InsUrgent Media from the Front by Chris Robé Stephen Charbonneau

Author:Chris Robé, Stephen Charbonneau [Chris Robé, Stephen Charbonneau]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253051394
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.1. Unist’ot’en Resistance Camp (Credit: Unist’ot’en Camp).

Currently the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs are opposing the construction of all fracked gas and tar sands oil pipelines across their territory, and several Wet’suwet’en clans have “re-occupied their traditional territories (outside of the reservations allotted by Canada) in order to revitalize their culture, traditional harvesting practices, and generations of storytelling embedded in the land.”73 In 2010, the Unist’ot’en conferred with their hereditary leaders and decided to set up a traditional pit-house on the GPS coordinates of several proposed pipelines in order to protect their territory and salmon waterways from potential oil spills, and reestablish themselves on their ancestral lands.74 Using video and other means of communications, they reached out to Indigenous and non-Indigenous land defenders and environmental and social justice activists around the world who have subsequently showed up to help build additional cabins, a permaculture garden, a solar powered minigrid, and a healing lodge. As their spokesperson Chief Hawilhkat, who is also known as Freda Huson, says in a short video called “A Cultural Mission,” the camp is a place of cultural resurgence and reconnection of people with the land.75

Glenn Coulthard has called the Unist’ot’en encampment, with its anticolonial and prefigurative politics, the “politics of the act.”76 “Initially, we realized this was not only a pipeline issue but a sovereignty issue on our part,” said founding member Mel Bazil. “We don’t only think of ourselves, we think in solidarity with neighbouring nations and the world around us, and when we got an understanding of the proposed fluids that would be transported in these pipelines, we realized this was a danger for the whole world, particularly communities affected by the tar sands and fracking.”77

Video has always been key to the circulation of Unist’ot’en politics and ideas, and the representation of their traditional practices of living with the land. In a short YouTube video, Chief Toghestiy, who is also known as Smolgelgem, described their radical politics:

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