The Unist’ot’en camp in North-Western British Colombia, Canada, is front and centre in a global battle for climate and energy justice.
Since 2011 they have been maintaining a check-point controlling access through their territory to stop government and industry plans to build several gas and oil pipelines through their territory. These pipelines form part of an energy corridor that will serve to unlock the vast energy reserves of the tar sands and transport fracked gas with disastrous implications for the climate. The camp was established to oppose these projects, to defend the sacred headwaters, the salmon that spawn there and to maintain their autonomy over their unceded lands.
This video, filmed at the camp in 2013, reveals how the Unist’ot’en camp is succeeding in stopping up to 7 pipelines, holding up billions in investment and keeping millions of barrels (and cubic metres) of fossil fuels under the ground. It also show how the camp, beyond being a simple movement of resistance is creating a new intentional community, informed by a millennia old relationship with the territory and natural law, but through a constant process of re-iminagination.
As of Fall 2015, the camp continues on high alert amidst multiple incursions from the companies trying to build the pipelines. Yet while under attack, the camp enjoys wide support and solidarity. As this video highlights, the Unist’ot’en form part of a networked “corridor or resistance” of numerous justice movements who are increasingly willing to take action to oppose extreme energy projects and who are building energy sovereignty from the ground up.
Welcome to the gateway of meaningful decolonization.
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDR1l_Xw7ts
More info
Corridors of Resistance is an EJOLT Video directed by Leah Temper, edited by Siobhan McKeon and Claudia Medina with camera by Fiona Becker and Leah Temper.
It accompanies an EJOLT report on Climate Justice: Refocusing resistance for climate justice. COPing in, COPing out and beyond Paris
This report includes an article on the camp with the title: Decolonising and decarbonising: How the Unist’ot’en are arresting pipelines and asserting autonomy (Leah Temper and Sam Bliss)
