Indigenous Struggles / Luttes autochtones

The royal Bank of Canada is at the head of a group of 27 banks who lend the 6.8 billions that are needed for the construction of Coastal Gaslink.. In Canada, the banks taking part in the agreement are ATB Financial, Bank of Montreal, Scotia Bank, CIBC, the Canadian Western Bank, Export Developpement Canada, the National bank and the Toronto Dominion. In short, the whole banking sector is supporting pipelines.

The spring of 2020 saw one of the largest Indigenous mobilizations since the Kanehsatà:ke resistance in 1990. The Wet’suwet’en nation’s opposition to the Coastal GasLink project currently being built on their territory has inspired many other communities, both Indigenous and non- Indigenous, to take direct action across Canada, thereby blocking the national rail system, the backbone of Canadian colonial capitalism.

The area known as Ada’itsx, better known as Fairy Creek, is located near the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, about a two-hour drive from Victoria. Originally composed of the watershed of the creek of the same name, the area has come to encompass a collection of pristine forests in the region. The originally defended watershed is in Pacheedaht territory, but the area now touches a larger forest complex, including Ditidaht territory [1]

The struggle for self-determination of the Wetsu’wet’en people is not a new one. Since the late 1990s, the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan peoples have been waging a legal and political battle for recognition of their territorial rights. In 1997, these two peoples obtained recognition from the colonial legal system that their territory had never been ceded, and that their hereditary system of governance had never been extinguished.

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