This report was made possible in part by a grant from the Vancouver Media Co-op
(Filmmaker) Wet'suet'en territories, August 2012.
A few comrades and I hit the road to join dozens of people
in the third annual Unis'tot'en Action Camp.
A convergence called by members of the Wet'suet'en Nation to prevent oil and gas pipelines from entering into their terrritory.
As we sped away from the visceral noise of the city, the natural splendor of the Pacific North West revealed itself.
Canyons, rivers, lakes and mountains,
beckoned us to abandon our gasoline-powered chariot and invited us to walk and swim through them.
And leave behind the spectacle of industrial civilization.
But even in this remote areas, the insatiable appetite of capitalism demands the further ravaging of nature.
Mining, highways, dams, clear-cut logging, and now oil and gas infrastructure,
are not only defacing the landscape, but also the cultures that have lived in this region for milennia.
(Freda Huson, Wet'suet'en Nation) We're opposing these projects, because we have very few areas that are pure and still in natural state.
For example, the river behind us. We actually can still drink that water.
And we still hunt this area, and industry has destroyed most of our areas and we have very little left
and we're gonna fight to protect that for the future generations, our children, grandchildren.
If we don't protect it there'll be nothing here and we'll be saying that: "We used to have moose" and "We used to have fish".
And they're not even going to know that as part of their diet if we don't step up and start protecting it today.
(Filmmaker) After driving for over 1,000 kilometers we arrived at the boundary of the Unis'tot'en land, the pristine Maurice river.
But before any of us could cross the bridge and enter the territory we had to follow the free prior and informed consent protocol.
(Mel Bazil, Wet'suet'en Nation & Gitxsan Nation) The protocol is ancient, it's thousands of years old. The land taught us how to do this, to protect it.
And also to see you act out your knowledge of self, which helped us keep the integrity of the land, and the people.
So free prior informed consent is nothing new, it's been asleep for a couple of hundred years because of colonization.
Our responsibilities were taken from us by military, and police, hoplites, Catholic Church.
Pretty much put the fear into our ancestors a couple hundred years back,
telling them that they could no longer act on their lands in the ways that they have.
Unis'tot'en music and singing
(Filmmaker) Much of the area what is now known as British Columbia is made up of land that was stolen from indigenous communities.
The Unis'tot'en Clan of the Wet'seut'en Nation are asserting the rightful ownership of this forest and wilderness
to stop a natural gas transport project called the Pacific Trails Pipeline, or PTP.
(Dini Ze Toghe, Wet'suet'en Nation) Well the PTP Project is a project that kind of snuck through under the radar.
It's a pipeline project that's proposed by the Apache corporation.
And they want to run a natural gas pipeline from Summit Lake B.C. to Kitimat B.C.
And the spot that we're sitting in right here, right now is a tenting area,
but it's also the central point on a GPS coordinates for a right of way that they want to put through here.
So we're occupying the lands and we're stopping PTP from coming in.
(Filmmaker) This year's camp attracted over 150 people, who came from as far east as Montreal, and as far as south as Florida.
The camp organizers opted not to tap large environmental NGO's for material support,
and instead reached out to grassroots community-based allies.
(Zoe Blunt, Forest Action Network) We were invited by Mel Bazil and later on by some of the other chiefs here to come help them stand up against the pipelines.
And we're all about stopping the pipelines. At this point we're all about doing indigenous solidarity, and so with this we get to do both.
And we get to bring a bunch of people from Vancouver who have maybe never experienced an action camp
or being welcomed by First Nation's people on their own territories, and they get to experience that.
And they get to learn new skills, and share their own,
share food, and comradery, and culture, and build something.
You know, we built a small city here. Practically, you know. [laughs]
And I think it's really good for everybody's morale.
You know, cause people feel they can actually do something physically,
they can physically do something to stop the pipelines.
You can't get funding from Tides Canada or George Soros or any large foundation to do direct action training.
(Filmmaker) Out of the proposed pipeline projects that will cross through Unis'tot'en land,
Pacific Trails is the first one slated to begin construction, and poses an immediate threat.
The PTP project is a partnership between Apache Canada, Encana, and EOG Resources, formerly known as Enron Oil and Gas.
The 463km PTP pipeline will connect the liquefied natural gas port in the pacific ocean to the Spectra Energy west coast pipeline,
with the aim of transporting gas extracted through fracking to overseas markets.
Others, like the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, would transport tar sands oil from Fort McMurray,
an extraction project that is devastating the nature and the indigenous communities in the Atthabasca region of northern Alberta.
Sue Deranger is a member of the Atthabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
We travel from Fort McMurray to show her solidarity with the Unis'tot'en.
(Sue Deranger, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation) They're blocking the Enbridge pipeline, which is going to haul the bitumen from our community,
that is affecting our lives so intensely.
The cancers that are there, the animals that are sick,
the water that's polluted, there's such a connection.
Because, if there's no tar sands, then there is no pipeline.
If there's no pipeline, there's less for them to do.
(Filmmaker) These dirty energy schemes not only threaten nature and indigenous people in the north, but also have global implications.
If decisive action is not taken to stop the flows of oil and gas, the effects of global climate change
could be catastrophic for people, plants and animals all over the world.
This is why natives and their allies travel from far away to come together at this camp.
(Zoe Blunt, Forest Action Network) At this point people know, that you know, I think most people realise
that appealing to government, appealing to the Harper government, or the B.C. government is really hopeless.
And the only real way to stop this, especially this particular pipeline, which is already approved.
The way to stop it is going to be to actually shut them down, slow them down, cost them money, scare their investors away,
and this is going to involve, you know, going to do direct action.
(Mel Bazil, Wet'suet'en Nation & Gitxsan Nation) This camp is designed to create a culture of resistance.
What we are doing is we're showing our young ones who are in this camp that there is peaceful resistance,
there is also the way of the warrior, and there is also uncompromising stance.
(Dini Ze Toghe, Wet'suet'en Nation) Our territories have never been ceded, we've never surrendered anything here.
These territories belong to our people and we have no intention of giving it up or surrendering it to any entity.
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For more information about this struggle visit unistotencamp.wordpress.com
Written, Produced, Shot, Edited and Directed by Franklin López
Music by C.J. Boyd & Chris Schlarb
Special Thanks to Joe, Dawn Paley, Gregor Jahn and Harjap Grewal