[00:00:00] Jennifer Wickham
We know that any sacrifice that we make in our lifetime is going to be one less sacrifice that our children have to make that our grandchildren have to make. And that's worth it. And that's what they don't understand. They think if they throw money at a project and they throw money at a community, communities that they intentionally impoverished, that that's going to be enough for us to just stand aside and let them destroy what little we have left. They don't understand our connection to the land or our connection to the water and our responsibility toward our children and the future generations.
[00:00:39] LeAndra Nephin
That was media coordinator for Gidimt’en Checkpoint, Jen Wickham. On this episode of Not Invisible Native Peoples on the Front Lines, Jen joins me to discuss the Wet'suwet'en resistance to pipeline occupation on their land. Thank you for joining us, I'm your host, Leandra Nathan. Today on our virtual couch at Red House series, I'm speaking with Jennifer Wickham, media coordinator for Gidimt’en Checkpoint. Jennifer, we're really excited to have you here with us today. I wondered if you could just do a bit of an intro and just let our viewers know our listeners know everything that we can about you. Can you just talk us through a little bit of your experience and how you got involved with the Wet'suwet'en resistance against Coastal GasLink?
[00:01:45] Jennifer Wickham
My name is Jennifer Wickham, I am the media coordinator for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint. I belong to Cas Yikh, which is the Grizzly Bear House of the Gidimt’en clan, a joint clan of the Bear Clan. It's an interesting story. I think it's certainly not what I planned to be doing in this time of my life. I had actually just finished the education program at the university in Prince George and was planning on moving home and starting work as a substitute teacher. And then I was hired at the Wet’suwet’en Language and culture society is the executive director. So I was doing that and I was subbing, and I was also an on call worker for the women's transition house here in town. So I was doing all sorts of things, and my sister, Sleydo Molly Wickham, has been living out on the territory with her family since 2014. So in 2018, when the temporary injunction was approved against free to Houston and we're known as L and Jane and John Doe for a Coastal GasLink pipeline in order for them to be able to come in and enforce and remove them from the territory is when our house group Cassie got together at a meeting and decided that because we had been supporting Minnesota and over the years, going out to the territory every summer would hold like an action camp. And it was actually at the action camp that I met and fell in love with Woods Cinchona for the first time, which is the river or sacred headwaters that is the boundary line between Minnesota and Kasha territories within quote was under threat by a bitumen pipeline. At the time, I was living in Victoria, British Columbia, going to the University of Victoria with doing an undergrad in English with a minor and Indigenous Studies, and I almost quit school right then and there and moved home. My family was like, "You have one year left. Don't do that". I'm like, "OK", so I finished, moved back home in 2013. My sister and her family moved out to the territory in 2014 and have always been really active in supporting Minnesota. So it wasn't much of a leap in 2018 for us to decide that we're going to do something to show our support physically out on the land in support of Minnesota. We set up a checkpoint. I think it was just a matter of days. I believe the court's decision was December 13th, 2018 and by the 16th we had set up a wall tent and a T-shirt at forty four km East River for a service road. And we had no idea all the things that have happened since then. We're going to be happening and how just absolutely powerful the solidarity would come in and all the actions and support that we've received across Turtle Island and internationally. And so my cousin and I were having a conversation the first day I was on the phone with her and we're like, Oh my God, what do we do? Like, should we? Should we start a Facebook page? Like, What? What do we even call it like? Do we do a page or we do a group or like, how does this even work? That was kind of the beginning of our social media adventures, and then we started a Twitter account and Instagram account and then eventually got a website, and it's been quite the journey since then, that's in a nutshell how I got to where I am and what I'm doing now. It's definitely not at all what I had planned, my dream and my goal. I was two years into a five year plan and the universe was like, Oh, cute Jen, that's super not going to happen. And maybe someday it will.
[00:06:34] LeAndra Nephin
I wanted to talk a little bit about the Wet’suwet’en resistance to Coastal GasLink pipeline occupation in twenty twenty one in terms of letting our listeners know what it is. When did it all start and who is currently occupying Coyote Camp or the area now?
[00:06:54] Jennifer Wickham
Absolutely. So there has been multiple fronts of this resistance of Coastal GasLink in 2020, which feels like a lifetime ago. Now are hereditary chiefs evicted Coastal GasLink and we had over a month of freedom where there was no work happening. It was really beautiful. We saw the Shut Down Canada movement so much solidarity happening all across Turtle Island and then COVID 19 sort of one upped us and shut down the entire world. And so a lot of the work on the pipeline was slowed down for a while. I'm sure you can imagine that within close living quarters that their man camps forbid just spread like wildfire and leaped over into our communities. We've lost a lot of elders. It's been a really hard year and a half of grief for our communities. So when we found out that Coastal GasLink plans to have completed their work of drilling underneath, would Xinhua by the end of the fourth quarter of this year, we knew that we had to take action and we knew that this is really a last stand. Different clans within our nation have taken action within the court system. We had our hereditary chiefs sit down with the provincial and the federal government. They signed a memorandum of understanding, but the Coastal GasLink project was never on the table. And so we knew that direct action is going to be the only thing that is going to stop this project. So when we found out that they were planning on having this work completed by the fourth quarter, we knew that now is the time. So they didn't have the drill in place yet. They don't have the pipes in place yet. They're planning on using cement molds and putting those in the ground around the pipe. According to the website, it will take seventy-nine days of twenty-four hours a day work to complete the crossing, so essentially seventy-nine days to destroy our river. On September 25th, folks including my sister Sleydo and allies and supporters went and occupied the drill site. Since then, there have been multiple structures built on the site. There are multiple barricades on the road to the site and the support is growing. We have people from other front lines that have come to show their support and solidarity and share wisdom and from their fights and their struggles and things. Maybe that works for them. Maybe things that didn't work for them. It's a really powerful show of allyship. Eve and her partner Shiloh were both arrested last year during the raids on Wet'suwet'en territory, and she was pregnant with their first child at the time. Now they're back and she is pregnant with their second child this time. And so, you know, they are really invested, obviously in their children's future and their children's ability to go out to the internet and to drink from a Dinka and to hunt and to be with Wet’suwet’en territories. They don't have that ability in Six Nations territory. You know, like in Haudenosaunee territory, it's all developed. You can't even swim in the river, never mind drink the water from it. And so most of a large part of their communities can't even drink the water from the taps in their homes. They see the importance of protecting the clean water source. It reminds me of alliances that were built traditionally through marriage. And that's the reason that they did it was to build strong kinship with your neighboring nations so that in times of need, you could call on each other and people would be invested and willing to stand up and do whatever is necessary because they're family. And so I think in this modern day time, like the Haudenosaunee are not are our direct neighbors, but we're connected and all indigenous people all across Turtle Island are connected in that same way because we all know the pain and the trauma and the injustice of colonization. So we can recognize it happening to another community, we recognize it happening to another nation. And I think that that is the thing that really fired people up. The Wet'suwet'en people had never signed a treaty, we never gave up our territory. We had a court case. The delegate moved in to say with a court case that we want in the Supreme Court of Canada in nineteen ninety seven that said and acknowledged in the decision, the Wet'suwet'en and gets on have never ceded or surrendered their territory. They are the rightful authority and title holders of their territory. The government at the time decided that the right thing to do with this decision was not to come to the table with us and figure out how to implement our rights and title instead. They formed a committee with industry and devised a plan on how to circumvent this decision so that they could continue to have access to the resources and that it would not impede on the extraction of resources from Wet'suwet'en within Gidimt’en territory. There's been a fly done by the narwhal, and they did an article last year that has all of the email conversations and memos in between the different departments of the government saying like What are we going to do about these Wet'suwet'en and Gidimt’en people and. That's what they found. It's something we've always known as indigenous people that the purpose of colonization, the purpose of the RCMP, the purpose of residential schools has always been about our land. They want access to our land and they are willing to do whatever it is that they have to do in order to get it. And it's still happening. This is still the problem, and they're still trying to remove us from our territories. And you know, like in 2019 and 2020, they had lethal overwatch. They were prepared to shoot us. They had everything in place so that if they felt it was necessary, the people, the RCMP officers, the militarized guys in green decided that this is what needed to happen. They had the authority to shoot and kill somebody. I would do it in person defending their own land against a project that they did not give consent to. And this is something that we've had to live with. We know that any sacrifice that we make. In our lifetime is going to be one less sacrifice that our children have to make that our grandchildren have to make. And that's worth it. And that's what they don't understand. They think if they throw money at a project and they throw money at a community, communities that they intentionally impoverished, that that's going to be enough for us to just stand aside and let them destroy what little we have left. They don't understand our connection to the land or our connection to the water and our responsibility toward our children and the future generations like they really just don't. Get it. It's so beyond their realm of capitalism. I think about it sometimes, you know, I think like. I don't know, because it's not within my worldview. It's not within my capacity even to really understand where it is they're coming from. This like, you know, where money rules everything. But I wonder sometimes like, Oh, I wonder, you know, do they think we're just like savages sitting out on the land that we're totally disillusioned? You know what I mean? Like, that's sort of what I imagine, like CEOs of this company are like, "Oh my God, these Indians are still in the way, like, just get rid of them". And I really, I feel so bad for them. I mean, they're not going to get my pity, but it's like as a human being, as a human to human, I'm like, Wow, you are really so disconnected. It's sad.
[00:16:17] LeAndra Nephin
In terms of the Gidimt’en checkpoint. Now what current kind of updates and what's going on as we speak right now.
[00:16:30] Jennifer Wickham
We are continuing to dig in. We're continuing to build. Winter is coming. It gets very cold up here. And so we're building the necessary infrastructure to withstand winter. If the RCMP plan on trying to wait us out will not happen. Things are being built. More people are coming every day to support on the ground. There are other nations that are sending support and supplies and people. It's actually been a really beautiful time to see the solidarity happening again in slightly different ways than we saw last year during the shutdown Canada. There are people showing up. We saw a lot of actions happening in cities all across Turtle Island, and people are, I think, through the relationships that we've built. People are really wanting to come and show up personally. Those relationships have strengthened during the pandemic. The communication has opened. And yeah, it's it's really, you know, we're taking the time right now to build and fortify. And also, we know that the enforcement will come sooner or later. The enforcement will come, and so we're building what it is that we need to build right now before that happens. And taking a bit of a moment to enjoy our friends and allies and relatives that are coming to show their support on the frontline.
[00:18:16] LeAndra Nephin
What is it that you would like people to know or what can we do to support or to amplify, or particularly those who maybe can't make it to be there in person?
[00:18:29] Jennifer Wickham
Yeah, absolutely. There's a recent campaign where we're targeting the investors of Coastal GasLink and the LNG Canada project because the two are linked. And so all the information on that, the press release, as well as a copy of the letter that was sent to investors, is up on our website at yintah access dot com.. I think it's a really critical time for targeting investors at this point because they are over budget by millions of dollars. The entire budget that they have planned to complete the project they've already spent. They're out of money. Other than that, there's always awareness campaigns, there is the short documentary called Invasion that is a really good primer. It's only a 20 minute film talking about the Wet'suwet'en struggle. You can look it up on YouTube, host a screening in your community, use it as a fundraiser and donate to one of the campaigns. There's three Wet'suwet'en struggles right now, and that's the Unist’ot’en Camp and Gidimt’en Checkpoint. So there's definitely a lot of things that folks can do from afar if they're not able to come directly to the front line.
[00:19:50] LeAndra Nephin
You heard it here first. It sounds like there's a lot of ways to support the work that you're doing. Thank you for sharing those links. I really just want to say that I completely feel honored to have had this conversation with you and just really in awe of the work that you're doing in terms of the frontline advocacy and the work that you're doing at the interactive access and get them at checkpoint and really hope that we can kind of amplify this story so that there's more support and potentially maybe people who can come and join you in the front line. So thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your story. Thank you again.
[00:20:38] LeAndra Nephin
This has been Not Invisible: Native Peoples on the Frontlines, A House on Fire production. To learn more about Jen’s work and the resistance efforts at Gidimt’en Checkpoint, and Coyote Camp, check out their Instagram at yintah underscore access. For more information on how you can support the camp, check out the information listed in today’s show notes. This episode is produced by Spirit Buffalo and Ashley Cinders Robinson. Our editors are Kim Acheson and Abbey Franz. The song for this episode is Another Side, by Wild Whispers, Produced by Ben Reno, Eli Lev, & Megan Leigh. I'm your host, LeAndra Nephin. Until next time! WóNgithe wíbthahaN, I thank you all.