By Mordecai Specktor
Yintah means ‘land’
In my Dec. 2024 column, I wrote about threats to the environment and to tribal sovereignty posed by the incoming Trump 2.0 administration. The Orange Führer is assembling a Cabinet of grifters and right-wing extremists to execute his benighted policies. For example, Kristi Noem, the So. Dakota governor and a Trump sycophant, has been nominated to serve as Homeland Security secretary. After making disparaging remarks about tribal leaders, Noem has been banned from setting foot on all nine of the Lakota reservations in the state. Some parts of the “homeland” will be off-limits to Noem.
I expect that considerable chaos will ensue following Trump taking the presidential oath of office on Jan. 20. Executing plans for mass deportation of undocumented residents across the country could provide the flashpoint for popular resistance.
North of the border, efforts by the Wet’suwet’en to defend their unceded ancestral territory from encroachment have been depicted in an excellent new documentary titled “Yintah.” Yintah means “land,” and the Wet’suwet’en lands in what is now called British Columbia, Canada, have been assaulted by the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The film, which is produced and directed by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano, in consultation with tribal leaders, highlights the struggle led by hereditary chiefs and two charismatic women activists: Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham.
At various point in the decade-long struggle against the CGL natural gas pipeline, the First Nations patriots, along with some non-Native allies, blockade roads and the pipeline path. Push comes to shove when paramilitary Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) show up to arrests the land defenders and destroy their barricades. The RCMP, the “Mounties,” are portrayed in popular culture as noble law enforcers in red uniforms and broad-brimmed hats — think Dudley Do-Right from “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” In reality, the RCMP is Canada’s version of the U.S. FBI. During my time in Saskatchewan many years ago, I heard many stories of RCMP brutality directed against First Nations communities.
As portrayed in “Yintah,” when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses a community meeting in Kamloops, British Columbia, his rhetoric is about “reconciliation”; however, the federal government is determined to push the pipeline through the Wet’suwet’en territory and will employ force to defend the project. Behind the pipeline are RCMP guns. Wet’suwet’en land defenders tell Trudeau to eff off and walk out of the meeting.
The film’s website (yintahfilm.com) notes that “Wet’suwet’en land is unceded: There is no treaty, no bill of sale, or no surrender placing the land under Canadian authority. In 1997, the Dinï ze’ and Tsakë ze’ (Hereditary Chiefs) of the Wet’suwet’en people proved in Canada’s top court that they had never given up ownership to 22,000 [square kilometers] of land.”
I should mention that neighboring clans stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en land defenders. When the RCMP destroys the blockades, the land defenders seize on a new strategy: shutdown Canada.
Solidarity activists across the Canada heed the call and block roads and rail lines, severely disrupting the national economy. The crisis, in February 2020, forced Trudeau to convene his Cabinet to discuss “next steps” to deal with “anti-pipeline protests that have hamstrung the country’s rail network,” according to a CBC report.
“This is an issue that is of concern,” Trudeau told reporters while visiting Senegal..
The Canadian transport minister said “the federal government is ‘very concerned’ after CN Rail said the railway has no choice but to temporarily shut ‘significant’ parts of its network because of blockades by protesters near Belleville, Ont., and New Hazelton, B.C.,” as per the CBC.
In a similar vein — American Indians confronting a pipeline on tribal land — the documentary “Bad River,” directed by Mary Mazzio, focuses on efforts by the Bad River Anishinaabe, in northern Wisconsin, to force Canada-based Enbridge to remove the 70-year-old Line 5 pipeline that crosses 13 miles of the reservation. My colleague Winona LaDuke has written about this pipeline fight in The Circle. She wrote two years ago that “Enbridge’s right of way, expired in 2013. The pipeline has become exposed during extreme weather and the Anishinaabe life is threatened.”
LaDuke noted that a federal judge “stopped short of shutting down the pipeline across the reservation. The judge ruled Enbridge was unjustly enriched by continued operation of its Line 5 pipeline on the Bad River reservation, entitling the tribe to a monetary remedy based on the company’s profits.” However, the judge denied the tribe’s request to immediately shut down the pipeline.
Again, the incoming Trump administration could go to bat for the Enbridge fossil fuels project to the detriment of the Bad River tribe.
“Bad River” is streaming on the Peacock network.
