Okanagan Indian Band supports Wet'suwet'en in letter to PM

The Okanagan Indian Band has thrown its support behind the Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs.

The chiefs are opposing a natural gas pipeline that would run through their traditional lands.

Blockades of rail lines have popped up across the country as people act in solidarity with the five hereditary chiefs in protesting the pipeline.

In a letter from Chief Byron Louis to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the band states its support in opposing the pipeline.

"We, the Chief and Council of the Okanagan Band and member of the Syilx/Okanagan Nation wish to express our support for the Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs who are attempting to protect their land by blocking TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast," states the letter signed by Louis.

"When the Crown or its agencies refuse to hear from a legitimate level of government such as a Hereditary Government and its Chiefs, it is seen as calculated and insidious attempt to divide communities and sow internal dissent within the nation in order to impose its will. This is not in the spirit of proper consultation and tramples all attempts at establishing true reconciliation as articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada and the UN in its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."

The letter goes on to state: “Canada’s history is replete with instances of First Nations people forcibly removed from their land. Whether by government policy or police action, the result is the same – economies and cultures are destroyed, ecosystems ravaged and rights unjustifiably extinguished in the name of 'public interest.'"

Louis goes on to say that consultation and reconciliation demand respect for rules and systems of government "that were in effect in this land long before people with Western European ideas of governance immigrated here."