The Press just loves a good "Indian" story

The press just loves a good “Indian” story.

Last year it was the plucky and principled “Indian Princess” Jody Wilson-Raybould, dressed in her First Nations blanket, following “my truth”, fending off the nasty politicians and their minions of the Prime Minister’s office, including the Prime Minister himself! That trope ended badly for our former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General (although she was re-elected as an independent, and is still sought-after copy) and very nearly cost the government re-election. It almost certainly would have, had it not been for an incompetent and insensitive alternative.

This year we have the largely self-styled (as it turns out) “hereditary chiefs” of the Wet’suet’en, marching for the photo op in full regalia down the main street of Smithers BC, willing to engage with any member of the Press at the first sight of a microphone. 

Thanks to the diligence of the Press and their eager informants, we now know far more than almost all of us did before about real and imagined Wet’suet’en cultural practices, the structure of Wet’suet’en traditional society, the economic power of rail blockades, the traditional and ongoing grievances of a very vocal minority of Mohawk, and the abilities of various politicians and police to deal with on-the-ground realities. 

Some of these things are instructive, a few are important, and all of them are interesting. Which I suppose is why some of us still buy newspapers and read them diligently.

Unfortunately -- and this is admittedly very much my own opinion -- much of the information we have been exposed to on this issue is pretty-much irrelevant to the actual issue at hand.

The issue is a natural gas pipeline, the kind that already criss-crosses BC to provide natural gas to BC homes and industry. Here’s the company description: “Coastal GasLink Pipeline Limited is building an approximately 670 kilometre pipeline from the Dawson Creek area to the west coast of B.C. The pipeline will transport natural gas to the approved LNG Canada facility near Kitimat. The approved Coastal GasLink route was determined by considering Indigenous, landowner and stakeholder input, the environment, archaeological and cultural values, land ...” You get the picture; there’s nothing remarkable about this infrastructure, except that the gas is for export and that the line, in order to get to Kitimat, is pretty-much obliged to cross Wet’suet’en territory. 

In the distant past this would not have been an issue: the government would have approved, and the company would have just built the line, possibly consulting the Wet’suet’en bands, possibly not. But in 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada, in a decision called “Delgamuukw vs British Columbia” declared that the two tribal groups in the area, the We’suet’en and the Gitksan to their north, had aboriginal title to most of their claimed traditional territory. And that changed everything.

What Delgamuukw did not specify, however, was how the various boundary claims would be reconciled, how those decisions would be reached, or by whom. That was left for a future agreement or legal decision. And that part hasn’t happened.

So Coastal GasLink, having made the necessary accommodations with government and the designated regulator, made deals with all the elected bands on the proposed route and started building.

And that’s when the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan, and we were treated to the famous photo op in Smithers. Eight “hereditary chiefs” declared that the bands (that is, the actual Wet’suet’en people and their elected representatives) could only decide for reserve territory; outside of those reserves only the “hereditary chiefs” could give permission. They and their supporters call that “Wet’suet’en Law”. They didn’t give their permission.

To me it’s absolutely mind-boggling how many otherwise rational fellow Canadians saw the logic of this: for example, the entire Green Party of BC got on board! What is it they don’t understand about Canada and democracy? What am I missing?

Because as far as I’m concerned, in a democracy people have a right to have an equal voice, and to make decisions in matters that effect them. And, as far as I know, Wet’suet’en people are Canadians, and, just like me, get to vote in Canadian elections and to participate fully in BC and Canadian institutions. The only difference is that, as aboriginal persons, they have a few extra rights, like the communal rights that come with their traditional territory, among which are the right to be consulted and the right to be compensated.

Those rights have been satisfied, so I’m confident that the pipeline will be completed. 

Of course, for most people who feel passionately about this, it’s not really about the Wet’suet’en and their protection of “the land” at all. It’s about the export of natural gas and the fracking that produces it. Those are real issues, and we shouldn’t pretend natural gas isn’t a fossil fuel, and that producing it and burning it isn’t bad for the environment. They are, and it’s not useful to minimize those facts.

That acknowledged, we also have to note that companies paid many millions of dollars to the BC government for the right to frack in the BC northeast, and to extract the gas. So that’s going to happen; no democratically-elected government could prevent it. We in BC already use about as much of that gas as we can; for example, ours is one of the few houses our neighbourhood that isn’t hooked up. (and we burn wood for heat, so we don’t get to gloat about our environmental superiority) That gas is going to be used somewhere, and so far a lot of it has, ironically, gone at cut-rate prices to the Alberta oil sands to release bitumen from its sand. Personally, I’d rather see it exported, hopefully bringing a better price and more jobs and revenue to British Columbia. 

So there’s that.

The other issue is the “land defenders” argument. I believe it when people say the Wet’suet’en people have a strong connection to their territory. But it’s hardly pristine, as a recent post I found on Twitter of an overflight of the relevant part of the pipeline route demonstrates. There has been intensive logging there for decades. Of course: the access for large parts of it, the pipeline route, in fact, is via the Maurice River Forestry Road. The one the activist blockaded before the RCMP did their duty and took it down.

And that’s where all of this started.