John for a few days.
“I’m really trying to honour my great, great grandfather’s intent when he signed the treaty.”
Last summer, Knott, along with her little brother and cousins, walked the Peace River Valley.
“I tell them now that what we are doing is all for you. You must be a witness to this. You have to stand for what you believe in and remember this when you’re older.”
Along the way, they prayed for the land and did millennia-old ceremonies. On the 20-minute walk out to the road to return to Fort St. John where she lives, Knott says, “I was just so happy. I was just enjoying the beauty of it and then I saw one of the ‘Honour Treaty Rights signs’ that we’ve posted and I remembered why I was there.”