My Interpretations - Ken Whytock: February 2020

People wonder about the protests happening across the country in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en nation, so I'm going to try to explain it to the best of my abilities.        

We need to remember that the territory in dispute is unceded territory which means Canada has never negotiated to have access to it.        The question you may ask is why does Canada have to do this?       That goes back to 1763, shortly after the English defeated the French and now had control over most of North America (from a European historical perspective). King George III of England issued a proclamation in 1763 which stated that the land belonged to the Indigenous people. Period. No question about it. He said that if Europeans wanted to settle on the land then a negotiated treaty had to be signed to allow this.            

That began a hundred+ years of treaty negotiations and most of Canada is on treaty territory. Kitchener-Waterloo is on land falling under the Haldimand Tract and its subsequent treaties. Drumbo, where I live, is on the Land-between-Lakes treaty.    I think it is the onus of every Canadian to know the treaty land they are on.  

Just so you know, non-Indigenous settlers have broken almost every treaty in some manner and if the government (our representative in treaty matters) were taken to court, it would lose. Also, so you know, most treaties gave the Indigenous People free education, free health care, yearly pay-outs, hunting and fishing rights, etc. so if you have a place to live don't begrudge anyone their treaty rights.       

This brings us to Wet'suwet'en Territory; Canada has never signed a treay for it, so, according to King George III, it belongs to the Wet'suwet'en People and we have no right to put a pipeline on it or send RCMP onto it. And yet we did.    

So are people angry? Yes. Do they have a right to be angry? Yes. Is Canada in the wrong? Yes.    Why are people blocking roads and railways across Canada? It's a tit-for-tat counter-measure.    Our government and the RCMP carried out illegal actions on unceded territory and no one listened. No one called for them to be held accountable because it happened in remote B.C.    

People who know are bringing the fight to urban Canada so Canadians, who claim to be law-abiding, will call out their government (which isn't acting in a law-abiding way) to negotiate with the Wet'suwet'en and follow the alternative pipeline route that the Wet'suwet'en proposed. So if your life is inconvenienced call your MP.