The Wet’suwet’en village of Witset bustles on a hot August morning as locals cast their spears into the Bulkley River below the Morricetown canyon.
The salmon run this year is low. Still, Wet’suwe’ten people continue fishing in the hopes of catching a few to process, smoke, and can — a tradition integral to their way of life. However, Wet’suwet’en Likts’amisyu Clan Wing Chief Dsta’hyl, also known as Adam Gagnon, wasn’t able to partake this year.
Perched on a hill overlooking the canyon, he watches things unfold from his home, where he’s been held captive for most of his days since July 3 as he completes a sentence of 60 days house arrest.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” said Dsta’hyl, about not having to serve his time behind bars. Yet he remains defiant, and plans to appeal. “All of us have to start standing up. We must raise our children to start taking control of their own territories.”
In late July, Amnesty International took the extraordinary step in naming Dsta’hyl Canada’s first ever designated prisoner of conscience, and now demanding his immediate and unconditional release.
“The Canadian state has unjustly criminalized and confined Chief Dsta’hyl for defending the land and rights of the Wet’suwet’en people.”
The organization considers a prisoner of conscience to be any person imprisoned or otherwise physically restricted, such as through house arrest, solely because of their political, religious, or other conscientiously held beliefs, and who has not used violence or advocated violence or hatred in the circumstances leading to their detention.
“The Canadian state has unjustly criminalized and confined Chief Dsta’hyl for defending the land and rights of the Wet’suwet’en people,” Amnesty International’s Ana Piquer stated in a press release. “As a result, Canada joins the shameful list of countries where prisoners of conscience remain under house arrest or behind bars.”
In October 2021, Dsta’hyl was arrested and charged with criminal contempt after confiscating and decommissioning heavy equipment utilized by Coastal GasLink to construct its LNG pipeline on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. Dsta’hyl said he was enforcing Wet’suwet’en laws as the company did not have the free, prior and informed consent of hereditary chiefs to build the pipeline.
The B.C. Supreme Court first issued an injunction at the request of CGL in 2018, preventing land defenders from safeguarding Wet’suwet’en territory against pipeline construction.
The RCMP orchestrated highly publicized militarized operations in January 2019, January 2020, and November 2021, targeting blockade camps and the Unist’ot’en healing centre, all on unceded Wet’suwet’en land. These actions triggered widespread protests and demonstrations of solidarity across Canada.
In June and July 2022, the B.C. Prosecution Service charged 20 land defenders with criminal contempt for breaching the injunction order. Among the group, seven land defenders pleaded guilty, while charges against five others were dropped.
Three additional Indigenous land defenders, who were convicted of criminal contempt for defying the injunction terms, are currently contesting the legal process in an abuse of process application with their trial set to resume in September.
Another five Wet’suwet’en land defenders arrested in March 2023, and charged with criminal contempt of the injunction, are awaiting the scheduling of their trial dates.
‘They wanted to make an example out of me’
After three years of wading through the trial process, Dsta’hyl, 68, said he wasn’t expecting to be sentenced. He had assumed the charges would be dropped because he has no prior criminal record.
During a hearing at the Smithers courthouse in early July, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen said a jail sentence was “required” in his case, because Dsta’hyl “caused a significant degree of disruption for the workers and the pipeline construction,” according to CBC.
“I guess they wanted to make an example out of me because I’m a chief, just to deter anybody else from doing the same as I did,” Dsta’hyl said, sitting on his favourite recliner in his living room. A side table next to him is cluttered with vitamins, minerals, and other health care-related items. He’s been taking his health seriously since being diagnosed last year with stage four lymphoma.
His sentence conditions allow him to venture out of his home for four hours a day. He runs errands and swims at the local pool in nearby Smithers, something he asserts helps him through the process of dealing with cancer and having to otherwise stay housebound.
He’s following the rules but he doesn’t believe his conviction is just.
“The biggest thing I have to say is the corruption within the government and the Canadian judicial system, and how the whole system and the RCMP were created to force the Wet’suwet’en, and all nations across Canada, into the whole Euro-Canadian structure,” he said.
Dsta’hly first became a chief in the mid-1970s. The Dsta’hyl name is hundreds of years old, passed on through the generations. He said the name first belonged to a man adopted into the Wet’suwet’en Nation during the Kweese wars with the nations living in Kitimat.
“We have 80 per cent of our territory logged. Just look at all of our fur-bearing animals and all of our big herbivores that we live off, all the moose, deer, elk — all of these animals there, they have no place to go because everything has been cleared out.”
Dsta’hyl’s mother told him if he became a chief, that life as he knew it would be over.
“She said the moment that you take that name, no longer are you your own person. The moment you accept that name you will be working only for the best interest of your people right till you die,” he said.
Dsta’hyl worked as a carpenter throughout his life while fulfilling his duties as a wing chief. He witnessed the long process of the Delgamuuk and Gisday’way Supreme Court of Canada case that ruled Aboriginal title existed.
Dsta’hyl remembers the celebrations that broke out after the 1997 ruling.
“They did lots of dancing out on the land there,” noting that at the time he was working as a lead negotiator on behalf of the tribe to negotiate with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The fight for Wet’suwet’en rights continued with Dsta’hyl helping to establish fishing rights for community members. But since then, salmon stocks have dwindled, he said.
“The sockeye, they’re down to the two or three thousand that are making it to the spawning beds, from over a million back then. We’re in a really bad state of affairs in our fisheries. And especially as CGL wants to compromise some of the tributaries.”
Wet’suwet’en traditional territory is also impacted by logging, which has wiped out animal habitats, he said.
“We have 80 per cent of our territory logged, just look at all of our fur-bearing animals and all of our big herbivores that we live off, all the moose, deer, elk, all of these animals there, they have no place to go because everything has been cleared out.”
He has to protect his territories from the CGL pipeline from further degradation, to preserve what’s left, he continued. And that’s what he was doing on the day he was arrested.
“When you look at the accumulative effects on our land — we’re impacted by logging, by mining, by farming. We’re impacted by everything and all of that is accumulative effects going into our water.”
Not that long ago the penalty for outsiders trespassing on Wet’suwet’en territories was death, he said.
“At one time, trespassers would be given one warning and then capital punishment was a part of the laws. If someone commits an offense and takes a large game off your territory without permission, they were given one warning and were sent off and whatever game they had was confiscated. And if they were caught again, they were shot on sight.”
“The biggest thing I have to say is the corruption within the government and the Canadian judicial system, and how the whole system and the RCMP were created to force the Wet’suwet’en, and all nations across Canada, into the whole Euro-Canadian structure.”
When he showed up to check out the work CGL was conducting on his territory in October 2021, Dsta’hyl was acting in the capacity of a hereditary chief seeking to protect it, he said.
“We knew that there was a lot of siltation going into our creeks and rivers. They (CGL) were trying to hide all of that, they didn’t want no witnesses.”
B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office has fined CGL multiple times in relation to repeated non-compliance with EAO requirements.
Dsta’hyl said there was no trust between the company and the hereditary leaders. The territory goes hand-in-hand with the identity of Wet’suwet’en, he said.
“Without our land we are nothing. We have nothing because the land is us. We have to be able to nurture the land back to life, and we have to have that for our children and generations to come.”
Dsta’hyl plans to visit friends and relatives on Vancouver Island when his sentence is done on September 3. His daughter, grandchildren, and sister keep him company in the meantime.
He said if he could still be out on the land protecting it, he would. Because the time to save it is running out. Last year CGL announced mechanical completion of the pipeline with plans to have natural gas ready to ship to Asian markets in 2025.
CGL did not respond to Ricochet and IndigiNews’ request for comment.
Land defenders vow to keep fighting
Chief Howilhkat, Freda Huson, of the Wet’suwet’en Dark House Clan, the matriarch who established the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre on her unceded Wet’suwet’en land nearly 15 years ago near the pipeline route. Howilhkat led opposition against CGL’s pipeline, and was forcibly removed from her territory in 2020.
She asserts that even though the pipeline construction is complete, no natural gas will ever flow through it.
“Mark my words, I don’t believe any product is going to go through that line,” she said from her daughter’s home in Witset.
“The economy is going to collapse, don’t you see it coming? None of the leadership is listening. And Mother Earth is going to survive. Sure, they’re destroying and beating the crap out of her, but she will survive. But we won’t survive. That’s the truth. Because she’ll nurse herself back to health while we’re starving and have no clean water to drink.”
She went on to share that the federal and provincial governments pushed the project through while violating Wet’suwet’en rights in the name of the “national interest.” She called that a stupid move.
“They think it’s good, but it’s not,” she said. “All of them are going to be begging a Native for food. We’re the only ones that are going to survive, not the city people, all the city people will be the first ones to die.”
“I hope one day they wake up. It’s not enough that Indigenous people have been taking care of the land for thousands and thousands of years and have done it successfully. They just come in and destroy everything in their path.”
Howilhkat said she and her loved ones are prepped and ready to live off the land when the time comes.
“I’ll be ready. It’s coming. I don’t know how soon it’s coming, but the way things are going and how the government and leadership are ignoring [the climate crisis] and still doing everything against trying to protect the environment,” she said.
“We’re going to run out of water, good sources of water. Water is going to be an economy of its own.”
Although her ancestors helped the settler population to survive when they first arrived in her territories, Howilhkat said that won’t be the case with the coming disasters related to the climate crisis and the fallout of destroying natural ecosystems.
“I hope one day they wake up,” she said. “It’s not enough that Indigenous people have been taking care of the land for thousands and thousands of years and have done it successfully. They just come in and destroy everything in their path. And if they don’t stop doing that, their children and their grandchildren are going to starve.
“And then they’re going to remember our words. Warning them. Wake up before it’s too late for you, and your children, and your descendants. Indigenous people aren’t going to make the mistake the second time around and save you. We’ll say ‘go drink your pipelines.’”
‘This is the long haul’
About an hour and a half’s drive up the mountain road near the CGL pipeline route is a log cabin and several smaller structures. The view from this clearing is stunning — a glistening lake, rugged mountains, thick forests beneath wide-open skies with fireweed and Indigenous flowers growing wildly.
In the home of Sleydo’, Molly Wickham, a Wet’suwet’en matriarch of the Gidimt’en Clan and mother of three, who helped lead the resistance against CGL’s pipeline, she looks out the window over the lake.
In January, Sleydo’ was convicted of criminal contempt for attempting to block the pipeline. She and two other convicted land defenders are scheduled to attend an abuse of process hearing which alleges the RCMP used excessive force during their arrest and that they were treated unfairly while in custody. The filing asks, if the judge does not suspend their charges, then consider lessening their sentences, in light of the treatment they received from the RCMP.
“People have asked me, ‘Do you feel like you lost?” said Sleydo’, sitting on her back deck.
“I think that we’ve always said that this was bigger than just this one pipeline. To me, I don’t feel like it’s over — for one, because there’s no gas running through those pipes,” she continued. “But also, we’ve been able to do the most amazing things, like what we’ve created and what it has driven us to do on the territory, the awareness that it has brought, and the inspiration to other people, too.”
“It was literally like a war zone. And you can’t heal when you’re still in a war zone.”
Sleydo’ points to a grant that a group of Wet’suwet’en community members recently received that funds youth and hereditary chiefs to track and monitor their traditional territories and the impacts of the pipeline. A traditional feast hall was built on the territory as well as cabins for Wet’suwet’en community members. They’re also starting a milling project to utilize trees killed by mountain pine beetles.
“I feel like we’re doing good and important work. And this is the long haul — we’re doing this work as prevention for the next project that’s coming in here. Our kids are going to know how to be out here and know how to reoccupy and assert themselves on their own territories.”
Since the RCMP pulled out of the territory, Sleydo’ said she’s had a chance to breathe. The years of harassment and militarization of her homelands took a toll, and she developed PTSD.
“It was literally like a war zone. And you can’t heal when you’re still in a war zone. So, this last year my health has improved dramatically. I’ve been able to start processing things, and feeling a lot more stable, and doing a lot more healing work.”
Reporting for this story was made possible in part through a grant from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
