First Nations in B.C. forge alliances over shared environmental concerns

The recent Peace and Unity Summit sought ways to help impacted communities find solutions to ongoing threats to ecologies across Indigenous territories. Photo from the Peace and Unity Summit Instagram page

Canada’s National Observer: Unity is hard to come by in an increasingly polarized world — except in Prince Rupert, B.C., where hereditary chiefs, leaders and supporters recently gathered to build alliances among Indigenous land defenders. Tsimshian, Wet’suwet’en, Gitxsan, Haida and Tlingit standing, learning, singing, laughing and working together.

Host Tsimshian Simoyget (Gitwilgyoots) Donny Welsley is clear about their interconnectedness. “What happens with John Risdale (Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Na’Moks) happens to Donnie Wesley,” he said. “If something bad happens to their part of the river up there it happens to us.” It is this shared fight to protect the land, air, and water against extractive industries that brings them together.

The move to Prince Rupert from Smithers was an intentional decision by founders to foster solidarity and capacity on Tsimshian and Nisga’a territory, where recent land disputes and contentious agreement-making with industry and provincial and federal governments has created painful rifts between friends and families. As a girding force, the Peace and Unity Summit brought together supporting NGOs, environmental experts and non-Indigenous supporters who, outside of the summit, help impacted communities find solutions to ongoing threats to ecologies across Indigenous territories.

The four-day event livestreamed multiple expert panels and Q&As on diverse topics from deep sea mining, climate change, tanker traffic, and a deep dive on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and their deep impacts on communities.

From the beginning, organizers recognized the importance of getting people out on the land and the water, so they could understand first-hand what it is that’s so worth saving. Last year, they paddled down the Wedzinkwa (Morice River) on Wet’suwet’en territory, a crucial salmon-bearing river directly threatened by the CGL pipeline.

This year, 100 people went out on a catamaran to watch whales along the coast and to see grizzly bears in the protected Kutzaymateen Valley. “We’re experiencing the beauty of the land as it has been for thousands of years,” said Gitxsan/Tsimshian Hup-Wil-Lax-A Kirby Muldoe.

Mel Green (Tsimshian) had a different take about what he was doing on the boat. “I’m out here to make sure you people (referring to the visiting settlers) don’t steal any more of my land!”

He laughs as he says it, but he is deadly serious. The land grabs on his territory for fish, for lumber and for oil and gas pipelines is never ending. He is also very proud to share its beauty.

“We’re talking about our land, our areas and the water; they are very excited to see an area like this. [Hunters and poachers] used to really demolish our bears here, and they made this a park to protect them.”

Violet Gatensby, renowned Tlingit carver based in Carcross, Yukon said, “On my territory, we haven’t seen king salmon for decades.” On her iPhone she shows her fellow attendees an old picture of a community member holding a massive fish. “They used to sing to us. They don’t sing anymore.”

Gatensby’s people are caribou, goat, sheep and elk people. She had never been on the ocean until she came to Rupert for the summit, and she wasn’t alone. The delight in what people were seeing from the boat was palpable, even for old salts like Green who sat among them, smiling.

The issues facing Indigenous land defenders are grave. And they are grave not just for them, but for all of us.

“We don’t just do what we do for us, we do it for everybody,” said Chief Na’Moks. Climate change, extractive environmental degradation and the depletion of those things that sustain us all cannot be faced in silos or in solitude.

“More people have to do what is happening in Prince Rupert every year to make sure that this planet is better than it currently is,” he said.

On the last day of the Summit, McPhail invited people in the room and those watching online who would stand with them in the fight against pipelines.

The room — united — erupted.

Sidney Coles holds PhDs in comparative literature and is a PhD Candidate in Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto. She is a freelance journalist living on traditional Lekwungen Territory in Victoria, B.C., whose writing focuses mainly on the impact of extractive industries on Indigenous land rights.