Joint Statement By Secwepemc & Gidimt’en Land Defenders

Joint Statement By Secwepemc & Gidimt’en Land Defenders

(Unceded Yintah / Secwepemcúĺecw Territories): Coastal Gaslink pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory and Trans Mountain Pipeline in Secwepemc territory are both currently preparing to drill under our clear rivers, from which we have drawn sustenance since time immemorial. In the past few days we have seen Indigenous women interrupted during ceremonies in both territories, and arrests and incarcerations in Secwepemc territories, for enacting their sacred responsibilities.

The Trans Mountain Pipeline weaves through over 900 rivers and creeks, threatening both Secwepemcetkwe (Thompson) and Fraser River systems. The North Thompson is connected to the Adams River, a vital spawning habitat for chinook, coho, and pink salmon, and home to one of the most important sockeye runs in the world. Any leakage would immediately threaten the pacific salmon who spawn in the Secwepemcetkwe (Thompson) and Fraser River basins.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister dated November 26, 2016, our late Secwepemc leader Arthur Manuel wrote to Trudeau:

“The salmon and the rivers they inhabit have taken care of our people for centuries and we are obligated as Secwepemc people to protect the Thompson River system for future generations.”

In this the Secwepemc stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people, who have been fighting to protect Wedzin Kwa (Morice River) from pipeline incursions for over a decade. Wetʼsuwetʼen means “People of the lower drainage” and Wet’suwet’en people’s lives are inseparable from the life of the Wedzin Kwa river, which we have protected for thousands of years, and which has in turn fed us and governed us through our hereditary leaders and knowledge-keepers.

Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, spokesperson of the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, states:

At this time our rivers, the lifeblood of our nations, are facing drills, toxins and invaders. Indigenous people are standing up to state violence, big industry and corporate greed for the future of all of humanity–of all life on our yintah. We stand with our Secwepemc relatives in their struggle and ask all Indigenous peoples and our allies to stand up for the salmon, the clean drinking water, the animals and our future generations. We will not let them kill us. We will always be here.

Over the last two decades we have witnessed the dramatic decline of our salmon as a result of toxic extractive and urban development on our territory, as well as fish farms, invasive species, and climate change. These pipeline expansions pose the most direct risk yet.

The drilling alone threatens not only salmon spawning habitat but the balance of the entire ecosystem and food chain they rely upon. The sockeye are tenacious, fighting their way thousands of kilometres upstream from the Pacific Ocean to reach their spawning beds in Secwepemc territory. Wedzin Kwa joins the Skeena and runs through the canyons out to the Pacific Ocean. We cannot risk putting any more obstacles in the salmons’ way.

Our traditional land users and stewards—those who exercise our right to hunt, fish, gather, and practice our culture—are the ones who truly understand the potential impacts of the pipeline. It is these members of our nations who will feel the effects of the pipeline on our rights and our food sovereignty most acutely. It is these members who have authority over our lands the government of Canada has failed most.

When we protect our rivers from invading industries, and insist on our rights to fish and hunt on our territories, we are criminalized, harassed and jailed. In Secwepemc territory, there were 5 arrests yesterday and 3 indigenous land defenders were sentenced to 28 days in Canadian jail.

By refusing to seek the free prior and informed consent of our people, and instead opting to sign deals and agreements with a few of our federal Indian bands, the government of Canada has undermined the authority of the proper rights and title holders of Secwepemcúl’ecw and the Wet’suwet’en yintah.

Media Contacts:

Jennifer Wickham
Media Coordinator for Gidimt’en Checkpoint:
yintahaccess@gmail.com

Kanahus Manuel, Secwepemc
Tiny House Warriors:
(250) 852-3924

BREAKING: Wet’suwet’en Women Occupy Pipeline Drillsite To Stop CGL from Drilling Beneath Their Sacred Headwaters

BREAKING: Wet’suwet’en Women Occupy Pipeline Drillsite To Stop CGL from Drilling Beneath Their Sacred Headwaters

via Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidimt’en Territory:

BREAKING: Wet’suwet’en Women Occupy Pipeline Drillsite To Stop CGL from Drilling Beneath Their Sacred Headwaters

As Coastal GasLink attempts to destroy our homelands, we are surveilled, harassed, and criminalized even when we pray for our yintah.

Our rights are being trampled and our future is at risk. We ask our supporters to again stand with us and to take action, as Coastal GasLink is now days away from test drilling at our sacred headwaters .

The time is now to fight with all we have against this colonial invasion.

Indigenous Women Hold Ceremony at Pipeline Drill Site

https://www.facebook.com/wetsuwetenstrong/posts/695976478014808

Coastal GasLink has called in the RCMP to try and remove Wet’suwet’en community members and Indigenous youth as they hold a ceremony at a proposed drill site for Coastal Gaslink’s pipeline. Coastal Gaslink has been evicted from our territories by the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs – who have full jurisdiction over Wet’suwet’en lands. As CGL continues to trespass, we will do everything in our power to protect our waters and to uphold our laws.

We will not let CGL break our Wet’suwet’en laws and drill under the headwaters of the Wedzin Kwa river, which nourishes all of Wet’suwet’en territory. The standoff is ongoing. We call for solidarity actions from coast to coast. Take action where you stand, or come stand with us on the yintah.

Donate, volunteer, or take action: http://www.yintahaccess.com

 

Blockade Musings on Patcheedaht Unceded Territory

Blockade Musings on Patcheedaht Unceded Territory

Blockade Musings on Patcheedaht Unceded Territory

By Esther Muirhead


Winding my way from Lake Cowichan to Port Renfrew, the ravages of continuous clearcuts on steeply sloped mountains, magnified the sun’s rays bouncing off rocky mirrors of ravaged lands, like water hitting a hot frying pan. Driving up the mountain to (Renfrew) River Blockade, stopping road-building on the east side of Fairy Creek, the ominous logging roads carved into mountains and the large machinery scattered about, I wondered what planet I was on. Once at the blockade, and walking into a replica of a 200 million year old rainforest ecosystem, I took a deep breath and wept. Did you know that 200 million years ago, coniferous forests almost went extinct as a result of the evolutionary advancement of flowering trees that came to dominate the earth? The conifers retreated to the margins of the planet where a small number of species managed to maintain a foothold by adapting to extremely harsh conditions. Along the northwest coast of “Canada” is the only region where the conifers retain their former glory, revolving in and out of 10 thousand year cycles to create globally rare ecosystems. They are able to grow throughout the long winters and since they use water more efficiently than flowering plants they also thrive during the dry summer months. The result is a living organism so rich and so productive that temperate forest biomass is easily four times as great as that of any area in the tropics. Within the crown of a single conifer, is found as many as 1500 animal and plant species.

The ecological and spiritual value of old growth forests can never be reconciled with the resource extraction world view.

The intrinsic value of ancient forests has no place in the calculus of forest planning, which has, since its’ inception, allowed for the eventual total eradication of ancient forests. Forestry as traditionally practiced in the BC is less a science than an ideology; a set of ideas reflecting the aspirations of a closed group of professionals with a vested interest in validating its very short term, industrial practices. Old growth is “harvested” though it was never planted by humans, ancient forests are deemed “decadent” and “over mature.” In 1998, independent scientists concluded that BC logging of old growth had driven 142 salmon stocks to extinction and left 624 others on the brink of extinction. We live at the end of the clearcut; if we do nothing they will be lost within our lifetime.

Attempting to walk through the forest with my two walking poles, I would continuously fall through nurse logs into spongey damp ferns and moss up to my chest. Standing in the presence of a 3,000 year old cedar tree, knowing that she is taking care of countless younger trees, holding up the banks of the creek, pouring out oxygen in all directions, my mind stood still. These last stands reveal the intelligence of evolution and the source of ancient mythologies.

The highlight of the blockade were the frequent visits from Bill Jones, a Pateechadht elder, whose traditional homelands include the Fairy Creek watershed.

Bill described himself as the only wild Indian left in his village. I heard him saying that he wished that the federal government would cancel all band funding so that people would be forced to return to the land. He figured that most people would die but they are already dying anyway, due to poverty, health problems, drug overdoses, suicide, and domestic violence. Bill was always overflowing with patience, joy, warmth and compassion. His support is allowing us to remain confident in our efforts to save this sacred place.

One of the major issues that has arisen is clarifying how to gain consent from the Patcheedadht First Nation in support of us being on their land. We were not surprised that the Band Council did not reply to the letter sent in early August informing them of the blockade plan. I hear that poverty is widespread and with fish and hunting stocks very low, so jobs running a local mill, outfitted by Teal-Jones especially for old-growth timber, is appealing to many. The village is comprised of maybe 60 people, most youth leaving for the city and no hereditary chieftains have survived. Bill Jones was already known to us from the Walbran/Carmanah campaign and he gave us his blessing the moment he heard about the Fairy Creek blockade.

You can support the blockade by reinforcing our demand for legally binding legislation to permanently end the logging of BC’s last remaining 1% old growth forests.

Last week, the NDP came out saying they will defer logging in a few old-growth forests, for 2 years. Fairy Creek was not included in any of the deferments. This is Vicky Husband’s response, quoted in Focus Victoria; “The government’s response to the Gorley-Merkel (Old-Growth Review Panel) is a shoddy piece of spin-doctoring in advance of an election. It is duplicitous in intent, short on facts and intentionally misleading.”

We are seeking donations of thousands of dollars to hire a forest ecologist, archaeologist and biologists to argue that Fairy Creek must be protected from Teal-Jones’ chopping block.

Please contribute by sending an e-transfer donation to: rain4estflyingsquad@gmail.com

For more information contact <ejmuirhead4@gmail.com>.


For more information on the situation at Fairy Creek,


Featured image: Coniferous forest in Canada. By World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr. Creative Commons 2.0

Forest Defenders Hold The Barricades As The BC Government Fails To Defer Road

Forest Defenders Hold The Barricades As The BC Government Fails To Defer Road

An ongoing blockade to protect old-growth forests in western Canada has now lasted more than a month, but blockaders hopes that a government report would help protect the Fairy Creek Valley have been dashed.


Forest Defenders Hold the Barricades as the BC Government Fails to Defer Road Building and Logging into the Fairy Creek Rainforest

September 14, 2020

Featured image: Road building in the old growth forests of the Renfrew Creek Watershed, part of the greater Fairy Creek Rainforest. (Photo Credit: Ken Dawson)

The forest defenders blocking road and logging access to Fairy Creek are devastated that it was not included in the government’s announcement of deferrals of forest areas of the province. The Old Growth Strategic Review recommended: “immediate response to ecosystems at very high risk,” through deferrals. That would emphatically include Fairy Creek, which lies within unceded Pacheedaht Territory. Instead the government included Clayoquot Sound that the review did not recommend deferring.

Roads accessing Fairy Creek were going forward and poised to enter the watershed when stopped. This constitutes imminent threat. Other old growth forests in southern Vancouver Island, either under immediate threat or where active logging is taking place are: the Caycuse where there is active logging and roading; Edinburgh Mountain and the Central Walbran, both with multiple new approved cut blocks and road proposals; and the Nahmint Valley, where BC Timber Sales was censured by an internal review for violating its own legal requirements.

All of these areas deserve, and must receive, permanent protection from logging.

Among other areas of concern on Vancouver Island are the West Kauwinch River, and the Zeballos Lake watersheds, both similarly intact watersheds at imminent risk from new logging and road building. Fairy Creek has spectacular yellow cedar stands, a highly endangered and underrepresented species in BC’s forest inventory. The review calls for further protection of these species, yet the headwaters of Fairy Creek, and several adjacent old growth forests remain slated to be logged. Surely, the last intact watershed in the immense San Juan River drainage deserves a permanently protected designation.

We demand that the government immediately defer Fairy Creek and the other contiguous old growth forests from further incursions and permanently protect them from logging.

Until that happens, the blockades of the accesses into Fairy Creek will remain in place as support grows for protection following the OGSR report that highlights gross mismanagement, misinformation and collusion between government and the forest industry, where the public interest and that of the standing forests seldom enters their calculations.

Contacts:


For more information on the situation at Fairy Creek,

 

Grassroots Forest Defenders Establish Third Blockade to Defend Vancouver Island Old Growth Forest

Grassroots Forest Defenders Establish Third Blockade to Defend Vancouver Island Old Growth Forest

A third blockade has started to stop the logging of near the headwaters of Fairy Creek. To learn more about the blockade in Fairy Creek, read the media release by the organizers of the blockade, and listen to interviews with Joshua Wright here and here. Access the official Facebook page here.


Two weeks into a campaign to halt logging of ancient rainforests in the last intact watershed of the San Juan River system, activists have set up a third blockade on unceded Pacheedaht territory!

Grassroots forest defenders from across Vancouver Island have successfully prevented Teal Jones Group from blasting logging roads into the unlogged headwaters of the Fairy Creek watershed for the past two weeks.

The first blockade was established on Monday, August 10th, where the new roads were about to crest a ridge into the west side of the watershed. The blockaders successfully turned away the road builders early that morning. Teal Jones removed their road building equipment on Tuesday, August 11th, and the blockade has remained in place continuously since then.

On August 17th, in light of government inaction to meet the blockaders demands, a second blockade was established just to the east of the Fairy Creek watershed, preventing Teal Jones from building roads which have been approved for construction into that side of the rainforest, located on unceded Pacheedaht Territory.

And on the evening of August 23rd, a third blockade was established. The third blockade is located on a logging road on Edinburgh mountain (also unceded Pacheedaht Territory). With the exception of Eden Grove on Edinburgh mountain, contiguous old-growth corridors have been severed between the rich valley bottom and the protected upper reaches. The infamous Big Lonely Doug stands in stark contrast to clear cut in a cutblock on Edinburgh, the sole remaining giant fir in the cut. Lonely Doug has become an internationally recognized symbol for BC’s devastating logging practices. Just up the mountain, logging is ongoing. This is what the newest blockade will stop.

Photo shows Teal Jones old-growth logging operations adjacent to Fairy Creek. Photo by Ancient Forest Alliance.

This new blockade also obstructs old growth logging already in progress east of Fairy Creek.

This stretch of ancient forest is contiguous with the intact old growth forest within the Fairy Creek watershed and contains high value valley bottom old growth forest that would be fully eradicated if the logging was allowed to continue.  A massive, ancient cedar recently felled by Teal Jones in one of the old growth cut blocks now being blockaded:

“If anyone has ever felt called in their heart to take a stand for old growth forests, we invite them to join us here in Premier John Horgan’s own electoral riding: at our first blockade, or at this new, more easily accessible second blockade,” stated Cowichan Valley resident Caimen Shapiro.

Teal Jones, the licence holder of TFL 46, over the past month has begun road construction in the old growth hotspot of Fairy Creek that would enable them to clear-cut the upper Fairy Creek watershed, near Port Renfrew. The company has felled and graded several hectares of old growth forest on a road network that, had it not been for our first blockade, would have breached the ridgeline and entered the watershed.

Protection of Old Growth Forests

In view of the forthcoming release of theOld Growth Strategic Review (OGSR) report and recommendations, being held up by the BC government for up to 6 months from early May, with no firm release date to the public, we are again asking the Premier to establish:

1. The immediate and permanent protection of the entire Fairy Creek Valley, thereby nullifying all cut blocks and road construction approvals in the watershed and contiguous old growth forests. We demand this take place without a ‘land swap’ that would remove protections from other old growth forests to compensate Teal Jones.

2. An immediate end to old growth logging on Vancouver Island.

In an article in The Narwhal, Jan. 27, 2020, Gary Merkel, one of the two commissioners of the OGSR states: “I think the thing that surprised me the most is the degree of unanimity and common thinking around ‘we need to get back to the land’ and about moving past political cycles … we’re hearing it from almost everywhere,” Merkel told The Narwhal in a joint phone interview with Gorley: “We’re managing ecosystems — that are in some cases thousands of years old — on a four-year political cycle. The management systems change from government to government,” said Merkel, the former chair of both the Tahltan Nation Development Corporation and the Columbia Basin Trust.

We are now at the stage of final eradication of the ancient coastal temperate rainforest, reduced to less than 3% of its original extent by logging.

Port Renfrew has billed itself as the Big Tree Capital of Canada and this form of tourism has become the backbone of its economy. Once again, this future is threatened by the indiscriminate eradication of the ancient forests in this region.  Here is a dramatic drone video of Fairy Creek watershed, recently captured by a young firefighter showing road-building crews cresting the ridge into the very last unlogged watershed in the San Juan River valley rainforest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBnhktwJIo4


If you are in a position to help you can find you way with this information:  Blockade Directions: Blockade #1 (established August 10): GPS coordinates: 48°38’32.56″N 124°21’21.25″W

10 km on the Gordon River Main Line at Braden Creek Main Line (on your way to Fairy Lake after leaving Port Renfrew, turn left just past Deering Bridge and take the road up the hill to the right just before the bridge). Map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B038’37.3%22N+124%C2%B021’38.4% 22W/@48.6396915,- 124.357926,5720m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d48.6436944!4d- 124.3606667

Blockade  #2 (established August 17) GPS coordinates: 48°38’12.66″N 124°17’29.97″W  6.7 km on the Granite Main Line from Pacific Marine Rd.
Map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B038’11.1%22N+124%C2%B017’25.0% 22W/@48.6053997,- 124.3902158,13000m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d48.63642!4d- 124.29028?hl=en

Media Contact: Joshua Wright, 360-989-8067 (jawrighter@gmail.com)

Featured image by Ancient Forest Allianc. Captured earlier this month from the Granite (Renfrew) Creek watershed, just over the ridge to the east of Fairy Creek in Pacheedaht territory. Teal-Jones was – until recently – also constructing roads and starting to clearcut old-growth forest in this area. The second blockade has now been set up by independent activists to prevent the company from continuing its destructive practices here as well.