A8 FOLIO OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2020
The trip overlapped with talks be-
tween the Wet’suwet’en hered-
itary leadership and the federal
and B.C. governments, which
ended with a proposed agree-
ment on Saturday.
The Skin Tyee call themselves
“southsiders.” A 15-minute ferry
ride – “the Francois Forester”– is
the only way across. The cold,
clean air smells of wood smoke
and pine. Pot-belly stoves are still
a main source of heating in the
village, where tidy homes are en-
sconced in thigh-high snow. An
independent streak typifies many
here.
A little more than a quarter of
the Skin Tyee’s 187 members live
on-reserve. Most attended meet-
ings with TC Energy, the company
behind Coastal GasLink, says Ms.
Wilson, who works at the local
health station. Over five years, the
two sides met dozens of times at
the band office. Slowly, a consen-
sus formed.
In 2014, the Skin Tyee became
the first Wet’suwet’en nation to
sign on to the $6.6-billion, 670-
kilometre pipeline. Neighbouring
Nee Tahi Buhn First Nation, an-
other eastern Wet’suwet’en com-
munity, was quick to join them.
Each nation received just shy
of $3-million from the province,
part of the agreements they
signed with Victoria. The money
is locked up in trusts to fund
training, education and cultural
programming. Once fuel begins
flowing from B.C.’s eastern gas
fields to the Pacific port at Kiti-
mat, both nations will receive an-
nual dividends, like the other 18
First Nations along the route.
(Bands also signed impact and
benefit agreements with Coastal
GasLink, the terms of which are
not public but typically include
provisions for jobs, training and
other benefits.)
Ms. Wilson, a member of the
Gilseyhu (Big Frog) clan, says sup-
port for the pipeline remains
strong, both in Skin Tyee and Nee
Tahi Buhn, where her daughter
lives.
But elsewhere, Wet’suwet’en
opinion is divided. Both sides of
the debate remain deeply suspi-
cious of the other, each believing
their adversary has been
“bought” – the antis by environ-
mentalists and environmental
NGOs, the pros by Big Oil. Each
side, meanwhile, claims the other
has been marshalled by outside
forces to help secure national pol-
icy outcomes.
The fight, which is also expos-
ing the continuing reality of racial
bigotry facing Indigenous people,
risks escalating into a full-blown
national crisis involving reconcil-
iation, the economy and the envi-
ronment.
Next month, Ms. Wilson will
start a new job as a construction
monitor and community liaison
with CGL. “I’ll go out every day
with the crew to make sure
they’re adhering to the environ-
mental and cultural standards we
set for them.” After two years, she
plans to retire.
She is fiercely proud of her First
Nation, which recently opened
the newly renovated Tweedsmuir
Hotel in neighbouring Burns
Lake. A new healing lodge on Un-
cha Lake is under construction.
She remains deeply connected to
her clan’s territories in the Sibola
Range, where they hunt moose
and mountain goat and pick
enough huckleberries, blueber-
ries and salmonberries to last the
winter.
But her family has stopped vis-
iting their summer camp site at
Morice Lake for years, ever since
pipeline opponents erected a
supply camp nearby. The arrests
made there in February escalated
a conflict that has been quietly
simmering among the Wet’suwe-
t’en for years.The white-hot zone of conflict is
the Witset First Nation, three
hours west of here, on Highway- The lonely two-lane road
snakes past vast, dark forests and
fields criss-crossed with snowmo-
bile tracks on its winding route to
the Pacific Ocean. The area is re-
mote, even by B.C. standards. So
many women and girls have van-
ished or turned up dead along it
that northerners have another
name for it.
“Girls don’t hitchhike on the
Highway of Tears,” a series of
large, yellow billboards read.
“Killer on the loose!”
The Witset, with a total mem-
bership reaching 2,050, are the
most populous and politically
powerful of the six Wet’suwet’en
bands created by the Indian Act.
(Five have signed on to the pro-
ject; the Witset were the last to do
so.) According to archaeologists,
the village of Witset, a 40-minute
drive from Smithers – the region-
al hub – has been continually in-
habited for 6,000 years.
“Our way of life is everything
for us,” says Simb’ yez Wilson,
who grew up in Witset, which is
still better known as Moricetown
- its former name.
The land in question, home to
some 25,000 people – of whom
5,000 are Wet’suwet’en – is mag-
nificent. Dark valleys peel off
from aquamarine rivers rich with
sockeye, steelhead, kokanee and
trout. Below snow-capped peaks
are ancient forests of towering
lodgepole pine and spruce, home
to grizzly bears, caribou and
moose. What you notice most un-
der the vast Wet’suwet’en skies is
the cathedral stillness of the
place.
“These jobs are temporary. The
resources don’t have a timeline,”
the 21-year-old said after deliver-
ing a stirring banjo-soul perform-
ance at a benefit concert in near-
by Smithers. Hand-painted signs
in black and red – “Reconciliation
Not Bullets!” and “Fracking
gashole. Your backyard is next” –
were given to the crowd.
There is urgency to their cam-
paign. Some 46 per cent of the
pipeline right-of-way has already
been cleared, advancing on Wet-
’suwet’en territory from the east
and west. For now, only the mid-
section, a 163-kilometre stretch
running roughly from Skin Tyee
to Morice Lake, remains untou-
ched.
Between the Witset’s “pros”
and “antis” is a large group of
fence-sitters. Some support eco-
nomic development, but worry
about the environmental and po-
litical risks. With careers, friend-
ships and marriages at stake, an
even larger group is keeping
mum.
“People are afraid to speak
out,” Caryssa Nikal says. The 27-
year-old business student knows
this too well.
Her father is Barry Nikal, Wit-
set’s former chief councillor, one
of the best-known Wet’suwet’enproponents of the projects. Her
mother, Angeline Alfred, a Wet-
’suwet’en hereditary chief, is
staunchly opposed.
The conflict has “brought out
the worst in people,” she says.
“It’s scary.”
Ms. Nikal says that after a re-
cent incident at the Twin Valley
Inn, a Smithers bar, she stopped
going into town altogether. There,
a man recognized her 22-year-old
friend, who has spent time work-
ing security at the Unist’ot’en
Camp – a protest site – and threw
a drink on her.
Smithers, a quiet mountain
town with vistas of the Babine
and Telkwa Mountain Ranges,
has come alive with the project.
Its hotels and restaurants arehumming. A local truck rental
has erected a massive sign read-
ing “LNG CANADA” on the high-
way outside the city. “The largest
private investment project in
Canadian history deserves a cool
sign, right?” says Fred Wilson, the
owner of Northwest Truck Rent-
als Inc.
But the conflict is also re-ener-
gizing dormant anti-Indigenous
sentiment and racism.
A sign reading “Yes to Jobs/It’s
Time for BC to Idle No More!” was
paint bombed, then removed.
In Smithers these days, “you
feel like a drunken Indian walk-
ing into a redneck bar,” says
hereditary house chief, Ron
Mitchell (Hagwilnekhlh).
“The racism was always there,”B.C.U.S.ALBERTA150
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Top:Gitxsan supporters
set up a blockade on
Highway 16 onFeb. 25 in
support of Wet’suwet’en
hereditary chiefs who
oppose the Coastal
GasLink pipeline project.Above: A benefit show
titled Wet’suwet’en
Strong is held in
Smithers,B.C., onFeb.- Hand-painted signs
that read ‘Reconciliation
NotBullets!’ were handed
out to the crowd.
Right: Crystal Smith,
chief councillor of the
Haisla Nation, says she
has been labelled a
‘sellout’ for supporting
the pipeline project.FROM A