A Nov. 29 screening of Yintah in Williams Lake attracted about 50 people, coming together to witness and reflect on a decade of Indigenous land defending.
The film Yintah documents the Wet’suwet’en fight to protect their land from pipeline development, as Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham uproot their lives and bravely stand their ground as they defend their right to occupy and protect their ancestral land.
Considering the film is available to view online, the turnout for the screening was a real demonstration of community, as pointed out by organizer Venta Rutkauskas with the Community Arts Council of Williams Lake and Area (CACWL).
The screening, paired with a craft and learning circle the following day, was one of CACWL’s recurring ComeUnity events which seek to build reconciliation through arts and culture.
“We’ve come a long way,” said award-winning author and former chief of Xatśūll First Nation Bev Sellars who attended the event as a guest speaker. She contrasted the community’s desire to run this event with the not-so-distant memory of local bookstores unwilling to accept a book about residential schools.
Sellars and co-speaker Blaine Grinder ignited conversation following the film’s screening, emphasizing the importance of nature in the road to reconciliation.
“If you really want to reconcile with Indigenous people you need to reconcile with Mother Earth first,” Sellars said.
The two spoke about how natural law is more than just a moral code, but common-sense principles which apply to everyone.
“When money comes along common sense goes out the window,” Sellars said. “You don’t shit in the water you drink.”
“The natural laws exist whether the people are here or not,” Grinder said while urging people to think about what’s being done to the land and water around them. Grinder is a Tsilhqot'in Indigenous educator, leader and land defender local to Williams Lake who knows some of the people in the film Yintah. His journey has taken him from working in forestry and oil and gas industries to working with elders and learning about water rights.
“It’s something you take for granted, and then when it’s gone you wish you did something about it,” he said about access to water.
The audience actively participated in the conversation, with one woman remembering how she was raised with strict rules not to set up camp anywhere near water, and another calling for chlorine-free water treatment. The conversation’s focus on water drew from concerns raised in the film around the dangers pipelines pose to water and wildlife.
Sometimes generating laughter, often times frustration, Yintah is a film which demonstrates the double-standards between Indigenous land defenders occupying their ancestral land and private companies wanting to use the land.
As Huson and Wickham move back to the land to monitor and protect it from pipeline developers, the RCMP come along stating their presence is to ensure Coastal GasLink workers are safe. Over the years the police’s role escalates to enforcing an injunction and forcibly removing the Wet’suwet’en land defenders by arresting them.
The film contrasts the peaceful occupation of the Wet’suwet’en on their land to the aggressive enforcement of the law. Barricades set up by land defenders are breached with chain saws and a sign with the word ‘reconciliation’ falls apart. Members of the media are arrested, and police often outnumber the occupiers whose presence is sanctioned by the Wet’suwet’en clans. RCMP are seen in one instance walking through a path of red dresses while holding long guns and smashing the window of a car to arrest an occupier.
While the RCMP were present to protect pipeline workers and enforce an injunction, only the Wet'suwet'en were around to uphold a 1997 Supreme Court of Canada ruling which confirmed the Wet'suwet'en people had never given up title to their 22,000 square kilometres of land, which they call Yintah.
