Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs are fighting the construction of a natural gas pipeline. Why do you think they're doing what they're doing? Well, part of it is for money.
They got over about two million dollars since they started. No one talk to this guy. He's the fastest.
This is Northern British Columbia just outside Smithers, BC. Home to some of the most pristine landscape in all of Canada and also the traditional territory of the Wet'suwet'en people. But this tranquil environment has also seen some of Canada's most contentious political fighting, pitting family against family, clan against clan, and five so-called hereditary chiefs against elected chief and councils of First Nation communities. But is this entire dispute... really about a pipeline?
Are these hereditary chiefs really who they say they are? Or have environmental groups exploited a pre-existing situation and personal grievances in a bid to stop the project? Let's go get the truth. For them, it's not about the Aboriginal rights and title. It is about power and control and asserting it or abusing it.
I do have a voice and nobody's going to tell me to be quiet. My name is Aaron Gunn and this is Politics Explained. Protesters who joined Indigenous leaders opposed to a natural gas pipeline in BC have been causing major disruptions. Via Rail has now cancelled all commuter train service across Canada because of the ongoing blockades.
In February 2020, protests opposing the construction of the coastal gas link pipeline erupted across the country. As protesters, angered by RCMP actions in what is traditional Wet'suwet'en territory, erected illegal blockades on rail lines, highways, and other critical infrastructure, all with the purpose to, in their words, shut down Canada. Throughout the unrest, a common refrain heard from protesters was their commitment to, quote, stand in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en people.
And, more than two years later, not much has changed. With protests less frequent, perhaps, but also occasionally much more violent as well. One such peaceful demonstration was recently held in Vancouver, specifically targeting RBC Bank for financing the project. My film crew and I drove past the gathering protesters to plan out a way to best capture the footage and find out what they had to say.
Okay, so we just passed the protesters. They're just a couple blocks away. They're kind of in the middle of... a field. It'll be a little too obvious, I think, for myself to approach.
So we're going to send Colin in a little undercover, a little incognito. Good luck, Colin. Thanks.
See what you can get. Okay, I'm going to go now. I can't get coffee in either one of these. Everybody knows that at this point, these projects are literally premeditated murder.
Take your money out of RBC. We'll show you how We know that there are certain members of our community who do tend to get more targeted by police. So those of us who sit in more privilege, those of us with white cis bodies, we make sure that we are taking care of the others. TGL stands for Coastal Gas Link. It's the company that's basically making the pipeline because they're currently violating indigenous law and they're going to poison the water with their pipeline.
Okay. Okay, so we are going to march! Wooo! And we are going to march to the RBC at Broadway and McDonald's. We can occupy the roadway as we walk down 10th.
Hey, hey, ho, ho! Boston News have got to go! Hey, hey, ho, ho!
Boston News have got to go! And we are here, um, Because our hearts are breaking in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en people as the drilling has started. So we are here today to protect the...
The sovereignty of the Wet'suwet'en people RBC is killing me Remember there's no planet B Fossil fuels pollutants fill Divest now to kill the dril- RBC is killing me, remember there's no planet B. RBC is killing me. So we're here in Vancouver just outside the RBC branch in Kitsilano where there's a big Big protest coming to try to get RBC to defund the coastal gas pipeline.
So we're going to go, we're going to try to talk to some of these protesters. Can I ask you what brings you out here today? Should really talk to the organizers. Yeah, we literally just stepped. I walked here.
Are you one of the organizers? OK, awesome. Thank you for the action. Awesome.
Awesome. Are you answering questions or? I can.
Yeah. What media outlet are you? Just with me.
Just I got a YouTube channel and that's all. OK, what's your? Aaron Gunn. Aaron Gunn.
Yeah. Oh. Yeah, I'd be happy to answer, sure. So first thing, well, first of all, congratulations on a very impressive turnout. What's the main driving force here?
So this action is being organized by the Decolonial Solidarity Campaign, or a national project largely run and operated by settlers. We take all of our leadership from the hereditary chiefs, the Wet'suwet'en Nation. You mentioned working with the Wet'suwet'en. You have all the different houses, and then you have the elected bands, and then you have the hereditary leaders that you referenced.
The elected band councils are those who have signed in their support for CGL and TMX and other fossil fuel projects. Those systems are put in place by the colonial powers that be. They're designed to be mouthpieces of the federal government. And this is just one small action to register our dissent and our refusal to be complicit in the settler colonial project. While various environmental and activist groups claim to stand with the Wet'suwet'en people in opposition to the pipeline, they all ignore one very inconvenient fact.
All 20 elected First Nation bands along the pipeline route support the project and have signed agreements with Coastal GasLink, including... the five Wet'suwet'en bands located in what is considered traditional Wet'suwet'en territory. And one final question for you regarding the hereditary chiefs. I think it feels like it seems odd to most Canadians to have kind of a decision-making process based on non-elected leadership.
How would you explain that to most Canadians? It's not our place as white settlers to question that kind of system that has had such a long... History of success, but regardless it's our responsibility as settlers on stolen land to listen to that governance and follow it.
Yeah, we'll just walk through it for, just b-roll. Just b-roll. Go. Are you guys news? Uh, I have a YouTube channel, yeah.
You do want to add something? You have a YouTube channel? No, Aaron Gunn.
Oh, you! You're a fing fascist! I thought you talked about how many times the downtown Eastside? I'm a fing- Cops the downtown east side with you how you talk to cops how you you used there you push the narrative of criminalization Homeless people Everyone's entitled to their opinion Thank you for your the escort through through the crowd After that exciting encounter, we still found ourselves with more questions than we had answers. Do protesters really represent the wishes of the Wet'suwet'en people?
What is the role of the elected councils? And who, maybe most importantly, are these hereditary chiefs? What was clear was the next stop on our journey had to be northern BC, and the traditional territory of the Wet'suwet'en people, where we first sat down with the Wets'uwet'en people. with Wet'suwet'en matriarch Bonnie George for a traditional home-cooked meal of moose stew, followed by a rundown of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary system. Am I right to say there's 13 house chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en?
And are those considered, like when people say the hereditary chiefs, are they talking about the 13 clans? they should be, yeah. We have two governance systems in place.
One is the band council system, the other is hereditary system. Each hereditary house group are 13 houses within Novotsov. Anuknuitin has autonomy and a say as to what happens within their territory called Anuknuitin. But we don't have a central governance system, a model, where the nation decides on who's going to be speaking for us as a nation. Due to this lack of a unified governance model, internal differences that might otherwise have been settled democratically have been allowed to fester for years.
The traditional Wet'suwet'en territory is located in north-central BC and encompasses the settlements of Burns Lake, Houston, Smithers, as well as other smaller communities. Within this territory are five indigenous Wet'suwet'en bands who oversee the delivery of services to First Nations who live on their respective reserves. These bands are governed by chief and councils that are democratically elected by the First Nations who live there. not unlike a municipality.
This elected system was first introduced and is recognized by the federal government and is part of the Indian Act. There also exists a parallel governance structure known as the hereditary system that is comprised of five clans and 13 houses, each led by a chief. Clan membership is passed down through matrilineal lines while hereditary titles are usually inherited. The Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs claim domain over the entire traditional territory.
The divide between the elected and hereditary leadership can largely trace its origins to the beginning of the pipeline debate, which some may be surprised to know, actually began before the coastal gas link pipeline, when a handful of hereditary chiefs supported the Eunice Doughton Camp or blockade meant to impede the construction of the of the Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline back in 2010. But after that pipeline was killed by the Trudeau government, protesters fixed their sights on a new target, Coastal GasLink, a natural gas pipeline that was set to be built along a similar route. These protesters, led by activist Molly Wickham, were once again supported by a group of hereditary chiefs through an incorporated entity known as as the Office of the Wet'suwet'en, or OW. The Office of the Wet'suwet'en came about after the Dalgamu court case.
It was put together for the six elected councils and the five hereditary chiefs to be able to sit down and govern the Wet'suwet'en people. While those six elected council chairs have never been filled, we don't get invited. So... I think that that office was put together for the Wet'suwet'en people, but it hasn't served our community.
In the years that followed, all five elected Wet'suwet'en bands along the pipeline route signed benefit-sharing agreements with Coastal GasLink to support the project, including the Wet'suwet'en First Nation Band led by then-elected chief Karen Ogin-Tose. It's hard when you live within a community and you can't even drink the water. Poor housing, overcrowding, lack of housing, our education levels are low. You know, we have maybe a handful of our members that have post-secondary degrees.
So all of those things are looked to the leadership to resolve for the community. And does that benefit-sharing agreement with Coastal GasLink help those communities and the council achieve some of those things? Yes, it does. Unlike the elected bands, however, the office of the Wet'suwet'en is not a place for discussion. did not receive benefit-sharing agreements with Coastal GasLink, who preferred to deal directly with the elected chief and councils.
But this isn't to say the OW doesn't receive any funding. It does, including in the form of grants for massive environmental groups, such as Tides Canada. However, ENGOs aren't the only place the OW gets their money. In fact, in 2020, as illegal blockades ravaged the country in the name of these hereditary chiefs, the federal and provincial governments negotiated what was effectively a ransom payment worth millions of dollars directly with the OW. This was called the Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, and was signed without the consent of the elected chief and councils.
From what we understand is that they've been applying for money on behalf of our communities, but we don't get it. Little to no services at all. The province, once the MOU was signed, they had given $7.2 million to the office of the...
And part of that was to reunify the Wet'suwet'en people, which has not happened. There's been no invitations to meetings, there's been no invitations to any feasts at all. They're still, the communities are still fractured yet. They've been there 30 years and I don't think they've created one job for one person in this community.
And that's the sad thing about it because I don't know how much money they've got but it's in the multi-millions. They take the money but they don't give it back to the community. They think they speak for the whole community and all the other clans but they don't.
They don't consult, they don't have meetings, they have closed door meetings. They got this hoax, I call it a hoax, the memorandum of understanding from the federal and the provincial governments for... For us to build unity and it's only the Fab Five and those that entities benefiting from it. Are they supposed to be getting money to benefit the community?
Oh yeah they are they got 7.4 million dollars over four years that they're supposed to be uniting the Wet'suwet'en and strengthening the Wet'suwet'en system which they're not. No they're not. They're traveling all over to Toronto and wherever else I heard they went to Switzerland. Do you feel like when the government made that agreement with the office of the Wet'suwet'en they kind of undercut all of the elected chief and councils that have kind of been working constructively? Yeah that was pretty ironic.
The very system that has been imposed upon us was the very system that both the provincial and Federal government's ignored. It's just idiotic. I don't have any other word for it. The federal government imposed this system on us, and then they go and sign an MOU and completely ignore the elected councils.
Far from uniting the Wet'suwet'en people, the money given to the OW and the protesters they support may be inflaming tensions even more. As professional activists like Molly Wickham, who is currently facing criminal charges, have continued their campaign of blockades and intimidation, while using their large reach across social media to entice increasingly radicalized individuals from across North America to join their cause. A lot of the protesters that you see that are all over the media and everything, are they all Wet'suwet'en?
Are they all from the community? Oh, absolutely not. I think there's probably one or two Wet'suwet'en out there, aside from those monkeys that you see. Prancing around with their costumes now I call them. They're Americans from back east and there's a few Mohawks.
You can tell by their accent because you hear those videos. These outsiders, these foreign organizations that have been funding this group, they perpetuate the divide within the Wet'suwet'en people and communities and they need to just... back off and let the Wet'suwet'en people find a path forward. Because from my perspective, as long as the Wet'suwet'en communities are divided, we can't move forward. This is a Wet'suwet'en issue that needs to be resolved by Wet'suwet'en people, not by outsiders.
This point was made clear to protesters when they attempted to blockade a major rail line in Wet'suwet'en territory in 2020. Instead of successfully setting up their blockade, as they were able to do, in much of the rest of the country, protesters were met defiantly by Bonnie George and other Wet'suwet'en matriarchs who demanded they leave their traditional territory immediately. I met with Bonnie and Philistine Olson at the exact spot where this tense encounter took place to find out exactly what happened. Towards the end of the day, when I got a call from my auntie and we checked things out, there was nobody around, but we checked things around.
you can see that they had trucks, vehicle trucks going up to the train tracks. And by that point, by that day, they already had supplies up there to build their structure that they were going to block the railway. And so we walked up there, her and I walked up there, and we saw the dozer was still there and a pile of materials and a pile of pallets.
So there's no doubt that they were planning to erect a very big blockade here. And the one fellow, he come walking, it was just getting dark, he come walking towards us and I came out of the car. He said he was just checking things out and then he said to me that I had no right doing what we're doing here.
I said, excuse me, I said, do you know who I am? I am from Tekel Bia. This is our house territory.
We're here to take care of everybody. How could you say you don't know me? And I have no right. As far as I'm concerned, As far as I'm concerned, you guys don't actually have any power. Who is you guys?
This is our territory. This is Lexilew's territory. My house.
Who do you think I am? They just stood there like he was, I don't know, he was like, he was waiting for me to retaliate with physical force maybe. And they did not care who they were going to hurt. They did not care what they were going to do to hurt people. And you were set up here for almost three weeks.
So the idea was to block them from getting to bringing their stuff to the railway to block everybody else in a way. Yeah, prevent a mishap. We made sure that those areas were patrolled, that they weren't able to weasel their way in there. And finally, after After three weeks they got the hint that we didn't want them around here anymore.
We stayed here day in and day out. People came from other communities, other families. They supported us. They were glad.
They were really, really happy to see that we could stand up to all of this. Is this the literal spot where you guys were? Okay, this is it right here.
Let's walk up to it. We'll show you where. Yeah, we can walk up there. So if we didn't stop that blockade, it would have been right here.
Was that like... from a community perspective, was this kind of the most dramatic thing that you've seen with the police and CN and all the media? I would say so.
Yeah. Like it was pretty much every day, the top story for at least two weeks. Yeah.
Yeah. Until COVID happened, basically. Yeah.
It shook our community up, but lots of people were proud that we, we stood up here. I feel like lots of Canadians came away with maybe the wrong impression that it was like. You know the entire community is rising up and making these blockades, but it was almost the exact opposite where you had a community rise up to stop a blockade in this case.
And we did this all on our own. We never got no no GoFundMe money. We never begged anybody for money to support us through this.
Everybody looked after each other. Bonnie, Philistine and the other women who stopped this rail blockade did so in defiance of the OW and the five hereditary chiefs who supported these protests. In response, Bonnie was publicly shamed in a process known as feathering. These disgruntled Fab Five tried to humiliate me again in the public.
Again, have they tried it before? Oh yeah, they tried to feather me, which is they put feathers on top of your head, eagle down feathers, and that's called shaming you. And they pointed out a whole bunch of stuff saying that I did this and did that whatever. Why they did that is because I've been with a project since 2011 and that was their fighting tool but they tried to throw all this other stuff in to make me look incompetent as a person as a Wet'suwet'en matriarch.
So to see how How our women were treated, they were shamed, scorned. It was sad to see. But these five hereditary chiefs, led by John Risdale, didn't stop at publicly shaming matriarchs who happened to support the coastal gas link pipeline. They also took the unprecedented step of unilaterally stripping the hereditary names of the other female house chiefs that opposed them. Taking those names and giving them instead to their friends or, in some cases, even themselves.
For example, the hereditary chief title of Smogethgim of the Sun House was stolen from Gloria George and given to Warner Nizel, the brother of an OW board member, while the hereditary chief title of Woos of the Grizzly House was taken from Darlene Glam and given to Frank Alec, an outspoken critic of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Could you tell me how you managed to steal a matriarchal name, Chief Woos? How'd you steal that name?
It was a year ago today. How'd you steal it? Teresa Tate Day, another female matriarch, also had her hereditary title, Waha Light, stolen from her, signaling to all hereditary chiefs that if you don't fall in line with the OW, they will strip you of your name and cultural identity. We had a public meeting in Houston.
Our territory, La Cuenpea territory, where the hereditary male chiefs came in and said, We're not allowed to speak about this and this goes against our system totally because everybody has a voice, everybody has an opinion. We have male chiefs asserting their right as male chiefs and women that were supporting LNG, they got their names stripped. They didn't do anything wrong, but because they supported LNG, they got their names stripped. But what those guys did to those ladies who they claimed to strip the names from, they just went ahead and did it. They just went ahead.
People whispered about it saying they're gonna do this but nobody spoke up because they're bullies. And it's unheard of. There's no such thing as people taking your names. When you were born, you were born into a house, nobody can come into your house and take something from you. That's against the law.
It's against Canadian law. It's against our law. Nobody does that.
It's unheard of. It's uncalled for. It has never been done before.
And this was an assault on our women. It's like kicking your grandmother when your grandmother is down. That's how it felt to me because I held my grandmother's names.
You know, and that was a lack of respect for our culture and tradition and what they did. They feathered me in the feast hall. So I see a whole sort of...
Faction of taking our traditional system and making it their own and making up rules as we go, breaking traditional law. How did it feel to you when this whole sudden they just took your name from you? They didn't take my name. They think they did.
They did not take my name. I am still a hereditary chief. Nobody can come and take your name.
Stripping names and titles isn't the only thing these hereditary chiefs have done that goes against Wet'suwet'en. and even Canadian law. In fact, many of them have ignored these traditions completely.
Ask anybody about when there's a death in the community, everything is on hold. But the Fab Five, the OW chiefs, they had a rally in Smithers to protest the pipelines on the day of Sophie's funeral, which is a really high matriarch. And another thing is when they put on the regalia, they're only supposed to use for ceremonies. You know, the OW, as soon as they got a camera on, they all dress up and they walk out.
They know what's wrong and we know what's wrong and we know who they are and that they're really not chiefs. On top of breaking cultural traditions, John Risdale, the most outspoken hereditary chief in the fight against the pipeline, committed the shocking and disturbing crime. of shooting and killing his neighbor's dog while intoxicated, resulting in a criminal charge. For example, the chief that shot a dog while under the influence of alcohol, to me, that's not good behavior.
That's not how you conduct yourself as a head chief of any clan. To me, that looks... That is a prime example of somebody that should be getting stripped of their name. The turmoil brought to the community by the fight over the pipeline has led to an unprecedented amount of infighting among not only Wet'suwet'en leadership, but many of the Wet'suwet'en people themselves. To address these issues head-on and to start the process of healing, Bonnie and other matriarchs called a potluck just south of Houston, in which we were invited to attend.
So we're on our way to see Bonnie George and her family. We have no idea what to expect, but hopefully we can talk to many Wet'suwet'en members and know more about their history, their culture. So we're excited for it, but we have no idea what to expect. And we'll see what happens.
My name is Aaron Gunn. I'm here visiting from Victoria and I'm very honored to be here and excited to be here. I don't obviously have a house name or anything like that, although I'm big on history. being Scottish they actually have a clan system as well that everyone originally gets their name from so the Gunn clan is from the very northern tip of Scotland and so it's kind of interesting that wherever you travel in the world there's a bit more that holds us together that then divides us apart.
I respect the Chiefs that respect us. You see all the hereditary Chiefs out there? They don't respect us.
They're all out there making money and stuff. I'm just getting so tired of it. Even as a young child, we were always told, even if we didn't have a name, our words meant something. That's what the... Our leader is supposed to do talk with all of us like what we're doing around here.
Whether you've got a name or not, your voice matters. And that's what's not happening today. We need to teach our younger ones too.
Not the way we are today. Fighting, fighting, there, there, there. You know, that's not the way our kids are going to grow up and learn.
We're the ones that have to teach them now. You know what's going on today is not our way of living like our elders did, what they taught us. That was a part of my vision was, like Bonnie said, reunification of our nations, all the five bands. People don't realize that. Many of our band councils have hereditary chiefs in them.
The last council I sat on, there was seven hereditary chiefs sitting on a table. O.W. they don't understand that.
You see what's happening out here now. You give them that territory, one young lady, single-handedly. It's changing our traditions, our culture.
We as a people, if we're unified together, we can bring that tradition and culture back. I'm from the Laksalu clan, the small frog. Okay. And I'm from Ganexlaia, House of Many Eyes.
I didn't go to university to be a... be Indian, you know, my school was right here. That's where I grew up, on the territory. In the real world? Yes.
Not in the textbook? No, not in the textbook. I grew up on the territory.
I was packing water at 8, winter and summer, trapping at 8, wintertime. You don't see a lot of people doing that anymore. No, no, no, not nowadays.
It used to be very respectful in the past and seems to have disappeared. You talked a little bit about the office of the Wet'suwet'en. What's their role in all this?
Well, the office of the Wet'suwet'en is a form of dictatorship. When you sit on the table... and you make decisions for your clan without consulting with your clan or your matriarchs, that's not how our tradition is built on.
Why do these individuals, why do you think they're doing what they're doing? They're doing it for financial gain, I think, because like I said, Molly's bank account is huge. But there are those around Molly Wickham, John Risdale, and the other anti-pipeline chiefs who have taken the fight against Coastal GasLink one step further. On February 17, 2022, a group armed with axes and flare guns launched a coordinated attack on a Coastal GasLink worksite and blockaded roads to prevent the RCMP from reaching the location of the attack. The assault caused millions of dollars in damage to CGL equipment and the surrounding environment, while terrified workers who were locked inside their vehicles were forced to watch on helplessly and in fear.
While no one has yet to be charged with the attack, footage shows the masked attackers wearing the same camouflage commonly worn by members of the Gidhamden Checkpoint, Molly Wickham's group. Of course, if you ask the local Wet'suwet'en members, There's not much doubt of who was behind the attack. How did the community react to that?
What was the feeling? They were sickened. They were sickened. They were grossed. People are just so sick of that, that someone would go to that extreme, but everybody knows who did it, but no one wants to say anything, but we have to try to prove it.
You know, we all know, but proof, you know, society needs proof in order for charges. We were expecting something because it was too quiet. But we didn't know what was going to happen.
And it sure blew us away that they would go that far, even to put someone's life in danger. That's not who we are as Wet'suwet'en people. That's not what we were taught growing up. You know, people have disputes all the time.
It's a matter of sitting down and talking about it, talking with the people that are in opposition. That's what the Feast Hall was set up for. Was to hash out our differences and our disputes. You do it in a peaceful way.
The true elders and the true matriarchs of our community, most of them must be shaking their head. Like, what is this world coming to? This is not who we are as Witsothen.
This is not how we practice dispute resolution. I wanted to check out what these infamous protester camps looked like from above and to get a sense of their scale and proximity to the pipeline's construction. So we hired a helicopter to take us above Smithers to survey the surrounding area.
We're here right now just south of Smithers, British Columbia, and we're flying over the road where activists had erected three blockades back in 2020. And also not far, we just flew over it, where there was the, I don't know how else to call it, domestic... A terrorist attack, basically, in February of this year where they terrorized a bunch of CGL employees and caused what one can only presume to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in damage. So this is where everything all happened. We're also now just about to come up to the second of those blockades at the 44-kilometer mark.
This is the blockade that we actually visited in Season 1 and encountered a bunch of... We didn't seem to want to have a conversation, and so we're going to give it a flyover, and I guess we'll see if there's any activity still on the site. Meanwhile, the CGL pipeline is located just over there.
The company is planning to complete it in 2023, barring no future and unexpected surprises. After we landed, I went to join Bonnie and other Wet'suwet'en members at the site of the CGL attack to see how the workers had adapted to the new situation where violence against them was a real possibility. Originally we... We had four trailers on location, two of them are left.
We were able to demobilize two of them intact with re-by reinforcing the walls. So the two that are left, one of them has been demolished in place. The other one is pending.
Those were located, I guess, just for reference here, would be straight in behind this excavator and then up against the fence, just in this very northeast corner. So how are the guys doing that were traumatized? What are they doing? As far as I understand it, everybody's back to work and everybody's kind of moving past it in their own way. So we're really just striving to move past it, to be honest.
Now I feel it's a time that the world needs to know what the truth is about the Otsokan people. And I really appreciate and thank Aaron and his crew for what they're doing for us because we had no idea how we're gonna get it out there. We can't be those guys'platform to ensure that we capture the absolute truth and that's what we're doing. During my time in northern BC and in the company of the Wet'suwet'en, it became clear to me that this was a people with a deep respect and passion for their history and their culture, but also a people that were beset by deep and painful divisions.
Divisions that have been inflamed by outside environmental groups, and while made out by many to be about a pipeline, in reality, is much more about power, control, and who gets the final say. But for protesters or politicians who claim to speak on behalf of the Wet'suwet'en, a note of caution. This is not an issue of emissions, building permits, or adequate consultations, but an issue surrounding conflicting governance structures and traditions of the Wet'suwet'en people themselves. And ultimately, it will be up to them to come together, find a solution, and chart a path forward united again.
There was protests all over Canada and people were supporting the protesters. They're not with Zooten. They have no say on our territory. Only the Zooten can fix the Zooten system.
As people, as with Zootens, let's just sit down and have a discussion. You know, we need to work this out because it's our people that are going to suffer. This is wrong.
I mean we should have, every one of us should have a say. Not close doors. Nothing's going to get done if they're just looking after their own interests.
Hopefully our people will get up and stand up and say no more. Our responsibility is to look after the people and the land. And I think that if the hereditary system and the elected system sat down and had these frank discussions... What a powerhouse the Wet'suwet'en people would be if we all worked together. To hold your head up high to be Wet'suwet'en on how we used to before.
We were proud to be Wet'suwet'en. We have to fight for it. Let's stand up and be proud once again. And that's what I'm going to do.
My name is Aaron Gunn, and this has been Politics Explained.