Dr. Karla Tait, Director of Clinical Programming at the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre on the “frontlines” of the Wet’suwet’en lands, took the time to write a letter to students and families in Washington discussing how their struggle connects to our lives and the lives of all people.

By Dr. Karla Tait, Director of Clinical Programming at the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre on the “frontlines” of the Wet’suwet’en lands:

We are a living example of indigenous peoples who are exercising self-determination and our own pre-colonial governance to occupy and protect our territories and waterways for both their right to exist, and to support all life forms dependent on them.

We are upholding this responsibility through the operation of a healing village on our yintah that will heal our people from the impacts of ongoing and intergenerational trauma, by allowing us to reconnect with our land and the cultural practices that flow from it.

In turn, healing our people and strengthening the bond to our territories will allow more of us to uphold our responsibilities to decent and protect the land for future generations. We hope our struggle, despite odds and regardless of outcome, will help to inspire people to learn more about localized land defense and/or indigenous struggles and become active allies, contributing in tangible ways by sharing resources and power to help our cause.

No one is too small or insignificant to make a difference at this critical time of climate change. The industry projects attempting to force their way into our unceded Yintah (territories) are intended to serve international interests, for export fuel, and profit for Canada and British Columbia. They will not be benefiting our Wet’suwet’en people, who will feel the brunt of the impacts on our land and salmon-bearing waterways.

It is important in the global consumer-based economy and society that western colonization has created, to question its underpinning values and morality of the practices that maintain this status quo. To continue allowing extraction and harm of lands and waters that are out of sight or on someone else’s territory harms our global ecosystem.

Standing by while indigenous people are criminalized to justify violence against us and forcible removal from our land, denies humanity’s shared responsibility to protect land and water for all future generations. We hope students and families in Washington and everywhere will help shoulder this important work that we owe to our children and grandchildren and all relations we share this beautiful earth with.