Indigenous Land Defenders

Feb 21, 2025

You can see much of that story in the film YINTA, currently on Netflix.

I compiled much of my writing in this PDF file, LANDBACK case study. Wet’suwet’en and Quakers.

British Columbia Supreme Court

On February 19th, the British Columbia Supreme Court decision issued is a “precedent setting decision,” according to a lawyer for three Indigenous land defenders arrested in 2021 along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route.

“The courts found the conduct of the police officers abused the court’s process. This is an extraordinarily rare finding, and it demonstrates how serious the police officers’ misconduct was,” Frances Mahon said during a press conference following the decision.

While B.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Tammen denied the defence’s request to dismiss the charges based on police conduct during the arrests, he found that Charter rights violations by RCMP officers could signal a “systemic attitudinal issue” within the unit responsible for policing protests in the province, something he said he will consider during sentencing.

…

Land defenders Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, Shaylynn Sampson and Corey Jocko were arrested, along with several others, on Nov. 19, 2021, under a civil injunction first granted to Coastal GasLink several years earlier.

While the pipeline company had opted not to proceed with court actions following previous arrests, the BC Prosecution Service announced in 2022 it would lay criminal contempt of court charges against some of those arrested during the two-day enforcement on Wet’suwet’en territory.

To meet the bar for criminal contempt, the Crown must prove that someone knew about a court order and wilfully defied it in a way that would depreciate the court’s authority.

While the trio were found guilty following a trial in January 2024, Justice Tammen then moved to hear evidence into an application by the defendants to stay the charges based on police conduct during the arrests.

The court heard that RCMP officers had set up snipers in the area prior to the arrest, and had also considered shooting out a security camera and sending a police dog to pull people out of the structures during the arrests.

RCMP Violated Charter Rights During CGL Arrests, Court Finds by Amanda Follett Hosgood, The Tyee, February 20, 2025

The court heard that RCMP officers had set up snipers in the area prior to the arrest, and had also considered shooting out a security camera and sending a police dog to pull people out of the structures during the arrests.

Trans Mountain pipeline, Fairy Creek old-growth logging protests and rallies supporting Palestine

C-IRG, the Community-Industry Response Group, is an RCMP policing unit established in 2017 to respond to resource-extraction industry conflicts. The unit, which was renamed the Critical Response Unit-British Columbia, or CRU-BC, and had its mandate expanded last year, faces broad misconduct allegations and a systemic investigation by Canada’s RCMP watchdog, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission.

The unit has also been used to conduct enforcements related to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Fairy Creek old-growth logging protests and rallies supporting Palestine. It conducted several high-profile police actions against those opposing TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline and maintained a constant presence on Wet’suwet’en territory until the project completed construction last year.

RCMP Violated Charter Rights During CGL Arrests, Court Finds by Amanda Follett Hosgood, The Tyee, February 20, 2025

Justice Michael Tammen’s decision

In his decision yesterday, Tammen agreed that some police conduct violated the land defenders’ rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including the “highly offensive and clearly racist terms” used to describe Sleydo’ and Sampson.

“I view the conduct as extremely serious, involving racism directed towards Indigenous women. That is a group who have been systemically disadvantaged throughout virtually all sectors of the criminal justice system for generations,” Tammen said.

He added that the comments were “not made by a single officer and were not a one-off occurrence” but represented “multiple offensive and discriminatory comments made by multiple officers in the wake of Nov. 18 and 19, 2021, arrests that is potentially a sign of a systemic attitudinal issue within the C-IRG.”

…

But also serious, Tammen said, was the violation of the court order by the defendants, which he said “poses a threat to the rule of law.”

“It involved a calculated, prolonged and well-organized attack on a court order. The actions of the accused were a clear attack on the rule of law,” Tammen said. “Each of the three accused would be convicted of criminal contempt.”

RCMP Violated Charter Rights During CGL Arrests, Court Finds by Amanda Follett Hosgood, The Tyee, February 20, 2025

landback_67b874c2Download