The Ongoing Pursuit of El Dorado in Wet'suwet'en Land.

I offer this reflection with humility and love, and also with great concern and sadness.

Over fifty actions are happening right now across Turtle Island (Canada), and around the world, in support of the Unist'ot'en Camp of land defenders for the Wet'suwet'en. I was headed to one of the Vancouver actions before a family health emergency called me back.

Yesterday the RCMP entered unceded, non-treaty, traditional Wet'suwet'en land to enforce a court injunction. The issue is the building of an Coastal Gaslink/TransCanada Corp gas pipeline on this land. An elected band council approved the pipeline, but the hereditary leaders of the Wet'suwet'en's five clans oppose it. RCMP have claimed that “'aboriginal title to this land and which Indigenous nation holds it, has not been determined,' and a trial is needed to settle the question." In the meantime, and before such a trial could happen, the RCMP have entered the land to close down the resistance camps and to make arrests.

According to the Wet'suwet'en Access Point on Gitdumden territory, who issued the call for international solidarity, “All Wet'suwet'en Clans have rejected the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline because this is our home. Our medicines, our berries, our food, the animals, our water, our culture are all here since time immemorial. We are obligated to protect our ways of life for our babies unborn.”

“Canada knows that its own actions are illegal,” further states the Wet'suwet'en Access Point on Gitdumden territory. “The Wet’suwet’en chiefs have maintained their use and occupancy of their lands and hereditary governance system to this date despite generations of legislative policies that aim to remove us from this land, assimilate our people, and ban our governing system. The hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en and the land defenders holding the front lines will never allow Wet’suwet’en sovereignty to be violated.” (from Harsha Walia's facebook page)


This is not a new thing. It is a continuation of the unbroken history of North America's militant displacement of Indigenous People, from first contact to this very day.

Wendell Berry views this as the foundational theme of North American history: any group or culture that formed roots in kinship and the land has been repeatedly dispossessed, driven out, subverted or exploited by “those who were carrying out some version of the search for El Dorado. Time after time, in place after place, these conquerors have fragmented and demolished traditional communities.” (The Unsettling of America, 4)

There are many more facts and figures that can be explored here:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-wetsuweten-bc-lng-pipeline-explainer/

here: http://www.wetsuweten.com/pipelines/

and especially here: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/01/08/LNG-Pipeline-Unistoten-Blockade/

I am deeply concerned about what lies behind this dispute, the spiritual reality underlying the conflict. When these kinds of issues come to the forefront you start to hear the clamoring of voices that normally are kept hidden in the dark places, the loud, abrasive anger of people who cannot seem to imagine why Indigenous people are fighting for their land. That is the ignorant underbelly, but the political, legal, and police machinations form the more "civilised" point of the sword.

But it is not civil, even according to the laws of Canada. If there is a genuine question of aboriginal title to the land and which nation holds it, and if it does require a trial to sort that out, why is the injunction being pursued? Why would we not want to discern that issue of title through a trial, or better yet through a traditional, Indigenous form of resolution (as the issue is internal), before we give it over to the use of the pipeline corporations? If we were really committed to truth and reconciliation, would this not be our priority? Yet we don't want to take the time for this, as a nation, because we are afraid of losing control of the land and what gets done on it.

It smacks of idolatry to me. I see a society that is terrified to surrender its dependence on oil and on the money that oil brings, land and people be damned. If people and land should have to be sacrificed to this dependency, then sacrificed they will be, particularly if they are Indigenous people who historically and worldwide have been required to lay down their land, their livelihood, and their lives for the political and economic benefit of others.

This is what idolatry does. Biblically, idolatry is almost always associated with oppression. Idols were a shortcut to power, wealth and control. God, through his prophets, frequently rebukes his people for worshipping false gods and for abusing people in their midst, as if God wouldn't see or hear the cries for justice.

We have been like the fools who build idols that cannot see, hear, smell, touch or speak, but in whom we put our faith and trust for salvation. The threat to our economic dependency on gas and oil, and our control of land and people, is a religious issue, because money (representing our "way of life") is our real god. Speaking or acting against this idolatry evokes religious, idolatrous anger, which always leads to terrible violence and demonic justifications.

The fight against this idolatry is therefore a spiritual fight. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Eph 6:12)

This does not mean that we just pray, though we must pray. It means that we can perceive the defense of land - thus far through non-violent means - as an act of spiritual defiance to idolatry. And we learn ways to stand alongside our brothers and sisters in the spirit of truth-speaking, repentance, and reconciliation.

Lord, have mercy on us; protect your people; let the meek inherit the earth; teach us to smash our idols; and help us to love better.

Amen.

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