Free Secwepemc Political Prisoner Kanahus Manuel
by Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society
Saturday July 14, 2018 – The Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society is outraged at the arrest of Kanahus Manuel. This morning Kanahus Manuel was arrested by the RCMP, an occupying force that has been criminalizing Indigenous peoples on our own lands and forcing us onto reservations since contact.
Last week the Tiny House Warriors reclaimed an ancestral village to block the planned route of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline. We are currently building solarized Tiny Houses on our land to block Kinder Morgan. By doing this, we are providing housing to Secwepemc families, re-establishing our village sites, and asserting our Secwepemc responsibility to our lands and waters.
As Secwepemc women, we will resist construction on the North Thompson line of the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline, which is expected to begin by the fall. We are re-establishing a permanent village on our land that the pipeline is trespassing without our consent. We have never provided and will never provide our collective free, prior and informed consent – the minimal international standard – to the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Project or the Man Camps. We are taking a stand against the destructive, genocidal, and assimilative forces that have been visited upon us by colonial Canadian governments since first contact.
We have faced intimidation by the white supremacist RCMP and Park ranger goons of the Canadian state who want us removed from our own lands. We are on Secwepemc lands that neither the federal government nor provincial government has any jurisdiction on. While there is much talk by the federal government about respecting Indigenous rights and reconciliation, the Trans Mountain buy-out expansion and arrest of Secwepemc woman warrior Kanahus Manuel is a declaration of war.
We are Secwepemc women. We are still here. We are unafraid. We carry the waters of our lands within us. We are guided by the warrior spirit of our ancestors. We will defend our lands and lives by any means necessary!
– STATEMENT BY SECWEPEMC WOMEN’S WARRIOR SOCIETY
Saturday July 14, 2018
Unsurrendered Secwepemc territories
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