It is not yet 6 a.m. when we hit the road. Marlene Hale has walked this path dozens of times. Last year, this Wet’suwet’en elder and activist who lived in Montreal crossed the country to lend a hand to the courageous mobilization of her “little troublemakers” in Fairy Creek.
She speaks with great emotion of the courage of these activists who, since August 2020, have exposed themselves to batons and bad weather to prevent the cutting of this ancient rainforest on Vancouver Island. She remembers one day in particular in late summer when the youths were sprayed with cayenne pepper as they formed a peaceful roadblock.
Several of them were handcuffed, detained for hours, without water. She has seen Indigenous and racialized activists being targeted and challenged. “That day I couldn’t look the officers in the eye, I was too angry. What if you had seen their contempt for Bill Jones? “
Bill Jones, 81, is a Pacheedaht Nation elder. Fairy Creek is part of the land of his ancestors. A former worker in the forestry industry, he supports the occupation of Fairy Creek, despite the opposing stance of his nation’s elected leader. He and Marlene Hale forged a special relationship over the course of this struggle.
Marlene Hale has been very active, from 2020, in the mobilization against the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory. She knows how resistance is organized with unequal weapons, and how isolated one can feel when adopting a controversial posture in one’s community. It is for this reason that she wanted to reach out to Bill Jones. “The first time I walked into Bill’s house, he was so happy to welcome a Wet’suwet’en under his roof! “
When we arrive at Fairy Creek, Bill Jones has been waiting for us since dawn in the pouring rain. He’s worn out. The last few days have been trying. Marlene offers to take him home. When she drives him back to his car, in the gentleness of their gestures, we feel the deep affection that unites them. A mutual benevolence which is also embodied through the defense of the territory.
Dam dismantling operations have resumed for a third day since the return into force of the injunction. At the entrance to the road, where the “headquarters” had been until the day before, I meet Pinenut. Involved for over a year, she tells me that on certain days this summer hundreds of people gathered here to support those “on the front line”. The sight of the headquarters destroys the sadness.
Why are you here ? She represses a sob. “For my granddaughter. So that she knows something other than the destruction of nature. Pinenut has already been arrested, she tells me. “But I’m old, they were extremely polite. Nothing to do with what young people are going through. “
I meet Okimaw, an activist from Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, who has been involved for seven months in Fairy Creek. “In June, in Cowessess, they found the bodies of 751 children on the grounds of the former Marieval boarding school. She returned to her community to commemorate this tragedy, but returned to Fairy Creek. In his eyes, a crucial struggle is being played out here for the defense of the territory, and for indigenous sovereignty. “We should have the right to make decisions about the land, to deal with it the right way. “
According to her, the differential treatment of certain activists is clear: “During my last arrest, 72 people were arrested and only indigenous and racialized people were handcuffed. They tied my feet up, carried me upside down… ”
On the side of the police forces, we claim to intervene in a manner proportional to the actions of the militants – who, however, carry out only non-violent actions. Certain images, certain marks left on the bodies raise eyebrows. And the proliferation of profiling accounts is a dismal reminder of the historical roots of the RCMP, the armed wing of the colonial state.
Today, despite the perimeter established by the police at the foot of the mountain, it is easy to let the small procession of media pass. We are allowed to drive the kilometers that separate us from the “obstacle” where an operation is underway. It is that such transparency is unprecedented here, I am told.
“The obstacle” is a twenty foot high structure erected by the militants: a tripod made of logs, on which a platform is placed. An activist is lying there, one arm immersed in a metal tube, itself cast in a concrete block integrated into the structure.
To dismantle the tripod, you must first break up the concrete, then lower the person. The police took more than an hour to root out the activist. The operation was faster than the first few times, it seems. And above all, softer. Other dismantles were brutal.
When the road is cleared, the police inform us that all obstacles have been removed. Some activists who spent the night on the mountain are still there, next to what remains of the structure. They look dejected, they are exhausted. The troops have decreased a lot in recent days. You have to be strong enough to stay there, in the October rain, cut off from the world, constantly watched.
Over the months, several left, traumatized by a violent arrest. “But it’s not just police brutality,” notes Marlene Hale. All of this is part of the climatic trauma suffered by this generation of young people, and especially indigenous young people. This is perhaps the deep meaning of this mobilization. Faced with generalized political inaction and the vertiginous asymmetry of resources, one offers one’s body to the defense of the territory. And we take the blows. Like an allegory of the destruction of our world.