Dini Ze Toghestiy

Indigenous Voices from Frontline Struggles against Dispossession

with Kanahus Manuel

I’m a hereditary chief of the Likhts’amisyu clan, from the Sun House. Currently in our territory we are focusing on the north shore of Francois Lake, a place called Allen Creek that is the site of many proposed pipelines. But they don’t have our consent. Our clan has met quite a few times and we held a feast where we announced to the other four Wet’suwet’en clans that we are against all pipelines coming through our territories. The Wet’suwet’en, like many other Indigenous nations in BC, have never signed a treaty with a government, with any government. No treaties were signed, and we have no relationship with the province or the federal government. But they forced us onto reservations and off of our lands, so they can go ahead and open mines, develop logging activities and engage in agriculture. Now they are putting in pipelines. So they have come in and decimated our territories to the point where the territories can’t really sustain us. (…)