Denver Rally in Support of Wet’suwet’en First Nation People in Canada

The Wet’suwet’en First Nation in British Columbia, Canada, have been fighting the Canadian government and an oil company over plans to extract build a pipeline on their ancestral land.

The hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en tribe are opposing the construction of a natural gas pipeline, and their resistance has prompted actions and support among Indigenous people across Canada and beyond.

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In early February, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) cleared out Wet’suwet’en land defender camps after Coastal GasLink, now known as TC Energy, the pipeline owner, directed police to enforce a court injunction allowing it to remove the “obstacles” and continue preconstruction work.

All five Wet’suwet’en Clans have opposed pipelines on their territories.

On Thursday, March 5th in Denver, a coalition of groups will rally in support of the Wet’suwet’en at the office of the Consulate General of Canada 1625 Broadway, from 1-3pm.

Renee Millard-Chacon, one of the local organizers, told KGNU that they want Denver to stand in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en tribe and she believes the Colorado oil and gas industry is creating a similar social and environmental justice narrative here.

“It’s very similar. It’s a lot of families that’ll be affected and it’s a lot of people that will be affected for generations in the interest of jobs in an unsustainable and unrenewable future that’s so degrading to everything that it touches.”

Millard-Chacon is the founder of Womxn from the Mountain, a group of female cultural educators. She says event though the Wet’suwet’en are trying to direct their own fate through official government channels, they are being ignored proving little has changed when it comes to the treatment of native peoples.

“For the Canadian government to not involve the indigenous narratives and its identity and its politics and being able to have its own sovereignty is directly the same old, insane and manic and greedy of maintaining of colonization and maintaining dominance over any targeted community you want to steal resources from.”

For more information on the event visit the Wetʼsuwetʼen Solidarity at the Canada Consulate Facebook page

(Featured Image credit: Wetʼsuwetʼen Solidarity at the Canada Consulate Facebook page)

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